EMC has partnered with Indian training company NIIT to train storage professionals in 32 countries. The alliance is the first of its kind by EMC, and aims to fill a shortage of storage and information management professionals worldwide, Manoj Chugh, EMC's country manager for India, said on Tuesday.

About 25,000 professionals are expected to be trained in India alone over the next three years, Chugh said. EMC will provide curriculum and training for NIIT staff. With a strong presence in India and China, NIIT is also expanding gradually in the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Rapid growth in the volume of data being stored by organizations is expected to create demand for 1 million new storage professionals worldwide by 2012, Chugh said, quoting storage industry estimates.

The courses offered will include a foundation course, a specialist course and an expert course. Students enrolling in the programs will be certified by EMC through Thomson Prometric, a third-party testing and certification business of The Thomson Corporation. The course content will be vendor-independent, according to Chugh.

The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA), an industry consortium based in San Francisco, California, is also running programs to train storage professionals, and in October EMC announced that EMC Education Services and the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) have agreed to recognize each other's certification programs.

Chief information officers want professionals that are trained on a vendor-independent curriculum, but they would prefer that the training is endorsed by an industry leader like EMC, which has built a curriculum from its deep knowledge of customers, Chugh said.

NIIT will offer the training under its "Edgeineers Series" for engineering students and working professionals, though down the line it may include the program in its standard course offerings. The program will be rolled out in the next quarter across 50 NIIT centers in India. The program will then be rolled out in China, and from there to other locations where NIIT has a presence, Chugh said.