This article first appeared in Business Times, 3 Nov, 2011.
IBM, which celebrated its 100th year of existence at a gala event yesterday, has announced a partnership with the Institute of Systems Science (ISS) to set up a Centre of Excellence for Enterprise Social Business.
Janet Ang, IBM Singapore's managing director, said that the centre will catalyse the transformation of Singapore's IT workforce and government and business leaders so that they would be ready to leverage the age of social media.
IBM helped set up ISS together with NUS (National University of Singapore) and the then National Computer Board in 1981. At the 30th anniversary celebration of ISS on Tuesday, IBM was honoured as one of the founding fathers of ISS.
Noting that IBM started here as a three-man outfit in 1953, Ms Ang said that since then the company has worked closely with the Singapore government to computerise the civil service and develop a pool of IT manpower to meet the future needs of the local IT industry.
The guest of honour at the event, Heng Swee Keat, Minister for Education, noted that as part of IBM's Celebration of Service, it is giving out community service grants.
'I am happy to learn that Singapore has been awarded nine grants in total, and Singapore is one of only five countries in the world to be awarded the full Centennial Grant.'
The Centennial Grant was presented to the Singapore Green Building Council (SGBC) for 'Project Green Insights'.
The project will equip 20 pilot schools with networks of smart meters that will allow the entire school community to track energy consumption using cloud-based software.
'Our staff and students can now have a comprehensive view of their energy usage patterns on an easily accessible dashboard. This will help them to identify best practices and make optimal decisions on energy usage,' Mr Heng said.
The minister noted that in preparing students for tomorrow, Singapore's collaboration with IBM has been fruitful.
'With the support of the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA), IBM collaborated on the academic course Service Science, Management and Engineering (SSME) with our universities and the ISS.
'The Business Analytics Innovation Centre with Nanyang Polytechnic (NYP) which trains students in high value and cutting edge areas such as cloud computing will also help Singapore graduates compete with talent from emerging markets such as China and India, who have a much larger pool of skilled manpower.'
'I look forward to more of such collaborations in the future, the minister added.