IBM Alliance Has Georgetown University Offering New SOA Boot Camp, Courses

With a mission of getting techies and nontechies acclimated in service-oriented architecture, IBM and Georgetown University on Thursday announced a pact to develop SOA college curricula that will be offered by the school.

Predictions of an impending shortage of IT professionals, in large part because of declining enrollment of computer science majors nationwide, make it important for skills such as SOA to trickle into nontech fields as well, says Paul Brunet, IBM director of SOA product marketing.

Next fall, Georgetown will include SOA in curriculum offered to computer science students, as well as in courses aimed at nontech majors such as business and law students, says Brian Blake, an associate professor of computer science at Georgetown. Law students, for example, could study the issues involved in setting up contracts such as service level agreements related to SOA.

For working tech professionals, Georgetown University next January plans to begin offering a three-day boot camp. The crash course will be aimed at a range of IT pros, including top-level executives like CIOs and CTOs who need to learn about SOA. The program will feature guest speakers, including IBM SOA experts, high-level discussions about SOA concepts and strategy, as well as hands-on training using SOA tools and techniques.

Georgetown's SOA courses will include lessons related to IBM's WebSphere integration middleware, which is used in many SOA environments.

IBM will also offer parts of the new codeveloped SOA curricula to other universities that participate in IBM's Academic Initiative, a program aimed at helping students develop technology skills.