IBM Delivers Smarter Computing in Jakarta University

Tech company IBM (NYSE: IBM) has announced that The Sunan Kalijaga Islamic State University (UIN) Yogyakarta has adopted IBM’s smarter computing approach to IT to improve the quality of the education process through collaborative learning services.

Founded in 1951, UIN is one of the leading private universities in Central Java with a student population of more than 15,000 from across Indonesia. To keep pace with the growing demands of the academic community, UIN turned to IBM Global Technology Services to build a smarter computing infrastructure.

The technical goals were to streamline learning processes, improve the economics of the administration system and increase overall computing and data storage utilization.

Among other technology for education projects, Microsoft said it has got All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) as its largest cloud customer. AICTE is deploying Microsoft Live@edu for more than 10,000 technical colleges and institutes throughout India. (Read: Why is Dark Cloud Hovering over Indian Skies?)

And more than 144 hours of UC Irvine’s faculty lectures were planned to be made available for free through a new UCI OpenCourseWare project called Open Education TV. (Read: Online TV Channel for Free Course Lectures)

Earlier, IBM said it is helping students at York University’s Schulich School of Business develop leadership skills by learning to collaborate on course work virtually in the cloud. (Read: IBM Using Smart Cloud to Teach Business Students)

Also, Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM), through its Wireless Reach initiative, Nan Chiau Primary School and Microsoft have announced the launch of the WE Learn mobile education project, which uses 3G smartphones to create a 21st century classroom experience for Singaporean students. (Read: Classroom with 3G Smartphones in Singapore)

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“With this project we wanted to simplify our IT environment and at the same time enable it to provide learning and administrative services in a combined and collaborative manner, sharing processes and technology within the campus and online,” said Agung Fatwanto, head of IT Department, at Sunan Kalijaga Islamic State University.

At the heart of the new infrastructure are IBM’s high performance IBM BladeCenter server systems and IBM Storwize V7000 Unified Storage Systems, all integrated with the university’s existing infrastructure through integration services from IBM GTS.

IBM GTS’s Networking, Site and Facilities Services focus on designing, implementing and managing networking and application environments optimized for integrated business communications, a necessity in a large campus like UIN’s Sunan Kalijaga, says IBM.

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One of the early byproducts of the new infrastructure is UIN’s first e-learning curricula for selected science, technology and science education subjects, which was rolled out at the beginning of 2012.

The technologies have also helped the university more effectively manage dramatic peaks in utilization, during such times as registration of new students, course enrolment, exam schedule postings, grades posting and graduation enrolment – all times when students access the system in droves, said IBM.

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The new IT infrastructure has also improved UIN’s administrative capacity by enabling students to register online without glitches or delays. As online activity increased another hot issue for university management was relieved – limited on-campus parking and study room availability. IBM made this announcement Friday, April 27.

“From New York to Jakarta to Beijing, education is the engine of economic growth,” said Fetra Syahbana, country manager Systems & Technology Group, IBM Indonesia. “We strongly believe that this project will support UIN Sunan Kalijaga Yogyakarta in enhancing the experience it offers its student and faculty population.”