IBM’s System i Academic Initiative, announced last year with the key intention of bringing new blood to the platform through forging partnerships with educational institutions and local businesses, is going from strength to strength.

Cally Beck, System i Academic Initiative programme manager, Europe, says: “This programme is not just for sourcing new blood for the platform but has also proved a good method for developing new business contacts. It provides another avenue for customer training for a college and equally enables universities to become technology advisers and consultants to System i customers -- saving them from paying expensive fees to management consultants.”

A coup for the Academic Initiative was the Scottish Qualifications Authority saying it was implementing a Higher National Diploma to include System i -- to be taught at all 43 colleges of further education in Scotland from September onwards. The move means System i certification will be an academic qualification in its own right as opposed to an award given purely by IBM.

Beck has undertaken a customer mapping exercise where she looked at the customers Big Blue has in the different areas where there is a college and put them in touch with customers.

“A large number of customers in Scotland are interested in this programme,” says Beck. “I’ve had tremendous support from our internal sales teams in selling the concepts to customers and business partners. People are excited that students on these courses will be able to actually do something when they leave a college as opposed to just owning a certificate.”

This work experience element was crucial to the Scottish Qualifications Authority’s decision. Although SQA already runs courses on Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco and Apple, these vendors do not provide a link between students and local businesses.

“There are three levels. The first tier is for systems operations and lasts for 60 hours excluding homework, which is one term,” says Beck. “The second tier is for systems administrators and lasts for 120 hours, which is two terms, and the third level is for applications developers, system architects and systems managers, and lasts for 180 hours. The course lasts just over 12 months and covers the whole range of skill topics. To reach the final tier, all students have to progress through the first two tiers.”

The courses will be available on a full or part-time basis and can also be accessed by people who are already in work and want to retrain or gain new skills. “We have also developed a special curriculum for colleges separate from universities which is job-based,” says Beck.

Another coup just signed is an agreement with the UK Edexcel examinations board which will be implementing the curriculum in September.

Barnfield College in Bedfordshire started offering the System i Architecture and Operations course as part of its Higher National Diploma in IT Studies in January. Following its most recent Ofsted inspection report, it became the first further education college to be designated a national Learning and Skills Beacon. The college is a Cisco Academy and wanted to teach the System i courses because it could see the opportunity for working with System i customers locally. The plan is to help partner the college with customers and software developers, not just locally but on a national and even international levels.

“The commercially active Suffolk College in Ipswich is also to offer the curriculum from September,” says Beck. “The college is close to businesses -- particularly small to medium sized businesses -- in Suffolk, Essex, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk, while it also provides technological education too. A major aim is targeting SMBs in the south east of England.”

On asking customers why they liked working with universities, Beck reports the view that “universities are able to offer very many different angles of looking at solutions.”

“Customers find solutions through dialogue and working through modules,” she says. “They find the solutions themselves. It’s rather like an extension of the IT department. University professors like the programme as it helps to drive tenure -- basically that’s proving to the dean that the professor is earning his salary, and more.” Discussions are ongoing with several UK universities.

The mainland Europe part of the initiative is also progressing, particularly at the University of Gothenburg which is partnering with Volvo. Advances are also being made in Germany, Poland, Bulgaria and Hungary.

Frank Booty, industry reporter