The Department of Computing at Institute of Technology Tallaght (ITT) has launched a part-time taught masters programme in distributed and mobile computing, which it developed in conjunction with the Irish Computer Society.
“We are living in an age where technology is all pervasive,” explained Gary Clynch, senior lecturer in computing at ITT. “Computers, the Internet, mobile phones and so on are part and parcel of everyday life. Technology is constantly changing and IT graduates need to keep abreast of developments to enjoy successful and rewarding careers.
“Recent times have seen a shift towards complex large-scale distributed systems and the delivery of systems to users via mobile devices. Recent innovations such as the mobile internet, 3G networks, mobile services and applications, and grid and cluster hardware platforms, are based on distributed and mobile technologies.
“This new programme focuses on distributed and mobile computing technologies and has as its themes the design and development of large-scale distributed and mobile computer systems, the design of a network infrastructure to support them and how scalable systems can be designed that exploit distributed hardware architectures,” Clynch explained.
Clynch said the technical focus of the masters degree is on distributed software development for enterprise software platforms, the development of software and services for mobile devices, network management and design, network security and forensics, building scalable computer systems using grid and cluster solutions, agile software development methodologies, the semantic web and non-linear computing techniques.
The programme also has management topics in the areas of technology law, intellectual property rights, strategic management and finance.
He explained this mix of topics allows a student to follow various career paths such as technical architecture, project manager, network engineer, information officer, research and development engineer, to name a few.
By John Kennedy
