Business software specialist BEA Systems has begun an investment programme aimed at boosting information technology education in Hong Kong.
The Silicon Valley-based firm last week donated products worth HK$5 million to the Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education (IVE), and it plans to make similar donations to a number of universities here.
BEA Hong Kong director Jerome Leroy said the initiative followed a 240-million yuan (HK$224.9 million) donation the company made to China's Ministry of Education early last year, under its worldwide dev2dev university programme.
'We are co-operating with academic institutions worldwide to make it easy and cost-effective to integrate BEA technologies into their courses,' Mr Leroy said.
'Job competition in the hi-tech industry is growing, and demand for highly qualified developers is increasing at a fast pace. With the dev2dev university programme, students can get ahead as they learn Web-based technologies that businesses currently require.'
The IVE received 150 copies of BEA's WebLogic platform developer kits, which will be used in the software engineering and computer systems administration courses at the Tsing Yi campus of its information and communications technology (ICT) department.
As part of the donation, BEA helped the IVE establish a Cyber-Technology Laboratory on the campus.