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Services science - pioneering education

John Guest, Information Age

18/10/2006 21:30:40

Did you know that IBM was responsible for introducing the first Computer Science discipline to uiversities in the 1960s? This made a powerful statement about IBM's reputation as pioneers of the IT revolution.

Today, 40 years later, we are again taking the lead in introducing another discipline to meet the changing needs of our industry and develop the skills of today's services-led economy.

Known as Services Science, Management & Engineering (or SSME), this new initiative will be responsible for training the next generation of IT savvy entrepreneurs, executives, practitioners and researchers - people equipped with the knowledge and skills to leverage technology in services to solve complex business problems that were previously just too difficult to address.

IBM recently hosted a Services Science Symposium in Sydney which brought together research and academic leaders from Australia and New Zealand to discuss the changing needs of our industry and develop the skills of today's services-led economy. It is IBM's view that the emergence of Services Science is an important part of developing skills for the future. At the opening address of the symposium I had the opportunity to discuss my thoughts on the topic.

There is a significant transition occurring in the information technology market, one that I have seen directly through interactions with my clients and confirmed through the common experiences of my colleagues from across Asia. In discussing this change with others the most telling message that we commonly share is that our business growth is not constrained by any lack of opportunity, but rather the significant lack of sophisticated IT services skills which is impacting our ability to respond to the demands of the marketplace.

The largest opportunities that I see with clients today are not traditional IT opportunities, but "services" opportunities that incorporate IT solutions. As an industry, our ability to provide value to these clients is determined by how technology can be utilised to enable improved service delivery - in service-led, not technology-led opportunities.

These are fundamental market shifts - and organisations who desire to participate in these opportunities must shift their skills. We, and our clients, now seek multi-disciplined people who understand both technology and business issues.

IBM has made this shift and is actively encouraging the educators of potential resources that support our business, such as universities and educational institutions, to also make that shift.

Just as IBM helped seed the then new discipline of computer sciences at universities 40 years ago and brought a new wave of qualifications into Australian and New Zealand universities, we are again taking the lead in introducing the Services Science discipline to develop the skills of graduates who will serve this new services-led economy.

It is obvious that the skills we need today in the IT services industry have changed; however the current teaching and student skills coming out of most universities is not meeting these requirements. While employment in the IT services industry grows, the number of students enrolling in IT courses is falling.

The IT services industry is employing professionals and graduates with business, engineering, science, language and a vast range of alternative skills as we seek to fulfil the demands of our customers. Other services industries are also seeking these cross discipline skills. Services Science is an approach to integrate these disciplines to properly focus education and research on services.

It is clear that the higher education space is facing some significant challenges - changing funding models, declining student numbers, as well as new and emerging competitors both locally and globally. Universities are looking at new areas of differentiation and in some cases enhanced specialisation. Services Sciences will give Australian and New Zealand universities a clear differentiator in the local and global education markets

The representation of a number of Australian and New Zealand universities at the IBM Symposium shows that consideration is being given to offering Services Science courses in the future. This is tremendously good news for the IT industry, as we eagerly anticipate the emergence of such graduates.

This anticipation is led largely by commercial realities. Since January this year, IBM in Australia & New Zealand hired more than 200 graduates - 85 per cent of them either with IT qualifications or commerce degrees with IT majors. For each of these IT graduates - in addition to their regular orientation and induction courses - IBM spends on average more than $10,000 per head training these young people before they are able to work effectively in the business. That's $1.75 million this year on top of their salaries, overheads, and normal induction training.

We invest in the training of our graduates in this way because we need our people to understand our clients' businesses - they need to be able to look at a problem from a business, not just a technology perspective. Moreover this is especially significant when our clients are the business leaders, not the IT department.

Today, commercial IT is no longer a "black art" - it is the essential infrastructure that keeps companies operating. IT is mainstream. It is the cornerstone of significant industry transformation and is no longer seen only as a cost centre.

Clients expect IT to contribute to the bottom line - and not just by automating tasks and streamlining processes to save money - but by opening up new markets, revolutionising the supply chain, improving organisational responsiveness and fundamentally changing business model structures.

The days when IBM simply focused on developing hardware or software are long gone. Today more time is spent talking to clients about business than about technology. Even in areas where the need for deep technical skills remains strong, and undoubtedly such areas will continue to exist, the need to understand and leverage business-oriented insights is essential if we are to work more effectively within the team.

Today's tech-savvy people need to understand core business processes and have a good grounding in business skills: project management, strategic thinking, communications skills and service delivery amongst many others. They require all sorts of complementary skills. This is the precise reason why IBM makes such a large investment in graduate hires - so that they will be equipped with those skills and serve our clients more effectively.

Our industry is undoubtedly interested in graduates who already have both technology and business skills. These graduates would have a competitive advantage over their peers with pure computer sciences degrees.

Critical to succeeding in this space is fundamentally changing the way future skills are built. This means that our academic institutions need to open up and work in tandem with business thought leaders to prepare graduates with qualifications that fuse technical competency with industry knowledge and business process expertise.

And as we learned at the symposium, many universities agree and want to work with IBM to help them get there. The experience that IBM has had to date with local universities outlines the pioneering approach that our higher education industry has already taken in other emerging fields:

• Researchers from the University of Queensland's Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN) are developing nanotechnology to help extract more petrol from oil fields; • The Securities Industry Research Centre of Asia-Pacific (SIRCA), which is an alliance of researchers from 27 Australian and New Zealand universities, are developing UNSW's international hub for financial research and innovation; • Australian and New Zealand universities are also assisting IBM to pioneer the world's first Innovation exchange - an idea now being adopted as a major driver of innovation in the US and around the world.

It is not just IBM and the IT industry that will benefit from a swift response to this call for changes in the education of IT professionals -it is also our local economy that will reap the benefits.

By acting now, Australian and New Zealand universities have an opportunity to bring local innovation to Services Sciences. Moreover our academics and institutions will be able to add considerable value to the discipline as it evolves, not just benefiting individual universities, but providing another opportunity to put the local higher education industry on the global map.

Amongst the international speakers at the symposium, Professor Rich Newton from the University of California spoke about Berkeley's experience of creating one of the first Services Sciences programs in America. The results are only just beginning to emerge; however the interest from both students and industry is very encouraging.

The realities of the market are driving us toward these new solutions every day. Globally, Services Sciences is an area that IBM is investing in by supporting educational providers to help create this new skills pool for our industry.

If Australia is to keep up with the rest of the world, we need to boost local skills in one of the fastest growing services segments - business services, the intersection of business and IT. The collaboration between Information Technology, Science, Engineering, Management and any other discipline that supports the development of skills for a services economy is vital to our future.

John Guest is Education Industry Executive for IBM Australia