Microsoft R&D lab to come up in B’lore

Microsoft R&D lab to come up in B’lore
Financial Express

BANGALORE, NOV 30: Microsoft said on Tuesday that it was setting up a research lab in Bangalore - its sixth in the world - as part of its R&D activities. While not giving the specifics of the investment, P Anandan, managing director, Microsoft Research India, said that the company made an annual R&D investment of $6 billion. The lab will be operational by 2005, he said.

Microsoft has five other research labs - three in the US, one in the UK and one in China, with a total of 700 people.

The Indian lab will have 12 people for the first six months, after which the team will be expanded, he said. The lab will focus on four major areas - computing technologies for emerging markets, multilingual systems, geographical infomation systems and sensor networks. All projects are in the research stage still, and products are expected to come out of them five to ten yeasr down the line.

The company is looking specifically at the developing markets. For instance, in a market which cannot afford access to computers or afford software, Microsoft is looking at a new platform (both hardware and software) which can help these societies get computing power.

The mulilingual systems will involve content creation, creation of databases, and search with an emphasis on Indian languages. The third area of research will be geographical information systems (GIS) which can find applications in a wide variety of areas from city planning, to mining, and crop cultivation.

Sensor network technology, the last focus area, detects the presence of people and objects at certain points and can be used in management of natural calamities and disaster, Mr Anandan said. Data is sent to the central server and a distributed computing environment can be an application that can be used in rural communities, he said.

The company plans to tie up with the academia, universities in India, as well as governments and public service organisations for egovernance projects and products. It will also have a technical advisory board drawn from academia, scientrific and research community to support Microsoft.