Mondays on “Mornings unPHILtered” is typically focused on business, economics and cutting-edge computer technology. Monday was no different, as host Phil Boyum welcomed frequent contributor Dr. Ron Shiffler, the Dean of Georgia Southern University's College of Business Administration and the interim Dean of the College of Informational Technology.
    Dr. Shiffler came on to announce that the GSU College of IT has just signed an agreement to create the world's first International VMware IT Academy Center. At the center, professors from across the country and around the world will learn to become certified instructors with this enterprise-level, virtualization software.
    VMware is not only helping the college upgrade its equipment for handling this software, but is also giving them a free licensed copy of their software (valued at $100,000.) Professor Timur Mirzoev of the College of IT worked very hard to convince everyone to set up this center.
    Mirzoev is the first professor to receive the company's VCI — VMware Certified Instructor — designation. Once the center is up and running, the college will offer training seminars to teach faculty from other universities seeking the same VCI certificate. In addition, Georgia Southern students will have the opportunity to be certified as a VCP, or VMware Certified Professionals.
    The College of IT at GSU was the first four-year institution to teach VMware classes and became a VMware IT Academy in 2008.
    Virtualization is VMware's business. Every computer is tied to a server, which quite often is not utilizing all of its available resources. VMware's software seeks to utilize those resources to make a company more efficient in order to reduce the amount of overhead spent on machinery.
    Though largely unknown outside of the computer services industry, VMware has over 200,000 corporate clients including nearly all of the companies on the Forbes 100 — a list of the largest multi-national companies.
    VMware allows business computers to be assigned numerous tasks in the most efficient way possible in a totally secure environment. Dean Shiffler said that they will begin offering training sessions as soon as they can, if not this summer, then by Christmas of 2010.
    Shiffler said Georgia Southern's partnership with VMware is a big boost to the College of IT. With the VMware's presence in so many Forbes 100 countries, a student earning the VCP designation will have additional doors open to them upon graduation. In addition, the VMware partnership has already begun generating interest for Georgia Southern among other high-tech companies including EMC - a storage network and date center company.
    Shiffler said this development could be just the very beginning of creating a very powerful IT College that is capable of competing for students worldwide.
        
    “Mornings unPHILtered” airs live Monday through Friday from 9-10 a.m. on StatesboroHerald.com and at WWNS 1240 AM on the radio. You can also listen to the archived recordings anytime at BoroLive.com or in the Multimedia section of StatesboroHerald.com