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Published date: 11 Feb 2008
The Mainstream -- February 2008 -- Issue 28
 In the dawn of the computer age, businesses commonly relied on college grads with mathematics, engineering and physics backgrounds to run their early IT initiatives. They had no other choice. No “computing” degrees, per se, existed.
All that changed in the mid 1950s when IBM lobbied universities with the notion of offering a “computer sciences” degree that pulled together multiple disciplines with a specific focus on computing.
Decades later, IBM is at the helm again with a new effort that prepares undergrads for the expanding world of IT services – a vast area largely underserved by education centers.
“We’re finding that many colleges don’t realize the necessity businesses have to support the infrastructure, or that IT services even exist,” says Paul Kontogiorgis, program manager and creator of the Information Technology Services Curriculum (ITSC). “So a major push by IBM is to revitalize an interest in technology and once again help bridge the gap between academia and the business world – while also helping to reduce corporate training costs for new IT hires. We’re also increasing hiring possibilities for our graduates.”
This accelerated workforce readiness will help alleviate the lack of available skills, and narrow the distance between IT job tasks, skills, roles, and the vision of business leaders.
Expanding world of services
In general, services make up a fast growing portion of the world economy. They comprise more than 70 percent of the US and European economies. But few courses teach students about business processes, or how to, for example, become a consultant.
Likewise, few college grads leave school equipped to perform or manage the IT services that support a company’s everyday business needs. Those services can include anything from performance and availability monitoring, to user request and software asset management. These skills may encompass the management of IT incidents, operations, software distribution, help desk, data transfer and IT security functions. Development of business services within a service-oriented environment, such as online credit checks, user authentication or new account set up, is another services area in which businesses require highly trained workers.
IBM has responded to this economic challenge by developing an IT Services Curriculum program for colleges and universities that will continue to grow and expand over the coming years.
To date, Kontogiorgis’s team has developed two university-ready foundations in IT services courses that familiarize college students, covering more than 20 key IT services crucial to every sector and industry. These services include problem management, IT security management, event management, asset management, storage management and many others. The courses remain vendor and methodology agnostic and follow an open-source philosophy. Classes include lecture slides, case studies, homework assignments, sample exams and recommended lab exercises.
More than 50 universities around the world have already adopted the initial offerings. One university, Missouri State, now offers a full bachelor degree program in IT Service Management. Other universities, including Ohio State and Neumont University are developing Master’s programs in IT Services, with Neumont also creating an undergraduate IT Service certificate program. Within a year, Kontogiorgis expects three to four dozen universities in at least six countries to offer full degree IT Service programs. Hundreds of others have expressed interest in the program.
The larger degree program will focus on services and related topics within IT infrastructure management and IT service/relationship management. Other identified bachelor and master’s tracks include software development, security, storage management, autonomic computing, service oriented architecture and others. The overall focus will also help students incorporate broader skills, with classes covering the business perspective for IT services, while promoting innovation along the way. The approach fits well with the evolving need for workers to integrate technical and business skills with so-called soft skills, such as creativity, written and oral communication, and cultural awareness grounded in analyzing and solving problems.
Growing need
The educational initiative offers a winning scenario for universities, students and companies looking to hire college grads trained in IT services.
“It can easily take six months to a year for companies to train an employee to manage a single service, either from a technical or business perspective,” Kontogiorgis says. “IT management is therefore an extremely important field of consideration, as is the need for schools and universities to align curriculum with IT industry needs.”
It’s also a win for the society at large, as opportunities continue to expand in the services areas, while interest in computer science programs continues to decline and baby boomers begin to retire, with fewer skilled workers available to replace them.
Shortages already occur. According to job postings, more than 73,000 systems management jobs are available at any given time, while about 40,000 remain open in the IT service management and problem management areas. “Thousands of other positions targeted to incident management, database administrators, IT architects and solution architects are perpetually available,” Kontogiorgis says. Informal queries show the number of these jobs holding steady or even growing over time.”
Coming attractions
In the future, IBM envisions advancing the initiative by adding master and doctoral tracks that emphasize IT services integration, business process management, policy-based autonomic infrastructures, security and storage. Those tracks have already been identified by IBM and will likely be developed by IBM in collaboration with colleges. Students could earn a masters, for example, in a specific area, such as IT security services. The advanced degree would provide a very deep dive into areas such as Internet security, ethical hacking, smart cards, vulnerability analysis, privacy technology, biometrics, multiparty protocols, trust policies, compliance management and many other subtopics. Today, students receive limited training in security. However, the complexity of this area and many others, along with new industry regulatory mandates, dictates a much more in-depth approach.
IBM further supports the overall curriculum by allowing free use of IBM software to augment course materials and provides immediate access via the IBM Academic Initiative Website. IBM, in many cases, also provides experts as guest lecturers, adjunct professors, course reviewers and course developers around the world.
Support your local university
Your company can support the IT Services Curriculum initiative by encouraging you local colleges to adopt the program, or provide other training to students in IT services. These are a few of the U.S.-based schools that already participate:
- University of Bridgeport, Connecticut
- Brigham Young University Hawaii
- Indiana University
- Neumont University, Utah
- University of Nevada, Las Vegas
- University of Southern California
- Colorado State University
- Colorado University
- Missouri State University
- University of Texas at Austin
- Temple University, Philadelphia
- George Mason University
For further program information, contact ITSC Program Director Paul Kontogiorgis, paulkont@us.ibm.com, or visit the IBM SSME Academic Initiative Web page.
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