Innovation within IBM (and WebSphere) development through university collaborations

Historically over the years, IBM has supported a wide array of university relations programs, at the corporate, business unit/product division and local (geographical) levels. These programs have been used to support a variety of objectives that include: product innovation, testing, proof-of-concepts and showcases; talent development and recruiting; sales opportunities; corporate citizenship and visibility; and others. An effective application of these university relations resources and programs occurs within the Chief Technology Offices (CTOs) of several IBM Software Group (SWG) product divisions. A notable example is WebSphere CTO, and specifically its Emerging Technology Institute (ETI), which defines the new products, new features, new technologies etc. for the IBM WebSphere product portfolio. It maintains a pair of regional university relations centers, the Centers for Advanced Studies (CAS), located in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina (US) and Toronto (Canada), which are also co-located at two of WebSphere's largest product development sites. These centers work directly with the local universities in support of product innovation and (student) talent development and recruitment, and are part of a larger network of some 26 such centers located around the world. This talk will provide an overview of the various IBM corporate university relations programs that are managed by the Global University Programs (GUP) team. These include the IBM Shared University Relations (SUR) program, the IBM Faculty Awards and Innovation Awards programs, the IBM PhD Fellowship program, the Open Collaborative Research (OCR) program and many others. It will also provide an overview of other special programs within IBM that support educational and research institutions, including the Academic Initiative, the Systems and Technology Group (STG) University Alliances, Corporate Citizen and Corporate Affairs (CCCA) and many others. An overview of the CAS program, together with the structure of IBM university relations world wide from country to country, will be provided. It will presented in a context that demonstrates how the 26 CAS programs and numerous local country university relations teams leverage these programs to maintain a strong partnership with local academia, while driving innovation within IBM products and services development. This talk will conclude with an outstanding example of how RTP CAS, IBM university relations and IBM hardware development partnered with a local university to develop a revolutionary cloud computing solution, the Virtual Computing Lab (VCL) developed at NC State University in Raleigh NC.