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Follow UsBANGALORE, INDIA: Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), an 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, said a press release.
TCS will initially directly invest $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 and Management, and research funds for SMU faculty.
The iCity Lab is be located within SMU’s School of Information Systems (SIS), and will draw on faculty from SIS as well as from 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 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 $100 billion is expected to be invested in the intelligent city segment over the next 10 years,” he added
The iCity Lab will 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 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 also in the areas of business models for developing, scaling and operating cloud-based iCity solution platforms.
“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 TCS-SMU iCity Lab, we will be partnering with surrounding urban centres 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,” he added.
In addition to the direct investment in the iCity Lab at SMU, TCS is supporting the initiative under the TCS Co-Innovation Network (TCS COIN) initiative, with collaboration from its global network of Innovation Labs.