IBM in collaboration with its business partners today announced “The Great Mind Challenge 2008” - a pioneering contest under the company’s Academic Initiative programs that provide student programmers with a unique opportunity to develop innovative solutions using open standards-based IT tools under grueling real time situations. It also declared the winners for the 2007 challenge - K.L.N. College of Engineering and the runners up from Gujarat Vidyapeeth, Gujarat and Amrita School of Engineering (Deemed University), Tamil Nadu were felicitated at an awards ceremony in Mumbai today.

The Challenge in 2008 will be themed around “Search for XML Superstar”. This will enable participants to get a hands-on experience on IBM software products, namely (Tivoli, WebSphere Application Server/ WebSphere Application Server Community Edition, DB2/DB2 Express-C, WebSphere Portal and Forms and Rational) and Eclipse which is Open Source on a Linux platform. Mentors from IBM along with the college faculty worked closely with the students enabling them throughout the programme. A total of 365 plus workshops were conducted on these software products around the country in 2007.

At the felicitation ceremony, Pradeep Nair, Director – Software Group, IBM India/SA said “The IBM Great Mind Challenge is aimed at encouraging students who aspire to make vital contributions by developing applications on leading-edge IBM technologies. We enable them to work on real world project scenarios with the objective of providing them scope for substantially improving their software writing skills.”

The winning team worked on tools such as DB2, Websphere Application Developer, Websphere application server, Rational etc. to develop ‘District Collectorate Office Information Integration’ that will help to maintain information about citizens and provide some basic level services to citizens. Citizens can request for Birth, Community, Income certificates and Ration card online as well. It will help to expedite retrieval & processing of information.

“This year the top 100 participants of TGMC got a special opportunity to be screened by IBM HR for placement within IBM. Academic initiative program also maintains a Student job portal facilitating the students to upload their resumes and apply for relevant IT positions .,” Mr. Nair added.

The Great Mind Challenge 2007 covered 28 States and 7 Union Territories and the students registrations went up form 21800 to 62456.

Apart from this IBM Academic Initiative also offers workshops and certification programs on various technologies like Service Oriented Architecture, XML, Infrastructure Management, DB2, WebSphere, IBM Community Edition Software etc. The company has successfully imparted training on open standards-based technologies to more than 125,000 students across 575 colleges in India during 2007 through the various AI programs.

Sourced From: Vox Public Relations