Twenty five years of innovation at Tata Research Development and Design Centre
December 12, 2006

After celebrating 25 years of innovation as the first dedicated software and engineering R&D centre in India, the Tata Research Development and Design Centre (TRDDC) is now poised to play a key role in TCS Innovation 2.0, the enterprise-wide innovation program initiated by Tata Consultancy Services this year.

Going forward, TRDDC will be focused on Innovation through R&D in the following two significant areas that will build new solutions and use tomorrow's technology to solve today's business problems.

Software engineering:

• Data Masking: Research on data privacy has already led to the release of the first data privacy tool developed in India, Masketeer. The tool has now been used by different financial institutions overseas for masking data before it is released for use by third parties. Data masking tools have major applications in the financial services, healthcare and public information areas.
• Research has commenced on version 2.0 of the tool using new techniques that can be used for enhancing the privacy of individual data while also permitting its use in controlled applications. TRDDC's ongoing collaboration with Stanford University in this area has resulted in the identification of some new techniques.
• System Complexity Management: TRDDC has been working on new techniques for managing the complexity of very large IT systems - IT systems with 100,000+ desktops, 1000+ servers and inter-linked communication and storage resources. These techniques have already found some commercial applications and loads for some applications have been reduced by as much as 60%.
• Fraud Detection: Applications to detect fraud in large system-based organisations like stock exchanges and public utilities such as electricity providers. This requires using software for the identification of patterns of potential misuse in real-time, eg, collusion between parties, and cartelisation on stock markets.
• Information Extraction Tools: TRDDC is working on extracting information from very large text data bases, to help identify major trends and problems from seemingly unconnected data. This is a difficult task as the data is not formatted in any particular way. New techniques using algorithms are being developed to identify patterns in such text and to make them available for subsequent inspection in an understandable form.

Process engineering:

• Nanotechnology: TRDDC is investigating the use of nano-materials for industrial coatings where special properties are needed in the coatings. These nano-material based coatings can transform certain applications through their robust and long lasting properties.
• Transformation of industrial waste: A major initiative is underway at TRDDC to transform industrial waste into useful products. TRDDC scientists have developed a number of techniques for converting industrial waste into alinite cement which has properties that closely match those of the more conventional portland cement.