IBM, ISB ties up for service science research centre

IBM and the Indian School of Business (ISB) on Monday said they have established a research "collaboratory" at the ISB campus for furthering research in service science. IBM and ISB have been working closely on service science research for last few years. This collaboratory marks the beginning of a new phase of an expanded relationship between the two organisations.

An IBM collaboratory is a laboratory where IBM researchers co-locate with a university, the government, or commercial partner to share skills, assets, and resources to achieve a common research goal. The new collaboratory will initially have a team of 10 full-time researchers, five each from ISB and IBM. The team will focus on developing foundational techniques in service science, including the modeling, measurement, and optimisation of "service systems".

Service research is multi-disciplinary and many variations exist today within the domains of management, operations research, and economics to name a few. While most of the existing work has focused on business-to-consumer services, the focus of this research is on business-to-business services.

Speaking on the setting up of the collaboratory, Ajit Rangnekar, dean, ISB, said, "We expect services management to be a huge area of focus for leading companies and we are delighted to collaborate with IBM on this initiative. In keeping with the ISB's emphasis on research, we believe our association will develop innovative solutions to enhance the way services are rendered."

According to Guruduth Banavar, director, IBM Research, India, "Innovation is necessary to address the world's greatest challenges and opportunities; and the responsibility must be shared among industry, the government and academia. Meeting market demands for higher service quality and innovation while increasing the efficiency of service delivery, requires deep insight into advances in information technology and management sciences. The collaboratory will expand our expertise in these areas to further differentiate IBM's services offerings in the global marketplace."

It may be recalled that during February 2007, IBM and ISB signed an MoU for joint research on service science, management, and engineering. In May 2008, IBM India and ISB signed the first open collaborative research agreement in Asia aimed at improving the competitiveness of the services sector in the region.