Further, IBM and Vietnam National University in Ho Chi Minh City have signed a Memorandum Of Understanding about SSME education and IT Service Curriculum (ITSC) for students and information technology (IT) professionals. This is the first time for Vietnam to use an on-line collaboration platform to support education on SSME and ITSC. Vietnam National University will be the first in the country to adopt such programme jointly created with IBM. The programme will emphasize ITSC principles, which will train students and professionals in using technology for service delivery and better managing people, assets and processes.

To build and sustain a highly-skilled competitive IT workforce, the Vietnamese government plans to adopt the academic programmes nationwide through a joint effort by the Ministry of Education and Training, the Ministry of Science and Technology, and the Ministry of Information and Communications. These programmes will offer computing courses in IT Service, free software tools, and business case studies representing real-world challenges.

Cultivating local talents with business and technical competencies has been a top priority and continued focus for the Vietnamese government. In February this year, Deputy Prime Minister of Vietnam Nguyen Thien Nhan and IBM Chairman, President and CEO Sam Palmisano met in Hanoi to discuss skill training for Vietnam talents among other topics.

"Our university is excited about adopting IBM’s SSME and ITSC curriculum, and using the Innovation Portal to enable open and collaborative relationships with other universities and research institutions around the world", stated Asso. Prof. Le Quang Minh, Vice President of Vietnam National University - Ho Chi Minh City. "We look forward to using the portal to build skills that will empower students and workers to drive IT innovations and benefit our market. Starting on university campuses, the programmes are expected to later expand to country-wide institutions across Vietnam."

Using the Innovation Portal as an open platform to develop and share service management curriculum, the universities will gain access to the repository of course materials. And the courses can be accessed anywhere, anytime and by anyone online. Beyond supporting teaching and learning functions, the portal can also be used to support research and development activities among broader academic and business communities to foster new services for local and global markets.

"The Innovation Portal and SSME programs help drive Vietnam's agenda for technology and economy development forward. They open up new opportunities for Vietnamese talent to flourish and interact with the world digitally", stated Dr. Willy Chiu, vice president, High Performance On Demand Solutions, "When implemented broadly, these resources can give Vietnam a competitive edge in the global market." Dr. Chiu added: "This is an example of using a new enterprise data centre infrastructure to support large volume Web-based transactions."

The portal runs on IBM Idea Factory, a Web 2.0 social software service. The Idea Factory operates in a cloud computing environment and helps virtually connect experts and on-line communities to create ideas, share experiences and debate opinions. Such real-time exchanges save time to destinations. The ability is highly advantageous for geographically distributed communities.