The Consortium for Enterprise Systems Management is a collaboration of companies, colleges and universities, and community groups that share a mission: Increase the number of people in the talent pipeline who can apply information technology to meet the needs of companies. Our goals are to teach IT, enable IT, grow IT and promote IT. We aim to provide a hub of intense activity aimed at promoting opportunities, nurturing professional development, cultivating relationships, inspiring innovation and celebrating success in IT. Founding partners are BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina, the University of South Carolina and IBM.

IBM has been well known through most of its recent history as the world's largest computer company and systems integrator. With over 407,000 employees worldwide, IBM is the largest and most profitable information technology and services employer in the world. IBM holds more patents than any other U.S. based technology company and has eight research laboratories worldwide. The company has scientists, engineers, consultants, and sales professionals in over 200 countries. IBM employees have earned five Nobel Prizes, four Turing Awards, nine National Medals of Technology, and fiveNational Medals of Science.[6] As a chip maker, IBM has been among the Worldwide Top 20 Semiconductor Sales Leaders in past years.

It will be steamy in South Carolina's capital city today, where year-round fun and exploration heat up the cosmopolitan scene. With fiery restaurants, hotels, live music and theater venues -- our brand of low to no-cost fun will make your visit sizzle. We're proud of our simmer and spark, our firebrand history and bright, shining future. Now for a warm invitation...we invite you to Columbia to sample the sultry South, with generous helpings of Carolina hospitality.

TM Floyd & Company (TMF) is an Information Technology consulting group dedicated to providing innovative and cost-effective IT solutions. Our goal is to be the insurance industry's preferred strategic partner for IT initiatives.

We have developed a high level of insurance industry subject matter expertise that we couple with our service offerings to distinguish us from our competition and to deliver exceptional value to our clients.

With more than 30 years of experience and working relationships with leading insurance services firms, TMF has the know-how and connections needed to direct the future of the insurance industry.

Founded in 1993, Red Hat is the leader in enterprise Linux and is the most recognized open source brand in the world. We serve global enterprises with technology and services made possible by the open source model. Solutions include Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, JBoss Enterprise Middleware, and a broad range of management and services: consulting, 24x7 support, Red Hat Network. Red Hat's global training program operates worldwide and features RHCE and JBCAA, the global standard Linux and middleware certifications.

Moodlerooms, Inc., was founded in 2005 by former teachers Tom Murdock, Sheila Gatling and Gina Russell-Stevens. They each wanted to make quality teaching and learning a possibility for everyone. As a result, Moodlerooms’ mission has been to provide an open, accessible and flexible learning management platform with open-source Moodle at its core.

Shortly after its inception, Moodlerooms was providing Moodle services for major corporations like Cisco, school districts like Frederick County Public Schools and universities like Louisiana State University and California State University. Moodlerooms quickly became the largest Moodle Partner in the world with 30 employees and more than 700 clients in 2009.

We have developed strategic partnerships and plug-ins with other education technology leaders, including Cisco, Dell, iParadigms and Datatel. In November 2009, we released our all-inclusive, tailored learning management platform, joule, to address the evolving needs and requests of the education community.

Open source software development has been one of the greatest sources of innovation. It has reduced costs, improved functionality and spurred new industries. In particular, the Linux community has been able to make tremendous strides in improving the customer experience because developers can take what has been written and build on it – without having to develop the same base of software code building-blocks from scratch.

In order to continue this rapid pace of innovation, a refined model of intellectual property management has been established. Open Invention Network® is an intellectual property company that was formed to promote the Linux system by using patents to create a collaborative ecosystem.

VC3 has been on the leading edge of Information Technology since 1994, providing a full range of IT services to both the private and public sectors in South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia. Headquartered in Columbia, SC, VC3 was named one of South Carolina's Fastest-Growing Companies in 2007 and again in 2008. VC3 is also a member of the Consortium for Enterprise Systems Management (CESM) and will be involved in managing the day-to-day operation of the CESM Data Center.

Our company's professionals implement IT projects and services to provide above average returns on investment, significantly enhance productivity, and lower technology ownership costs.

