Ericsson Brazil has recently extended its cooperation with universities in the South American country to build IMS capacity and competence.

Romualdo Barros, IMS Expert center manager at Ericsson Brazil, says they are talking to some universities of which three have shown interest in cooperation so far. With one of these, Universidade Metodista de São Paulo, a contract is being finalized.

“The set-up is that the university shall provide facilities such as labs, computers, and teachers, while Ericson contributes with the Service Development Studio (SDS) and building competence among professors,” he says.

The program, which is scheduled to run for three years, addresses students that are about to finish their studies. Those accepted to the program, between 15-20 for each semester, will be coached by professors at the university and receive IMS and SDS training. The professors will be supported by the IMS Expert center, helping the students with technical questions they cannot handle alone. The students will team up to work on projects to develop applications that must be up and running by the end of their last semester.

Barros says: “Although creativity is not a problem, the students can if they want choose from a list of ideas compiled by Ericsson. By the end of the year, the applications will be tested to see how well they run on the IMS development platform.

“To get the diploma the application must simply work. But we will also help Universidade Metodista to select the best applications and even make demos of these to show to the local operators. And where there is an interest, we will introduce the students to potential customers, or to commercial software development companies. The purpose is to let the students finish the applications they have started working on and turn these into fully-fledged commercial services.”

As a result of the program, Barros hopes to have obtained the following:
• New skilled software professionals with IMS expertise
• New IMS applications, up and running, conceived for commercial use
• A positive picture of Ericsson as a company that brings innovation and investments to the academic world.

Barros says that in markets such as Brazil, where IMS networks are being put into operation, it is important to get universities and local companies to invest their brainpower into developing IMS applications.

Barros also stresses that providing the technology is part of the deal, but training IMS professionals and developing an ecosystem around open platforms are also Ericsson’s responsibility.

Barros sees this program as part of a bigger future scenario: “We want to start with a few universities in Brazil and later include other Latin American universities, such as in Chile, to create a Mercosul (Southern Common Market) community of developers able to handle multinational collaborations in the region.”

Read more about SDS
Read more about IMS 
Read more about Universidade Metodista

By Benny Ritzén