College interns help craft IBM's next-generation products

For students returning to college, the question is always: "So what did you do on your summer vacation?" Some work, some play, but for the 100 or so students across the country who joined IBM's "Extreme Blue" summer internship program, the answer is: "I helped design the next generation of networking products."

As paid interns at IBM, these students - most on the path to college degrees in computer science or business - were ushered into three of Big Blue's development labs to tinker with software going from the drawing board to commercial release. Under the wing of IBM mentors, the students say they spent the summer working on future versions of Lotus Notes groupware, Java-based application servers for telephone companies or Tivoli security products.

"My project, sponsored by Lotus Research, was re-inventing e-mail," says University of Waterloo computer engineering student Evan Jones matter-of-factly, as though re-inventing e-mail were a typical summer job.

"Why and how do people use e-mail? Today's tools are no longer adequate," says Jones, who just spent the summer in IBM's Cambridge, Mass., labs working with a team of students assisting IBM in its effort to come up with a better way to analyze and organize large volumes of e-mail.

Michael Elder, a Furman University computer science major who also worked as a summer intern in the Cambridge labs, said the project centered on building what's called the Lotus Knowledge Discovery Server as a repository to link related e-mail and group messaging conversations based on subject line and text.

Formerly on Shell Canada's technical staff, Elder could offer insight to the student team on how large corporations use e-mail.

The next-generation e-mail management project has moved far enough along that IBM plans to soon post the Lotus Notes Knowledge Discovery Server code on its AlphaWorks Web site for review. One of the IBM mentors for the project, Paul Reed, expects to see the Lotus Knowledge Discovery Server make it into future editions of Lotus Notes.

For IBM, the Extreme Blue internships program, which just completed its third summer, has brought solid gains, even resulting in 18 patent filings, says John Wolpert, Extreme Blue program manager in IBM's Austin, Texas, labs.

"These interns are pros, quality coders and businesspeople," Wolpert notes. Like full-time IBMers, the summer interns work under non-disclosure agreements about products under development.

Bringing college students in to help develop IBM's most cutting-edge software doesn't just give IBM a chance to hire fresh talent. It has also helped dispel IBM's lingering image as a stuffy corporate giant deaf to new ideas. The students are often flown to IBM's corporate headquarters in Armonk, N.Y., to spend time with executives and make short presentations to them about their projects.

"It's changed my view of IBM," acknowledges Stephanie Leung, a University of Michigan computer engineering student who spent the summer at IBM's Austin lab working on "Telcosphere," a planned version of IBM's Java-based application server Websphere designed to help telephone companies provide e-business services directly or on behalf of businesses. "I met a lot of smart and dynamic people here that are passionate about their jobs."

The Telcosphere server, as envisioned, could use voice-recognition technology to understand customer requests and then read out responses pulled from a customized Web site. "You can read out what's on the Web," explained Leung. The students working on the project picked up a lot of understanding about how the telephone industry works, she added.

In a related voice/Web interaction project at IBM's Silicon Valley labs, computer engineering student Candida Valois spent her summer encoding a voice XML debugger that will eventually be used to help build applications that let the Web "speak" to users with a voice browser.

"Voice XML is a young technology, just a year old," said Valois, who said she enjoyed crafting the tool, which IBM plans to make available on its AlphaWorks Web site soon.

Byron Wang, who is working toward a master's degree in computer science at Stanford University, said his summer project for IBM involved developing middleware for Web services. The middleware enables users to request a document from a variety of input devices, including a wireless phone, and have it output to a fax or printer. IBM, which calls the middleware Blue Magic, expects to see it used first in Europe.

Over the summer, IBM also put some students to work analyzing what IBM should be doing in future products - and analyzing the competition, too.

For example, Shawn Young, a second-year MBA student at the University of California at Los Angeles, worked in the Tivoli division doing research reports on firewall and intrusion-detection products.

"They were looking to understand where the market segments are and how to price it," said Young. Although Young didn't have a background in security, his experience working in management consulting at The Boston Consulting Group prior to studying for his MBA was an asset in the IBM summer assignment. "It was fun," Young says.

Although the economic slowdown has made a larger pool of IT professionals available for hire than was the case a year ago, IBM plans to expand the Extreme Blue summer internship program into Europe and Asia.

"Some might say, 'Now that the climate has changed, why are you still running a program to attract top students?' " says Extreme Blue program director Leslie Givens. "My response is, the most talented student will always have options."

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