We started Engine Yard in early 2006 to meet a genuine need: customers were developing business-critical Rails applications, but they didn’t want to worry about application deployment, management and scaling. They wanted a smooth path from 100 users to 100,000 users and professional support and advice from Rails experts 24/7

Along the way, we’ve given back to the Rails community with several full time Ruby and Rails contributors and by providing early sponsorship for key community tools like GitHub, BeanStalk, New Relic and Lighthouse.

To date, we’ve raised $37.5 million of funding with participation from Amazon.com, New Enterprise Associates, Inc. (NEA), and Benchmark Capital.

Git is an extremely fast, efficient, distributed version control system ideal for the collaborative development of software.

GitHub is the best way to participate in that collaboration: fork projects, send pull requests, create issues, and monitor development with all of your public and private code.

The mission of Linux Fund is elegantly simple: “to promote the use and development of OpenSource Software”

We advance this mission by providing direct financial support to OSI-compliant software projects and the community efforts around them.

We have helped dozens of projects with income from our cards and are now embarking on an exciting new era as a 501(c)(3) non-profit that brings greater obligations and opportunities.

With the help of the community, our board has identified several key areas of opportunity in the free and open source software ecosystem and we are actively negotiating to assist projects of all sizes.

We are constantly impressed by the kind, smart and creative people we meet along the way and we look forward to meeting you on this exciting journey.

As the only South Carolina-owned and operated health insurance carrier, BlueCross BlueShield has been offering health insurance to Palmetto State citizens for more than 60 years. Our data center is also ranked in the top 2.5 % worldwide by IBM.

In addition to its many research labs, the department also houses two centers for research, development, and education: the Center for Information Technology and the Center for Information Assurance Engineering. Funding for the department's research programs has been received from many sources including the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense, and private companies.

The Technology Support and Training Management Program (TSTM) is part of USC‘s College of Hospitality, Retail, and Sport Management. Students in the TSTM program receive an in-depth background in information technologies in four major areas. These areas include computer networking, database systems, corporate training & development, and end-user support.

The SC State Board for Technical and Comprehensive Education operates the SC Technical College System. The System is comprised of 16 technical colleges located strategically across the state and its statewide affiliate programs: the Center for Accelerated Technology Training’s readySC™ program, Apprenticeship Carolina™ and competeSC™.

We recruit, nurture, and deploy new technology-driven regular and student companies in a collaborative effort with Midlands Technical College. It's an effort backed by a number of area governmental and private sponsors, as well as faculty, staff and students. Why? Because incubator businesses are at the forefront of developing new innovative technologies. And they create products and services that improve the quality of our lives.

Clemson University offers countless opportunities for students, faculty and community members to participate in decades of tradition, improve quality of life for their surrounding communities and pursue academic challenges. Ranked as the 22nd best national public university by U.S.News and World Report, Clemson is a vibrant student-centered community that thrives on leadership, collaboration and a winning spirit — in academics, athletics and life.

The College of Charleston is a nationally recognized, public liberal arts and sciences university located in the heart of historic Charleston, South Carolina. Founded in 1770, the College is among the nation’s top universities for quality education, student life and affordability. The College offers a distinctive combination of a beautiful and historic campus, modern facilities and cutting-edge programs.

The university comprises seven professional colleges and currently offers 18 doctoral programs, 62 master’s degree programs and 90 bachelor’s degrees. More than 900 full-time faculty comprise the university’s academic departments and the 2009 fall enrollment exceeded 24,700 students. UNC Charlotte boasts more than 80,000 living alumni and adds 4,000 to 4,500 new alumni each year.

Located in the second largest city in Georgia, Augusta State University is a unique blend of the old and the new, the traditional and the innovative. You'll find that blend in our academic offerings as well as the campus itself. Our academics combine a strong liberal arts tradition with practical hands-on application. Our campus boasts historic buildings and a $95 million building program that incorporates state of the art technology. Browse our pages and see how it all comes together to make Augusta State University truly unique among Georgia's colleges and universities.

