Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, has announced that it will join forces with Datacom, an Australasian IT services company, on a graduate internship program to address the technology industry's skills shortage and help build a talent pipeline in Australia.

To date, Aruba has funded two graduate candidates through the program, who Datacom hired full-time after they completed their graduate internships. Armed with skills they learned throughout their time with Datacom as graduate interns, both are now certified in Aruba’s technology suite, skills highly sought after across the industry.

The first Aruba-sponsored cohort launched at the beginning of 2022 to expand learning opportunities and hands-on tech experience for young talent. By building their specialisations and certifications in a real-world environment, both interns could accelerate career exploration through exposure to various teams and business areas.

“By providing an accessible pathway into technology, the graduate internship program facilitates greater workplace diversity in STEM,” says Tristan Rajah, Channel Leader, Aruba South Pacific.

“The two graduates that have completed the program with Datacom are now employed full-time by the organisation and play an integral role in managing large projects and teams, and acting as mentors to the next cohort of grads coming through the program.” 

Aruba provides secure, intelligent edge-to-cloud networking solutions that use AI to automate the network while harnessing data to drive powerful business outcomes. 

With Aruba ESP (Edge Services Platform) and as-a-service options, Aruba takes a cloud-native approach to help customers meet their connectivity, security, and financial requirements across campus, branch, data centre, and remote worker environments covering all aspects of wired, wireless LAN, and wide area networking.

“Fostering the next generation of tech talent is a strategic priority for us at Datacom," says Siobhan Gallacher, Director of People and Culture at Datacom. 

“Throughout Australia, there is a need for more people with technical expertise. Through our partnership with Aruba, we have the ability to offer graduates access to Aruba certification and first-hand product experience in a working environment, ensuring we play an active role in developing talent that will help solve some of our customers’ biggest challenges.”

“Datacom is Australasia's largest home-grown technology company and works with organisations and communities around the world to solve their biggest challenges, imagine new possibilities, and help move them to a better place by connecting people and technology. Datacom supports customers through a broad range of services and solutions that span technology, operations, digital and products, all underpinned by robust industry experience and insight.”

With the growing demand for technology services and technically skilled workers, Datacom has set the strategic goal of having 25% of its new employees be career starters.

Aruba will support the graduate program again in 2023 and work with Datacom to help train the next generation of Aruba-certified technology specialists.