IBM to Launch COE at 75 engineering colleges

IBM has announced that it will be establishing 75 new Centers of Excellence (CoE) at engineering colleges across 60 cities in India. Last year also the vendor had set- up over 75 such CoEs across the country. Spread across 20 states these new CoEs will be selected from the top 300 engineering colleges in India.


The IBM CoEs are aimed at creating a platform for the development of software skills among the students and to offer them an opportunity to acquire new skill sets around IBM software. Apart from providing training, certification and software which is free of charge to these colleges, IBM plans to take the CoEs to the next logical level of converting them into Incubation Centers, to bolster software skills and ensure industry-ready professionals.

IBM is looking to bring its Global Entrepreneurship Initiative (GEI) to some of these colleges. This initiative has produced around 10,000 certified candidates from the various CoEs. The number is expected to increase by 6000 certified candidates in 2010.

To me this looks to be a great intiative and an untapped sector which could produce wonders. Normally, the student would be enthusiatic to learn and can be much innovative particularly during the final year project and this could turn out to be a win-win situation between colleges and industry at a low cost. In West, most of the innovation orginates from college due to institute and industry collobaration, unfortunately, so far, this has been the missing link in India.

This will also pave way to building up entreprenuership culture. Will other corporates follow this trend?