Mumbai: IBM India (www.ibm.com/in) today announced the winners of its first national-level ‘The Great Minds Challenge’ competition conducted for university and college students of higher technology across India. The competition gave the students a chance to exhibit their skills on IBM Software Technologies and win fabulous prizes including a visit to one of IBM’s research and development facility in India.

The winners of this contest for 2003 are:

• National winner: BITS Pilani
• First runner-up: Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi
• Second runner-up: Jaya College, Chennai

“IBM is strongly committed to developing skills of the student community. This contest is just another example of that dedication,” IBM India country manager (software and developer relations) Frank Luksic. “We are working to encourage a generation of students who will make key contributions to develop applications on leading-edge IBM technologies. The Great Minds Challenge allows students to have fun and be creative, while providing them with an opportunity to improve their skills.”

Encouraged by the tremendous response to the IBM University Programme running in the country for the past two years, IBM India announced ‘The Great Minds Challenge’ contest in November 2002.

The competition was aimed to foster and recognise the top talent in India, to pit the best minds in the country working on cutting-edge technologies from IBM, support and encourage usage of the latest technologies from IBM Software Group.

The contest was a battle of the brains for the students. Huddled around innocuous computer, competing group of students raced against the clock in a battle of logic, strategy and mental endurance. Team-mates collaborated to rank the difficult of the problems, deduce the requirements, design test beds and build software systems that solve the problems.

As part of the challenge, students have built a working model for an application using any/all of the technologies like DB2 Universal Database, WebSphere Application Developer and WebSphere Application Server. The faculties of the respective institutions had internally assessed the projects and selected the best for the competition.

Only students who were certified on at least one of the IBM technologies listed above were allowed to participate. The students have described their objectives, methodology, research and results. The judgement was based on creativity, thoroughness, clarity, and results of the projects submitted.

The IBM University Programme is a unique strategic initiative between IBM and reputed institutions to increase the availability of skills on IBM software technologies. The programme enables institutions to incorporate educational programmes on IBM software technologies to support the main course curriculum, electives or projects, within the framework of the university syllabus.

Under this programme, IBM invests in providing licensed versions of cutting-edge software like DB2 Universal Database, WebSphere Application Server family and Visual Age for Java, in addition to faculty training and facilitation of courseware development. As a part of IBM software initiative, this is an ambitious plan to develop a symbiotic relationship with premium universities.

IBM is the world’s No 1 IT provider, with 80 years of leadership in helping businesses innovate. IBM helps customers, business partners and developers in a wide range of industries that leverage the power of the Internet for e-business. These solutions comprise the full range of IBM capabilities including software, hardware, research and services.