What is IT-oLogy? Hmm…

Welcome my friends! Welcome to your new name and your new place.

For most of my friends out there, over the last year I have been working with an organization called the Consortium for Enterprise Systems Management in Columbia, SC. You say who??? Yes, it is a long name for a big initiative.

A few years ago, Lonnie Emard of BlueCross BlueShield (BCBS) of South Carolina recognized the need to energize and empower the next wave of IT talent. He inspired Steve Wiggins the CIO of BCBS of South Carolina to perform a comprehensive study of the needs of the future IT Workforce not only internally, but across the industry. What they found was alarming and instrumental in today’s initiative now call IT-oLogy.

Did you know BCBS of South Carolina is more than just and insurance provider, they are data management/transaction group. Yes, in-order to allow insurance claims to happen…it takes servers exchanging lots of data. These servers require people to manage not only the hardware but the software that supports these transactions. Cobol is is the software that runs these servers and it takes people that know this software to support the servers and the infrastructure to facilitate these transactions. BCBS of South Carolina began realizing that the people who are managing this infrastructure were retiring and not many people to replace them. Many of the universities and higher education institutions were not teaching Cobol and the server knowledge to run the systems at BCBS. Houston…we have a problem.

So…with this problem, Lonnie Emard had the vision to bring together a “Consortium” of partners to find a solution. The solution: begin educating and empowering students in K-12 about the value of IT as a career path. Currently, to tell people the world is like telling kids it is ok to be a “geek.” IT is in everything we do, from turning on a light switch to connecting to a Wifi hotspot. It is everything we do. We have become a connected society and surrounded in world of IT….Information Technology.

So….why and I telling you this? This initiative came to fruition over a year ago with a legal name “Consortium for Enterprise Systems Management”. Well…they have re-branded their name to IT-oLogy. Yes…at little more edgy and appropriate given the audiences….young students and young professionals. Congratulations IT-oLogy…you have come so far. You have a new name and a new building. Lonnie Emard, the Executive Director of IT-oLogy, does not look at as a new building but more of a hub, a community, a place to join forces. The University of South Carolina will be teaching classes in this new facility, there will be an Open-Source Lab, a 200 person auditorium, tons of meeting space…all right across the street from the State House in Columbia, SC.

Pretty cool..huh? Well I think so!