IBM & Syracuse: Building Critical Software Development Skills

If you’ve been watching any of the Livestream coverage emerging from the IBM Innovate event down in Orlando, you know that skills is a key issue facing software development shops everywhere.  The need for new and changing skills, skills for new platforms and development languages, skills to help pull it all together.

Today, IBM made an announcement from Innovate that it is working to help address the skills issue in a new partnership with Syracuse University intended to help college students build computing skills to manage traditional and new systems in large global enterprises.

As business value creation increasingly shifts to software, the skills needed to tackle disruptive technologies like cloud and mobile computing, particularly for enterprise-class, large industrial systems, have become critical.

Lack of employee skills in software technologies is cited as the top barrier that prevents organizations from leveraging software for a competitive advantage, according to initial findings in IBM’s Institute for Business Value 2012 Global Study on Software Delivery.

And according to IBM’s 2012 Global CEO Study, including input from more than 1,700 Chief Executive Officers from 64 countries and 18 industries, a majority (71 percent) of global CEOs regard technology as the number one factor to impact an organization’s future over the next three years — considered to be an even bigger change agent than shifting economic and market conditions.  

Syracuse GETs Skills

Syracuse University’s Global Enterprise Technology (GET) curriculum is an interdisciplinary program focused on preparing students for successful careers in large-scale, technology-driven global operating environments.

IBM and a consortium of partners provide technology platforms and multiple systems experience for the GET students. IBM’s Rational Developer for System z (RDz) and z Enterprise Systems help students build applications on multiple systems platforms including z/OS, AIX, Linux and Windows.

“Our students need to build relevant skills to address the sheer growth of computing and Big Data,” said David Dischiave, assistant professor and the director of the graduate Information Management Program in the School of Information Studies (iSchool) at Syracuse University. “These courses and the IBM technology platform help prepare students to build large global data centers, allow them to work across multiple systems, and ultimately gain employment in large global enterprises.”

Close to 500 students have participated in the Global Enterprise Technology minor since its inception. Syracuse University’s iSchool is the No. 1 school for information systems study, as ranked by U.S. News and World Report, and serves as a model for other iSchools that are emerging around the globe.

Back To The Mainframe Future

More than 120 new clients worldwide have chosen the IBM mainframe platform as a backbone of their IT infrastructure since the IBM zEnterprise system was introduced in July 2010.

The zEnterprise is a workload-optimized, multi-architecture system capable of hosting many workloads integrated together, and efficiently managed as a single entity.

Syracuse University is a participant in IBM’s Academic Initiative and was a top ranked competitor in IBM’s 2011 Master the Mainframe competition.

As today’s mainframes grow in popularity and require a new generation of mainframe experts, the contest is designed to equip students with basic skills to make them more competitive in the enterprise computing industry job market.

IBM’s Academic Initiative offers a wide range of technology education benefits to meet the goals of colleges and universities. Over 6,000 universities and 30,000 faculty members worldwide have joined IBM’s Academic Initiative over the past five years.