New IT Services Courses Aim To Build New Business Tech Careers

Are services the next new promising career path for budding business-technology professionals? IBM thinks so -- and apparently nearly 100 universities across the world think so, too. IBM is working with colleges and universities in developing a new "Services Sciences, Management, and Engineering," or SSME, curriculum, which some schools are incorporating into their existing business and technology-related programs and others are adding as new degree offerings. The courses aim to provide business and technology students with skills ranging from problem management, managing service level agreements, and even how to interpret nonverbal communication cues, such as body language. "Companies spend millions of dollars on IT overhauls, but often employees don't buy into the systems," says Steve Allen, associate dean for graduate programs at North Carolina State University's College of Management. NC State is offering new curriculum that teach students a range of individual and team skills, including how to interpret organizational cultures. For business-tech professionals, those skills can help ensure IT deployments that are better embraced by users. The interdisciplinary courses being developed for NC State's management and technology students aim to equip them with "the right combination of technology, business, and people skills" that make them more viable job candidates to employers, in professions such as business-technology services and consulting, Allen says. NC State is a recruiting ground for companies in the Research Triangle Park region, and by offering these new SSME courses to its MBA and masters of computer networking programs, NC State's students will have a competitive skills advantage in seeking jobs and building careers, he says. In the long term, "I think these students are less vulnerable to off-shoring," he says. Rich Henderson, an MBA student at NC State who also works full time as an executive VP at an environmental consulting firm, will complete his degree in May. And while he's already working in a services company, he's says he's benefited from the new services management class he took during fall semester. The course helped "bridge the gap between business and technology," he says. Most helpful, he says, was a project with three other students in which the team developed a new service opportunity from scratch. Working with an actual local hospital, the team came up with a new mock RFID and Wi-Fi consulting service that helps lab workers track medical specimens as they are transported by the hospital's pneumatic tube system. "The services industry is changing rapidly," he says. The course exposed Henderson to an opportunity to brainstorm with technology and business students, illustrating how the blending of different talent can come up with innovative new services ideas. While NC State is adding new SSME courses to its offering of classes for MBA and masters of computer networking programs, other universities are developing brand new degree programs for SSME studies. Next fall, Missouri State University will offer a new bachelor degree program for information technology service management. The new major will include existing curriculum, such as IT networking and security classes, but will focus less on other areas, like computer programming. New courses will include service management and incident and problem management. "This is very much a blend of existing technology classes with some refocusing," says Ron Dattero, professor of computer information systems at Missouri State. As in the other schools launching SSME programs, IBM is helping Missouri State develop its curriculum by sharing course materials and case studies. Dattero predicts that the new program will attract 100 students during the next three to five years. Among the topics that Missouri State will teach is release management -- i.e., when to roll out new versions of software in a company, how to test it, and how to problem solve glitches. Those sorts of skills aren't usually taught to students before they enter the workforce, he says. "In America, we're behind the curve," Dattero says. European countries frequently adhere to ISO best practices for activities such as software upgrades. Teaching American students those best practices can help in their competitiveness in the global workplace, he says. Indeed, it's not just American schools that are looking to equip students with skills for business-tech services careers. In addition to the dozens of U.S. colleges and universities IBM is working with in new SSME programs, there also are dozens of schools outside the United States that are developing services course offerings with IBM's help, says Gina Poole, IBM VP of innovation and university relations. "The top 50 universities in China will develop SSME degree programs," she says. In addition, universities in Moscow, Sidney, Dublin, and Rio de Janeiro are among schools internationally developing new SSME curriculum. "Seventy-five to 80% of all jobs will be in services globally," says Poole. From IBM's perspective, "as IBM makes transition to services [as a dominate business], we'll require a new skill set," she says. "There's huge opportunity of innovation in services," she says. To meet the emerging skills demand, there's a need for degree programs that tie together a set of complex business, technology, and social skills, she says. By 2010, it's estimated that 6 out of 10 IT jobs will have "business facing" roles requiring those skills.