Dream workplaces

The IBM India research laboratory(IRL) in Bangalore, India is one of the eight places in the world where research and development for software and creative solutions takes place under the guidance of IBM. It was extablished in 1998. Their researchers are renowned for expertise in technologies such as information integration, distributed and high-performance computing, software engineering, human computer interaction, and application of computer science in governance, life sciences, commerce and telecommunications.

IBM research is one of the world’s largest IT research organizations whose intelectual property portfolio alone has the potential to generate $1.5 billion in revenues annually.

According to Manoj Kumar, director of India Research Laboratory (IRL), one of the eight research labs of IBM, some of the strategic thrust for the next two to three years will be autonomic computing, system management, Web services and tools and low-powered devices. This statement was made at an annual meeting, where ideas are shared amongst global research heads, building up a conslidated idea, a new vision which is then worked upon. Although there are many areas of interest, focuses are set strategically.

Autonomic computing, a widely promoted and developed technology was reinstiated for this years focus as well. The main area of work will be improving technical details.

A new area has been decided as well. According to this project, computer systems capable of running themselves, adjusting to circumstances and automated resource management will be worked upon. This will have AI as a primary development focus, and aims at developing computing systems with efficient handling of workload.

On the system management front, the focus will be on developing technologies and data management tools for making it easier for data administrators as well as non techno-savvy and inexperienced IT users. “The idea is to build simplified technologies, which allow for self help and self management. For instance developing the right set of tools to handle complexities like instructing the computer as to when to delete, retain documents and records,” explained Kumar.

Research work in the area of Web services and tools includes enabling applications to be written in the Web.

Ongoing projects include handling of unstructured information. The project is almost complete with the prototype already created. The IBM labs has done considerable amount of work relating to speech recognition for regional languages and for Indian-english. Another remarkable achievement is the ‘Telephony speech recognition’ which is itself a challenging job, as telephone lines carry a limited 8kHz band data with lots of extra noise.

The IRL has a university relations program which unites the staff with academic partners, providing a direct chaneling through internships, lectures etc.

As quoted by Dr. Satish Chandra “The best part about working in IBM’s India Research Lab is the opportunity to do world-class research and to do it at home.”

With all this, and much more unsaid, the IBM IRL woud really be a dream workpace for people who like to take challenges and innovate!!

For further info visit :: IRL Home