Textbook Case: Universities and the Telecom Cluster Are on the Same Page

Oklahoma's telecommunications and information technology (IT) industries deserve a seat at the same table the energy and aerospace industries enjoy. It's the table at which the Sooner State's future as a location for business and industry is shaped.       The state has a leg up on would-be competitive states in this important field with its concentration of telecom enterprises in the Tulsa area and elsewhere. WilTel Communications employs 1,300 in Tulsa and 500 more elsewhere; MCI employs 1,800 in the Tulsa area, offering a range of telecommunications and high-tech services; and 1,300 people work for data processing giant EDS in Tulsa with another 300 in Oklahoma City. These and other companies — with higher education playing a key supporting role — are building an IT and networking infrastructure that is second to none. MCI relies on local universities in Tulsa to supply employee candidates with network security expertise and other high-tech skills.       In Tulsa, university researchers at Oklahoma State University-Tulsa (OSU-Tulsa), the University of Oklahoma at Tulsa and the University of Tulsa collaborate to maximize their potential and their resources. "Cooperative research has been going on and is going on," says Dr. Allen Soltow, vice president for research at the University of Tulsa. "Purchases of equipment have taken place with National Science Foundation money, for example, where the equipment is available on our campus and we make it available to others. If you don't have a critical mass on your own campus, it makes a lot of sense to share the use of very expensive equipment."       From the corporate perspective, the Tulsa high-tech/telecom community is just that — a community. "EDS does some outsourcing with MCI, WilTel often provides extra [capacity] if we need it — we really all work together as partners for our companies and as a community," says Vicki Rose, service delivery executive at EDS in Tulsa.       But how the higher education component of that community participates today will determine the success of the community tomorrow. In other words, the state and local telecom and high-tech industries will be successful from a staffing perspective to the extent the universities are providing the right programs and curricula. So far, that's the case.       "We have a fairly sophisticated labor pool to draw from right in this region," says Jeff Storey, president and CEO of Tulsa-based WilTel Communications, a provider of voice, data, video and IP services to telecom companies, the government and private industry. "We rarely have to go outside the region. We depend on the local region to staff our company."       Basic long-distance service is no longer central to MCI's business strategy, whereas Internet services for small and large enterprises and network security are, says Tracy Eastridge, vice president at MCI's Tulsa operation. The center houses a diverse set of disciplines, from sales and marketing to customer service to IT. "What the universities can do is develop programs in areas like IP security, because that's where we're going," she says, "and those are programs they have, so we pretty much get what we need here."       OSU-Tulsa's telecommunications program, launched in 1995, was developed in response to the business community's interest in such a program.       "The important thing is that the dialogue exists between the universities and the business community," says Dr. Gary Trennepohl, president of OSU-Tulsa. "We do a very good job here of interacting with the external community and finding out what they want."       Adding to Tulsa's telecom infrastructure is its location on the National LambdaRail (NLR), the cross-country ubernetwork linking research universities and technology companies for high-speed research and experimentation purposes. The Tulsa node will help Oklahoma research institutions advance their agendas, leading the way to potential commercialization of research and, ideally, economic development.