Cisco Academy Opens in Scotland

LONDON -- Panduit has recently pledged financial and practical support to the first Cisco Community Networking Academy to be established in Europe - the ‘Hills Trust’ Academy. Located in Govan, Scotland, ‘Hills Trust’, which is a Community Technology Academy, was formally opened by Manchester United Manager Sir Alex Ferguson on the 20th March 2003. Sir Alex, who was born in Govan, was also joined by the First Minister of Scotland Jack McConnell.

The Hills Trust building was saved from derelict by the Govan Initiative Ltd in 1997 and was refurbished through philanthropic donations from public and private sector partners, including Cisco Systems and Panduit, to establish itself as a state of the art, Community Technology Academy. The Academy’s mission is to democratise access to industry centred learning and build innovative pathways to higher waged employment opportunities for residents of under-invested communities. The Academy’s curriculum incorporates several technology-based courses including the Panduit sponsored course “Fundamentals of Voice and Data Cabling (FVDC).”

The opening of the Academy marks another milestone in Panduit’s partnership with Cisco systems. Panduit has now been a sponsor of the Cisco Networking Academy™ Programme for 12 months, helping to expand the Academy’s curriculum to the benefit of local communities around the world. The Academy also works to improve the future of the networking market as a whole, ensuring that newly skilled graduates are au fait with the very latest technologies. As leading academic Michael E. Porter highlighted in his Harvard Business Review paper entitled “The Competitive Advantage of Corporate Philanthropy”: “The Cisco Networking Academy draws support from numerous technology companies [..] all of which benefit from the graduate’s success.[1]”

As well as their sponsorship of a Cisco Networking Academy™ course, Panduit has also partnered with Cisco is to educate the networking industry about the benefits of converged networks. Together, the two companies are researching ways to facilitate the migration from traditional switched voice to packet voice and converged networks through initiatives such as VoIP and Metro Ethernet. They have also spent the last two years educating the Networking and Telecommunications Industry, in particular CIO’s, CFO’s and IT Directors, about the importance of end-to-end solutions.

Commenting on the success of their FVDC course and partnership with Cisco, Panduit’s Strategic Alliance Manager, Oscar Criado Del Rey stated: “Our investment in world-wide education programmes serves to demonstrate that Panduit is committed to improving industry standards and best practice. By leveraging our input into the Hills Trust Academy and many others Academies around the world, we hope to educate and share our expertise in copper and fibre optic cabling with even more students and in doing so, build a generation of industry workers with the ability to deploy future technology such as VoIP and intelligent infrastructure to Cat6 standards.

Panduit Corp.

Cisco Systems Inc.