The Columbia Office of Business Opportunities (OBO) was formed to encourage the creation, continuous growth, and development of small businesses by providing quality services bridging an array of opportunities. The OBO values corporate and community leaders, who embrace our shared vision of economic inclusion of small businesses that support the continuous growth of the City of Columbia.

Linux Journal, currently celebrating its 16th year of publication, is the original magazine of the global Linux community, delivering readers the advice and inspiration they need to get the most out of their Linux systems.

In-depth information provides a full 360-degree look at featured topics relating to Linux, giving a comprehensive source of everything readers need for creating and completing their own projects --not just tools they will use today, but relevant and encompassing information they will turn to in future months and years.

If you use Linux, you should be reading Linux Journal. Start your risk free trial subscription today http://www.linuxjournal.com/subscribe.

Linux International, also known as LI, is a world-wide non-profit association of end users who are dedicated to furthering the acceptance and use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS).
An end-user is defined as a person that uses FOSS in their daily life.
Linux International is not a vendor organization, so while it may have sponsoring bodies who are corporations or companies, voting membership is limited to individuals, and individual representatives of international chapters and international affiliates.

The Pragmatic Programmers is an agile publishing and training company. We’re here because we want to improve the lives of developers. We do this by creating timely, practical books and working with the Pragmatic Studio to create the best developer training there is. The stuff we produce is timely and relevant because it is written by programmers for programmers.

O'Reilly spreads the knowledge of innovators through its technology books, online services, magazines, research, and tech conferences. Since 1978, O'Reilly has been a chronicler and catalyst of leading-edge development, homing in on the technology trends that really matter and galvanizing their adoption by amplifying "faint signals" from the alpha geeks who are creating the future. An active participant in the technology community, O'Reilly has a long history of advocacy, meme-making, and evangelism.

The IT Focus Expert Group is intended to be a group for experts in the following fields: IT Security, Networking, Data Management, Systems Architecture, Information Systems, Systems Administration. We want professionals to connect with one another to promote awareness, networking and community.

The Columbia Linux Users Group is a team dedicated to sharing knowledge and experience concerning Linux, free software and Open Source.
ColaLUG meets at least once per month to talk about items related to Linux, free software and Open Source. We have a brief business meeting to handle club matters, and then conduct educational sessions presented by our members or outside speakers.

Currently, membership in the ColaLUG is free and open to anyone interested in participating in the exciting growth of Linux and Open Source in the Midlands of South Carolina!

The Columbia Enterprise Developer's Guild (CEDG) meets every second Wednesday of the month at 6:00 PM EST at the Midlands Tech Northeast Campus Auditorium. Our meetings serve to educate the developer community on .NET and other enterprise technologies.

Anyone from the professional developer to the aspiring programmer is cordially invited to join in on our free learning experience! Refreshments are provided, and we often have great items to give away as well.

The main focus and mission of SCITDA is on collaboration of technology to benefit our agencies, and thus the citizens of South Carolina.

The South Carolina Association of Data Processing Directors (SCADPD) emerged in 1978 as the result of discussions by technical people from a few state agencies. It has since grown from a handful of people to being an organization that includes most state agencies, state colleges and universities. During the Fall Conference 2000, the membership voted to change their name to better reflect current responsibilities.

The Fall Conference 2001 was the first one conducted under the name of SCITDA (The South Carolina Information Technology Directors Association) although it was the 22nd annual conference for this group.

Purpose:
To provide a medium for the exchange of information pertinent to the management of State information technology facilities.
To provide a consolidation of experience, knowledge, and interest in improving information technology, administration and management.
To serve as an instrument for the dissemination of information.

The Columbia Information Technology Council is an assemblage of technology leaders promoting Columbia as a desirable location for IT companies. Drawing upon their combined knowledge and experience, the ITC identifies, cultivates and promotes those characteristics that IT businesses require for efficient and successful operations. Members endeavor to help develop a well-educated and dynamic workforce, provide guidance based on their professional expertise, and advance the amenities offered by the Greater Columbia Area.