INDUSTRY

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) announced the launch of its latest research effort, the innovation Lab. Based in New Delhi, iLab will focus research initiatives on emerging technologies that could drive disruptive changes in the global technology industry and develop reusable frameworks using these technologies. iLab has begun work on emerging technologies, such as Grid Computing, Collaborative Software Development and Service Oriented Architectures, and will explore other cutting edge technologies targeted to address customers' current and future business requirements. Speaking at the launch, Dr. Gautam Shroff, vice president of technology programs at TCS, said, "iLab will focus on delivering value through scalable and secure platforms based on new enterprise technology components developed by TCS as well as partners in emerging technologies, such as Grid Computing, Service Oriented Architectures and Collaborative Software Development." iLab will also play a key role in integrating emerging technologies to further improve research-driven products being developed by TCS at its other R&D centers across the country. In Life Sciences, for example, iLab is using Grid Computing to mirror computations within TCS' Bio-Suite product in the field of drug discovery using commonly available desktop computers. This will lead to a 10-fold or more reduction in the time taken to complete complex molecule docking calculations. Code generation tools developed by the Tata Research, Development and Design Center in Pune are being integrated into a service-oriented architecture framework to help improve the productivity of software developers. iLab is also integrating TCS' state-of-the-art code generation, testing and standards checking tools along with tools from technology partners into an integrated global collaborative software development offering. "iLab is well positioned to leverage TCS' R&D strengths by working together with our other labs in Pune, Hyderabad and Bangalore," added Dr. Gautam Shroff. Apart from iLab, TCS works in other areas of research, including systems and software engineering, applied process engineering and research for societal benefits. In systems and software engineering, the company's R&D efforts are focused on language processing and automation tools for application development, testing, migration and re-engineering. In the past few years, TCS has also expanded its research areas to embedded systems, bioinformatics and information security.