Syracuse U iSchool Takes Students Hands-on with Large-Scale Enterprise Deployments

IBM and Syracuse University are partnering to provide students with hands-on opportunities to learn about deployments of large-scale global enterprise information systems.

Students in Syracuse's iSchool Global Enterprise Technology minor program have access to Rational Developer for System z (Rdz) and zEnterprise Systems. Participants seeking the minor conduct case studies, engage in team projects, and learn from guest lecturers. Approximately 500 students have attended the minor program so far since its launch.

Rational Developer for System z includes "model-based application development, run-time testing, and rapid deployment of on demand applications," according to IBM. In addition, it integrates with WebSphere, CICS, Batch, IMS, and DB2.

The zEnterprise system, which was launched in July 2010, is a multi-architecture computer system that can host a variety of workloads, but manage them as one entity. It uses one management interface. The system uses either the zEnterprise 196 central processing complex, or the IBM zEnterprise BladeCenter Extension. It supports z/OS, Linux, z/VSE, z/VM, z/TPF, AIX, and Microsoft Windows operating environments.

"Our students need to build relevant skills to address the sheer growth of computing and Big Data," said David Dischiave, assistant professor and the director of the graduate Information Management Program in the School of Information Studies (iSchool). "These courses and the IBM technology platform help prepare students to build large global data centers, allow them to work across multiple systems, and ultimately gain employment in large global enterprises."

Syracuse University in upstate New York has about 20,000 enrolled students. It participates in IBM's Academic Initiative, which provides free access to books, training, tools, courseware, hardware, and software. It also received a top rank in the IBM Master the Mainframe contest, which is open to high school and college/university students in the United States and Canada.

For more information, visit ibm.com, or ischool.syr.edu.

About the Author

Tim Sohn is a 10-year veteran of the news business, having served in capacities from reporter to editor-in-chief of a variety of publications including Web sites, daily and weekly newspapers, consumer and trade magazines, and wire services. He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @editortim.

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