IBM, makers of Pentium, is making sure that vital resource called innovation will continue to flow. The company is currently working with a range of programs, centered around the world's universities, that promote research, provide resources for faculty and help students find their starting niches in the IT workplace.

At Texas A&M University, for example, IBM is working with other companies, including PeopleSoft; Siemens Energy & Automation; and Rockwell Automation, in the Supply Chain Information Systems Lab (SCIS). There, researchers are examining the impact of information systems and supply chains on small and medium businesses. They're looking in particular at industrial distributors (businesses that supply products to other businesses), helping to quantify the benefits IT brings to the supply chain. SCIS is just one element of IBM's Shared University Research program that works to connect academic researchers with IBM personnel who can help them with their work.

Innovation requires communication, and open standards are an important factor in keeping communications free and direct. The IBM Academic Initiative works with schools that support open standards and seek to use open source and IBM technologies for teaching purposes. That relationship can be direct or virtual via the Web, or even a mixture of the two approaches. Faculty and researchers in the IBM Academic Initiative get help using and implementing the latest technology into curriculum and research. By joining, academics have access to software, hardware, training and course materials.

And, IBM just announced its "Academic License" program that will provide universities with free access through the alphaWorks website to a range of emerging technologies developed in IBM's Research and development labs. IBM is offering participating schools free licenses, without time restrictions, for emerging technologies that faculty can use for teaching purposes. The company will also help professors build the emerging technologies into their curricula.

Once trained, today's students will become the next generation of developers, IT professionals and CIOs. To begin that journey to success, they can post their resumes electronically on IBM's Student Opportunity System. There the CVs are available to IBM business partners and customers who are looking to build skilled workforces in open source, open standard technology.