President Kalam celebrates 25th anniversary of TRDDC
January 17, 2007

Celebrating 25 years of innovation in the IT industry at the silver jubilee anniversary of TRDDC (Tata Research Design and Development Centre), India's first dedicated R&D centre for software engineering, Tata Consultancy Services launched the next wave of collaborative innovation through its 'Co-Innovation Network' (COIN) today at Pune. The network was launched by President APJ Kalam during his visit to TCS to celebrate 25 years of TRDDC and its contributions to the country's software success story.

The visit by the President of India to TCS' Pune offices marks the culmination of a year-long series of events, seminars, lectures and held to celebrate TRDDC silver jubilee celebrations and keep innovation firmly on the IT community's agenda. Established by TCS in 1981, TRDDC has delivered consistent new standards and methodologies for software engineering and process engineering as well as created IP through proprietary automation tools and methodologies.

S Ramadorai, CEO & MD, TCS, said: "Research-led innovation has been a key driver of the TCS growth story over the last 25 years since we established TRDDC in 1981. The launch of a new initiative through the TCS Co-Innovation Network will set a new standard for collaboration in R&D and is a key strategic component of the new enterprise-wide innovation program initiated by TCS last year."

Mathai Joseph, executive VP and head, TRDDC, said: "TRDDC has had a long history of driving new business initiatives for TCS through innovation and R&D in software engineering. Our tool-sets and accelerators have helped to increase automation in code generation and have enabled TCS to deliver excellence to its customers globally."

The TCS innovation model, that started in Pune 25 years ago, has been replicated across the enterprise and currently there are six such TCS Corporate Innovation Centres, in Pune, Hyderabad (two centres), Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi working on diverse areas like life sciences, software-as-a-service, business process agility, semantic multimedia and natural language interfaces. In addition, TCS also has 19 domain and service-focused innovation labs across the globe. TCS innovation labs are also committed to developing and building new domain-specific solutions using new technology areas to address customer 'pain points'.

The TCS Co-Innovation Network extends the collaborative eco-system beyond the enterprise and brings together research resources and innovation capabilities of six entities in an collaborative structure to deliver all new standards of innovation for the end user. These entities are anchored by TCS' innovation labs and include global academic institutes, venture capital funds, Silicon Valley start up companies, TCS alliance partners and multi-lateral bodies.

"The COIN partners have already started working to deliver joint solutions in new technology areas and will be deployed in the market in the next financial year, 2007-08, in areas like collaborative computing and SaaS," said K Ananth Krishnan, chief technology officer. "Some of these solutions are in the market already such as next generation software methodology, utility computing and bio-infomatics."