OREANDA-NEWS. May 04, 2011. The opening ceremony of the first Academic Center of IBM Competences took place in  the joint laboratory of IBA and the Faculty of Computer Systems and Networks of the Belarusian State University of Informatics and Radioelectronics (BSUIR) located in Minsk, Belarus, reported the press-centre of IBA.

The center is created within the National Program of Accelerated Service Development in Information and Communication Technologies for the Years 2011–2015. The program is aimed at raising the ICT Development Index (IDI) of Belarus among European countries within the survey Measuring the Information Society by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and at being rated as one of the Top 30 IT countries by the year 2015.

IBA sees it as the company’s responsibility to invest in public education and equip people with the skills that allow them to use IT to their advantage. IBA has good and long-lasting relations with Belarusian universities, including the Belarusian State University (BSU) and the Belarusian State University of Informatics and Radioelectronics (BSUIR) located in Minsk, the Grodno State University (GRSU) and the Gomel State University. IBA has already equipped six computer classrooms throughout the universities where four joint IT laboratories and the IBA-BSU IT Competence Center function today.

In 2008, IBA Group launched the joint IBA-BSUIR IT laboratory. In 2011, IBA upgraded the laboratory and created the Academic Center of IBM Competences.

Sergei Levteev, IBA CEO; Mikhail Batura, BSUIR Rector; Alexander Sorokin, IBM Manager of University Projects in Russia and CIS; Andrey Filatov, IBM Hardware Department Director for CIS; and Victor Merkuriev, IBM EE/A representative in Armenia, Belarus and Georgia, participated in the opening ceremony.

The first Academic Center of IBM Competences in Belarus is a unique facility that will provide advanced studies of IBM technologies. IBA and other Belarusian companies will assist BSUIR in implementation of IBM technologies within the university’s training and research programs. The students of the center will become professionals in business process automation across various industries including oil and gas, nuclear power engineering, and railway transport.

Levteev says: “It is a special pleasure for me today to be here in my Alma Mater. For years, BSUIR has been a leading institution of higher IT education in Belarus. IBA and BSUIR have been partners since the very foundation of our company because we do care about proficiency level of BSUIR graduates as they are our common future. Joint laboratories and IT competence centers provide the students with a possibility to expand and enrich the knowledge they obtain in the university. This autumn, we plan to launch one more joint IBA-BSUIR laboratory and I hope it will contribute to the intellectual and creative development of future programmers.”

Batura comments: “This center will provide training in IBM competences. It is important that a student who completes training and successfully passes testing receives the IBM certificate. Being certified by IBM means being more competitive at the labor market and more flexible during the period of adaptation to the real working procedures”.

Sorokin adds: “The center provides in-depth studies of IBM software development technologies and enables students to carry out scientific research within the IBM grant programs”.