What started as an initiative by IBM to bring its ‘Global Entrepreneurship Initiative’ to colleges and fortify industry-academia alliance in 2009 has gained further momentum. This year too, IBM is planning to set up 75 new Centers of Excellence (CoE) like the previous year, thereby, taking the total number of CoEs in India to 150. Last year, the CoEs were launched at several engineering colleges in the states of Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan, among others.
The CoE is an outgrowth of IBM’s Global Academic Initiative covering more than 2,000 colleges and universities around the world. Under the initiative, IBM partners with the local government and academia to create an enabling environment by allowing access to IBM software, course material, training and curriculum development. Thus, it helps the country become an innovators’ nation by investing in skills development and technology enablement, thereby, empowering future workers to be able to compete in the larger global workforce.
“We are trying to bring the industry and academia closer by creating a program where industry can use the CoE set up and the certified resources in the college to create innovative software projects,” explains Himanshu Goyal, Country Manager – Academic Initiative, Developer Works & Globalization, IBM – South Asia.
Moreover, this initiative helps start-ups capture new business opportunities by providing access to technology resources from IBM. Through its Global Entrepreneurship Initiative program, IBM will select a few projects based on their feasibility and provide guidance to take them to market and build sustainable business for the entrepreneurs. “Apart from providing training, certification and software, free of cost to these colleges, IBM plans to take the CoEs to next level and convert them into Incubation Centers,” confirms Goyal.
IBM’s Academic Initiative, under which these CoEs are being launched, has been ensuring certified and industry-ready software professionals, hitherto producing nearly 10,000 certified candidates from the various CoEs. The number is expected to increase by 6000 certified candidates in 2010.
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