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To help Cebu produce a quality pool of IT (Information Technology) talents, Software development company— Exist Global Inc., (EGI) introduced its Exist Code Camp (ECC) program tapping huge universities and colleges here.

This unique program is providing free training to graduating students from partner universities, to be more familiar and learn in different important programming language, currently being used by most global software development companies.

Global Exist Global chief executive officer Steve Nathan said the company will deploy three batches of IT trainees, with 12 students per batch.

The company has initially tapped five universities here to be involved in this program, like University of San Jose-Recoletos, University of the Philippines-Cebu, Cebu Institute of Technology (CIT), University of San Carlos (USC) and STI-Lahug.

Global Exist, which office in Cebu is located at the Asiatown IT Park, is a premier global software company supporting open source technology.

The ECC training will provide detailed learning in open-source technology, web-based methodologies, core JAVA, Linux, among others.

Aside from the company’s interest to hire good programmers to fill its expansion plan in Cebu operation, Nathan said all trainees of this particular program are not guaranteed for employment absorption, as elimination is also part of the process.

“[Good] software engineers are important for us,” Nathan said adding that students who interested for the training are screened before they can be a part of this training, which will run for at least three weeks.

Before the end of this year, Exist is targeting to operate with 60 software developers in Cebu to serve the company’s global clients.

Established in 2001, the company has helped in designing, developing, testing, and managing software solutions for global companies. It has established its presence in Asia-Pacific, North America, and Europe.

The company’s expertise include J2EE, XML, and web services; and participating in the development of world-class open source such as Geronimo, Jetspeed, Agila, and Pluto. It has also engaged in development using pre-built infrastructure which include Jira, Subversion, Mavan, Confluence, Mailman, and JForum.

According to Nathan, the company’s ECC program, will introduce specifics in programming, which are not usually offered in the universities, but of large importance to industries, like Exist.

The open-source technology for instance, has to be taught extensively to trainees, in order to be appreciated more by upcoming IT professionals, and next-generation IT “geeks.”

The company has done similar program in Manila last year. It has already deployed the first of the three batches this year, for Cebu.

Joe Ocaba, a computer science fresh graduate of CIT, who is part of the first batch training, said most of the learning he encountered, so far has not being extensively discussed in school.