While Indian students coming out of the country?s various engineering and research institutes are globally recognised for their educational skills, it is the lack of industry-academia research link that has stymied entrepreneurship from taking shape. Keeping this in mind, the US computing major IBM has launched an initiative to mentor select Indian students from reputed institutes on next generation technologies such as services-oriented architecture (SOA), telecom solutions engineering, enterprise computing, Web 2.0 and Web programming, IT services management, cloud computing, nano and microelectronics, among others.
Recently, IBM rolled out the initiative with its remote mentoring programme at International Institute of Information Technology?Hyderabad (IIIT-H). The first project is to develop multi-core processors, besides working on gene mechanics and developing solutions for earthquake prediction.
The initiative is targeted at mentoring selected students of reputed institutes on various short-term projects revolving around next-generation technologies and IT services. Jai Menon, IBM fellow and vice-president of technical strategy informs that the company plans to reach out to 25 institutes across India through its remote mentoring programme.
While the Indian academia and industry understand the need to collaborate to develop an industry-ready workforce, what is lacking is a platform to ensure constant communication between the two. Though there have been growing instances of collaboration between the industry and scientific, engineering and research institutions, the country could still potentially face a shortage of 5,00,000 IT professionals by 2010, warns a Nasscom report.
Remote mentoring is aimed at enabling students to experience the unique remote delivery model, work as a team, deliver on deadlines and enhance communication skills. It will simulate a remote project management and delivery environment, a first of its kind in the industry, informs Menon. ?This programme has been initiated and piloted out of India to handle real-world problems. Based on its success here, we might explore possibilities of rolling it out globally,? he adds.
IBM plans to work with the student community and faculties on various short-term projects revolving around generation-next IBM technologies with an aim towards establishing long term technical collaborations. By partnering with leading technical universities in India, this programme will provide an opportunity for the students and faculty to gain industry experience and exposure to world-class technologies. ?Besides exposure to technologies, remote mentoring will inculcate business skills, thus bringing students closer to the professional scenario,? says Menon.
During the mentoring period of three to four months, students will work with their university professors, and also IBM mentors (experts) through regular conference calls and email exchanges.
In the past too, IBM has embarked on various initiatives to tap the academia talent in the country. For instance, IBM India Software Lab, which has labs across Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad, Gurgaon, and Mumbai, started way back in 1992. Working closely with global product teams, the lab develops products and technologies across all five brands of IBM Software Group?s portfolio of Information Management, Workplace, Portal, Lotus and Collaboration Software (WPLC), Rational, Tivoli and Application Integration Middleware (AIM). The lab teams work on some of the core products like WebSphere Partner Gateway, WebSphere Adapters, WebSphere Commerce, Rational Tara, Master Data Management Server, FileNet P8, DB2 VM/VSE, Tivoli Identity Manager, Tivoli Provisioning Manager, Tivoli Role Management Product, Lotus Notes Client, and Lotus Expeditor. Given the significance of India in the global software development ecosystem and the huge local community of software developers, the lab has built a robust support structure to provide technical support, education, training, migration and design assistance to IBM?s business partners, system integrators and independent software vendors. Last year, the team successfully supported 110 engagements, and trained over 1,200 partner consultants in the Asia-Pacific region, company officials inform.
Meanwhile, the lab has set up the SOA Leadership Centre (SLC) to meet the increased demand for regional SOA skills and ease its adoption by clients in the region. This is IBM?s fourth SOA centre worldwide, joining existing centres in France, Italy and the UAE and the first in the Asia-Pacific region. Last year, this centre has helped customers like Standard Chartered Bank, Hindustan Unilever, Jindal Steel, SCB, American Express, Bank of Montreal, MTD Products, CVS Caremark, American Express (BPM/SOA) and Nokia to adopt and implement SOA framework to address their IT infrastructure/application challenges and growing demands.
Incidentally, IBM has also developed Extreme Blue, an internship programme that intends to cultivate innovative thinking and encourage out-of-the-box ideas to meet emerging business needs. Extreme Blue projects provide a unique opportunity for students to work in a high performance and highly charged environment. As part of IBM?s Centre for Advanced Studies (CAS), the lab has established a collaborative programme with the academic community, and drives focused set of activities towards collaborative research and advanced technologies. Key objectives of the programme include building relationships among researchers, customers and IBM towards collaborative research and design on specific topics of interest and projects that help advance the development of technology and solutions.
Some of the areas of collaboration with faculty members from institutions like the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institute of Science (IISc) include software architecture and programming models, service management, nanotechnology, data mining, and power management.
Sometime back, IBM unveiled its indigenous Dynamic Infrastructure Lab in Pune, by using the skills base from its India workforce. The lab showcases advanced technologies to address clients? business challenges and brings intelligence, automation, integration, and efficiencies to the digital and physical worlds.