When Leonardo LeTourneaut applied for an internship with IBM in 2003, he had an undergraduate degree and four internships on his resume. What he didn’t have, however, was exposure to a platform like IBM’s iSeries mid-range computers, or experience working on a business project from conception to completion.

LeTourneaut landed a three-month IBM Speed Team internship, during which groups of four students are assigned to work on projects on the iSeries platform. The students in LeTourneaut’s team completed a grid-computing e-commerce application designed to help small and medium-sized businesses handle peak traffic on their web sites. The group researched the problem, developed a solution and then presented their work to a group of IBM colleagues. For LeTourneaut it was a three-month immersion in the real world of business. “Projects in school are not as involved,” he said. “The best part was working on something from conception to the finish.” The internship paid off for LeTourneaut: IBM offered him a full-time job as a software engineer on the iSeries platform.

IBM is one of the most visible technology companies offering programs aimed at developing enterprise-level skills among college and graduate students. Using traditional internships along with web-based contests, blogs, and collaborative projects, the companies are trying to create a buzz about enterprise systems that may initially seem dull to the college crowd. In addition to exposure to mainframe and mid-range systems, the programs offer students a chance to work with professionals from a variety of disciplines such as marketing, finance, and human resources, that they would not likely encounter in the classroom. The technology companies benefit by creating a pool of talent for recruitment – IBM’s goal is to hire 70 percent of its interns -- and by positioning themselves as attractive employers to young IT professionals.

“The majority of college students know the desktop [PC], but they don’t understand the comprehensiveness of servers across corporations when they come in,” says Linda Grigoleit, iSeries worldwide marketing program manager. The intensive Speed Team internships create awareness of an entirely different class of computer systems, she says. The interns also hone business, project management, and communications skills, Grigoleit says. Unisys Corp. has also reached out to college students in an effort to foster enterprise-level skills. Earlier this year the company launched the TuxMasters Invitational, a contest in which college students are challenged to make improvements to the Linux operating system. Under the contest rules, students had to select a project using the Open Source Development Lab’s technical capability guide for Data Center Linux, a lengthy document that includes a laundry list of features needed to strengthen Linux’s enterprise features, says Derek Rodner, Linux program manager for Unisys.