IBM announced new and extended collaboration with six engineering and technology colleges in the state of Tamil Nadu to provide a platform for development of software skills among the students.
The collaboration has brought the establishment of a series of IBM Centers of Excellence (COE), creating opportunity for students to learn new skill sets on IBM software products – DB2, WebSphere, Lotus, Rational and Tivoli – as well as develop world-class business solutions.
The COEs were launched at Sona College of Technology, Salem; KLN College of Information Technology, Madurai; Kalasilingam University, Krishnankovil; RMK College of Engineering, Chennai; Karpagam college of Engineering, Coimbatore and Sri Krishna College of Engineering and Technology, Coimbatore.
IBM will follow a two-pronged approach, providing the colleges with access to technologies relevant to the market while ensuring the right skills are taught. The students can gain first-hand experience of the software products that are installed at the campus. Through this initiative, IBM will work closely with the colleges in the state of Tamil Nadu, leveraging the selected colleges as centers of learning.
“Organizations are not looking for nuts-and-bolts programmers and easy-to-document support workers. Increased competitiveness and demand for the corresponding business and technology skills will require students to develop a unique skill-set never seen before but the supply of such people with the right skills for a smart planet is increasingly inadequate,” said Himanshu Goyal, Country Manager - Academic Initiative, Developer Works & Globalization IBM India/South Asia.
The COE is an outgrowth of IBM's Academic Initiative which covers 2,000 colleges and universities around the world -- a global model committed to driving evolving open standards-based IT skills. Under the initiative, IBM partners closely with the local government and academia to create an enabling environment by allowing access to IBM software, course materials, training and curriculum development, helping India become an innovators’ nation by investing in skills development and technology enablement, empowering future workers with the right skills to be able to compete in the larger global workforce.