Collaboration agreement and TCS’ $6 million investment lays the foundation for research and development of cloud-based IT solutions for intelligent cities in Asia and worldwide
Mumbai | Singapore, August 8, 2011: Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), (BSE: 523540, NSE: TCS), a leading IT services, business solutions and consulting firm, and the Singapore Management University (SMU) announced the establishment of the TCS-SMU iCity Lab to be located at SMU.
The collaboration agreement signed states that the two organizations are partnering to create a new research facility to develop industry standards and IT frameworks for the emerging intelligent city (“iCity”) model of urban development. TCS will initially directly invest S$6 million in the new TCS-SMU iCity Lab over the next three years. The investment provides scholarship funds for SMU post-graduate students in Information Systems Technology & Management, and research funds for SMU faculty. In addition to the direct investment in the iCity Lab at SMU, TCS is supporting the initiative under the TCS Co-Innovation Network (COIN™) initiative, with collaboration from its global network of innovation labs. The iCity Lab is be located within SMU’s School of Information Systems (SIS) and will draw on faculty from SIS as well as the other parts of SMU.
“TCS’ investment in this joint initiative with SMU strengthens our commitment to Singapore, which we see as a hub of innovation in Asia,” said Girija Pande, Chairman, TCS Asia Pacific. “Tomorrow’s cities will be specifically designed and built with a sophisticated IT backbone to enable integrated urban management, improved quality of life for citizens and inclusive economic, social and sustainable growth. The TCS-SMU iCity lab is particularly relevant for fast-growing economies like China, India and others in the region. Globally, over US$100 billion is expected to be invested in the intelligent city segment over the next 10 years,” he added.
“This industry-university partnership is a first of its kind in Asia-Pacific for integrating cloud technology with the relevant business know-how to create urban management IT solutions,” said Professor Steven Miller, Dean, School of Information Systems, SMU. “Through the TCS-SMU iCity Lab, we will be partnering with surrounding urban centers across the region to change and re-imagine the way the IT hardware and software infrastructure of cities is going to be designed, built, integrated and managed in the future.”
The partnership combines TCS’ industry-leading IT services expertise and culture of innovation with SMU’s globally-recognized focus on research and education and for the world of business and management across both public and private sectors. Both TCS and SMU are known for their ability to integrate IT with business in ways that create innovative IT solutions that meet public and private sector management needs.
Apart from being an intelligent city research center, the iCity Lab will also be a digitally interactive user-experience center where city managers and planners from the urban areas of surrounding countries can come to visualize and interactively explore scenarios for transitioning to the new generation of cloud-based information service delivery. The lab will also serve government and commercial organizations via the rapid development and prototyping of intelligent city solutions in the context of real-world scenarios.
The iCity Lab will leverage TCS’ existing suite of urban IT applications, as well as its large global organization and partner ecosystem. The lab will also carry out R&D and solution development in the areas of cloud platforms and software solutions; mobile applications; business analytics combined with consumer, citizen and social analytics; the Internet-of-Things; and in the areas of business models for developing, scaling and operating cloud-based iCity solution platforms.
Strategically located in Singapore, a country recognized for leveraging leading edge technology solutions for e-governance and urban management, the TCS-SMU iCity Lab is well positioned to be a regional hub for the development of intelligent city IT architecture and solutions. The lab will work together with selected partnering cities in China, India and other rapidly developing ASEAN countries to create urban management solutions. The outputs of the joint TCS-SMU effort will be used to create holistic solutions and transition frameworks, service-related process models and working prototypes of new cloud-based IT service delivery solutions to deliver city services for healthcare, education, utilities, environmental management, transport, public safety and security, together with related G2C & G2B, and citizen social media services.
About Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. (TCS)
Tata Consultancy Services is an IT services, consulting and business solutions organization that delivers real results to global business, ensuring a level of certainty no other firm can match. TCS offers a consulting-led, integrated portfolio of IT, BPS, infrastructure, engineering and assurance services. This is delivered through its unique Global Network Delivery Model™,recognized as the benchmark of excellence in software development. A part of the Tata group, India’s largest industrial conglomerate, TCS has over 202,000 of the world’s best-trained consultants in 42 countries. The company generated consolidated revenues of US $8.2 billion for year ended March 31, 2011 and is listed on the National Stock Exchange and Bombay Stock Exchange in India. For more information, visit us at www.tcs.com.
About Singapore Management University (SMU)
A premier university in Asia centered around “The World of Business”, the Singapore Management University (SMU) is internationally recognized for its world class research and innovation, and its interactive approach to teaching. Established in 2000, SMU’s mission is to generate leading edge research with global impact and produce broad-based, creative and entrepreneurial leaders for the knowledge-based economy. Home to nearly 7,500 undergraduate and post-graduate students, SMU comprises six schools: School of Accountancy, Lee Kong Chian School of Business, School of Economics, School of Information Systems, School of Law and School of Social Sciences. These schools offer a wide range of bachelor’s, master’s and PhD degree programs. SMU emphasizes rigorous, high impact cross-disciplinary research that takes advantage of our location in the center of Asia, our university-wide focus on the World of Business including both private and public sectors, our strong working relationships with partners in business and government, and our ability to collaborate university-wide across our six schools and various research centers and institutes. SMU has well established relationships with leading foreign institutions, including Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and the School of Arts and Sciences, and the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. The SMU city campus is a state-of-the art facility located in the heart of downtown Singapore, facilitating strategic linkages with the business, government and wider community. For more information, visit www.smu.edu.sg.
About the School of Information Systems
The SMU School of Information Systems (SIS) was created in 2003 to extend SMU’s research and education efforts into the areas of Information Systems Technology, Information Systems Management and problems at the intersection of IS technology and management. SIS is distinct from the other five schools at SMU in that it is the only academic unit within the university classified as under Singapore’s Science & Technology cluster of academic units as defined by the Ministry of Education. The School possesses deep technology-based research and creation capability in four strategically selected areas of IT, Systems and Applications: Data Management & Analytics; Intelligent Systems & Decision Analytics; Software Systems; and Information Security and Data Privacy. The fifth strategic area of the School is Information Systems and Management, where faculty investigate a range of issues related to the managerial and business impacts of IT within public and private sector organizations, and across collaboration networks, value chains, markets and industries. Since its inception in 2003, SIS has had a strategic partnership with Carnegie Mellon. Recently, through SIS, SMU and Carnegie Mellon launched the Living Analytics Research Center. More on SIS is found at www.sis.smu.edu.sg.
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