The Hindu Business Line : From lab to customer

FROM contributing to the BlueGene supercomputer project to bridging the digital divide, the IBM India Research Lab (IRL) based in Delhi has a lot on its agenda.

It has embarked on a host of initiatives and has submitted a strategy map to the President, Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, on issues concerning India and how technology can play its part fruitfully.

Dr P. Gopalakrishnan, who heads the lab, is an expert in parallel and pervasive computing, speech synthesis and recognition-related technologies. eWorld caught up with him recently. Excerpts from the chat:

What is the mandate for IBM India research lab?

The lab aims to advance information technology through research in software and services.

It seeks to provide leadership by delivering innovations to our clients and IBM's operations in the region and globally.

It has been working closely with the research community, industry, government and academia.

It has significant initiatives in services and sciences, information management, user interaction technologies, e-Commerce, life sciences, distributed computing and software engineering.

How big is the research centre here? What are its future plans?

We have over 100 researchers and continue to grow IBM's interests in the region.

Our lab focuses on core technologies in the Solutions and Services space.

We will continue to grow and provide the environment for the best in technology, with a research orientation.

The lab has filed patents on several new innovations. Can you give us a flavour of some of them...

IBM's focus on innovation is deep rooted. Innovation is not just essential but imperative to our very existence and growth in the global market place.

Many of our technologies have made their way into major products and solutions from IBM and are on the threshold of making a major difference to our services organisations.

In India, our lab is busy not only inventing but also applying those inventions for real customer benefit.

Examples range from the highly technical to activities that directly touch ordinary people. For instance, the India Lab has created a new `eCoupon' technology.

This automatically tracks the coupons owned by a customer, prompting the user to redeem them at the right time.

This eliminates the need for customers to carry them to the store, remember what coupons are applicable to which products and adhere to the validity period.

This technology is now a part of IBM's Websphere Commerce Suite of software products and is being implemented by our clients.

At the more technical end of the spectrum, technology created in our lab is being incorporated into the Tivoli systems management software.

This will help CIOs and IT managers handle database administration better. This is part of IBM's overall focus in the area of `autonomic computing.'

Here, computing systems are being made more self-healing, self-configuring and self-managing to reduce their cost and complexity.

Hence, even small and medium businesses can take advantage of their capabilites to link more tightly with their customers and suppliers in what is known as an `on demand' mode of operation.

In tune with IBM's entire R&D effort, the India lab, which is one of eight such labs, is focused on not just the creation and patenting of new technologies, but also on the innovative application of those technologies.

They will help customers transform the way they do things.

Any killer application on the way?

Our technologies have found usage in IBM's products and services worldwide, for instance, in IBM's BlueGene, the fastest supercomputer in the world.

We have also been able to deliver value to clients spanning industries such as manufacturing and telecommunications.

Any India-specific developments to address the digital divide?

Yes. A recent initiative we have undertaken, along with other groups in IBM India, is a study to understand how we can improve India's education and healthcare systems through IT.

The report of the study has been presented to the President of India.

The report helps as a roadmap to integrate IT in education and healthcare systems.

We are looking at how we can achieve some of the recommendations made in the report.

On e-Governance initiatives...

IBM has strong capabilities in the eGovernance area.

IBM India is working with over 15 Governments on various projects, including Gujarat, Karnataka, Uttaranchal, Chandigarh UT, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Pondicherry, Maharashtra and Kerala.

Uttaranchal and IBM India have signed two memorandums of understanding (MoUs) for a statewide e-Governance and University Program initiative.

This will provide the Uttaranchal Government with a platform to leverage IBM's application development methodologies.

It will reduce the development time to build applications to deploy eGovernance initiatives in the State.

While IBM will act as Program managers, it will also assist the Government of Uttaranchal in conceptualising G2C (government to citizen) and G2G (government to government) projects based on platform-independent and open standards.

Aimed at select colleges, the primary objective of this programme is to train engineering and technically qualified students to become IBM certified professionals.

IBM will also provide an opportunity for the faculty and students of the identified colleges to design world-class curriculum, aligned to industry needs.

vrishi@thehindu.co.in

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