Forwarded for information by Fouad Riaz Bajwa IBM Helps NIIT to Establish Linux Competency Center http://www.ibm.com/news/pk/en/2007/06/news_06Jun2007.html Islamabad, June 6, 2007 - Today, IBM announced the opening of a Linux Competency Center which it has donated to NUST Institute of Information Technology (NIIT) http://www.niit.edu.pk, Rawalpindi. This Linux Competency Center will help customers, students, developers and business partners in Pakistan to experience and test Linux hands-on and to explore the benefits of open standards-based computing. The Teach the Teachers program will span several Universities and teachers will be trained at NIIT. In addition IBM is extending its Scholars Program to offer free software, course material and access to IBM Portals to major Universities in Pakistan.
As part of establishing the center, IBM has donated its range of enterprise systems (including pSeries Unix Servers, Intel Processor-based xSeries and BladeCenter servers, TotalStorage), Printers, PCs, CISCO equipment - all of the hardware running on Linux SuSE deployed by IBM Global Technology Services team. IBM will also provide free hardware and software services for the first year. In addition, IBM Middleware software will be used by NIIT in their curriculum for graduate and undergraduate students under IBM Academic Initiative program. "Linux is the Game Changer and IBM believes that open standards and open source technologies are a key driver of collaborative innovation" said Humayun Bashir, Country General Manager, IBM Pakistan. "The open source competency center at NIIT will play a pivotal role in the IT sector of Pakistan by training professionals in exciting open source technologies." said Dr. Arshad Ali, Director General, NIIT. Linux is the fastest growing operating system in the world (CAGR 44% 2003-2008) which runs on a variety of hardware platforms. It is the only operating system with the characteristics of being non proprietary in nature, resulting in flexibility for the technology enabled organization. Linux is about freedom and not free operating system or free application software. Linux's source code is freely distributed and available to the general public without restrictions on use or requiring royalties. It can save organizations significant amount of dollars compared to the use of proprietary, licensed operating systems. Highly regarded for its speed, reliability and security, Linux continues to evolve through contributed efforts from developers worldwide and is being used across all industries. Governments in many countries like Germany, China, India, Korea, Brazil and many others have adopted Linux as the operating system to minimize investment and centralize management. The Government of Pakistan is committing itself to the reduction of piracy and the protection of intellectual property. Linux and open source technology are the corner stone of this initiative. Many multinational companies and leading banks like, SCB, ABL, LMK Resources have already adopted Linux because of its flexibility, openness and availability from a wide variety of sources. IBM is a strong supporter of Linux and has taken various initiatives to promote Linux - Open Source in Pakistan. IBM organized a Linux and Open Source Conference in Karachi in 2005 which received overwhelming response. A similar event was held in 2003 together with TReMU, a former unit of Ministry of IT. IBM held worldwide Linux Challenge in 2002 in which two winners were from Pakistani Universities and were recognized worldwide. IBM has more than 300 software solutions on Linux and is shipping over 350 software products that run on Linux across its IBM DB2, WebSphere, Lotus and Tivoli software families. IBM has worldwide invested $1 billion and continues to invest several hundred million dollars annually to Open Source projects. For more information visit ibm.com/linux _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@digitaldivide.net http://digitaldivide.net/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.