Motorola to set up tech school in Hyderabad

Motorola’s investment and time-frame for setting up the facility was not immediately known. When contacted, a Motorola official said the first session of the school was scheduled to begin in August.

The official said the school would be developed as a state-of-the-art centre to create talent in advanced technologies in IT and telecom. It would also be able to offer R & D opportunities to innovate new approaches to wireless communication for the Indian market.

Motorola is expected to support IIIT by creating a physical and intellectual environment that encourages innovation and exchange of ideas by students and faculty with Motorola technologists and IT professionals. The school would also train IIIT students on the latest cellular phone and network equipment on GSM (global system for mobile communications) and CDMA (code division multiple access) technologies.

Motorola University is a global education service provider that designs, develops and delivers solutions to critical business issues to Motorola, its customers and partners.

Launched in 1981, the university has established academic partnership with institutes of higher learning around the world. It has such partnerships in US, Australia, Europe, China, Japan, Singapore and Malaysia. As of now, the university has 103 campuses in 24 countries. The association with IIIT, Hyderabad is the first of its kind in India.

IT major Sun Microsystems also said it is seriously considering the option of setting up a microprocessor design facility in India. "We are considering a hardware design centre in India which would mainly focus on very large systems integration (VLSI) microprocessor designing," Anant Agrawal, vice president (engineering microelectronics) of Sun said.

Agrawal said the company is currently evaluating various cities including New Delhi, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai for the centre. "India has a large pool of technical manpower coming from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and Indian Institute of Science (IISc) that the company wants to tap for its hardware design operations," Agrawal said.

The upcoming centre would focus on compilers, design tools and computer architecture besides VLSI designing, he said, adding the centre would be operational latest by 2003. Sun currently has a hardware design centre in United Kingdom which it started following acquisition of a British firm.

Asked if the company would follow the takeover route or set up its own facility in India, Agrawal said Sun was open to both the options.