OREANDA-NEWS. August 9, 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 organisations 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 SUSD 6 million in the new TCS-SMU iCity Lab over the next three years. The investment provides scholarship funds for SMU postgraduate 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 (TCS 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 from the other parts of SMU.

“TCS’s 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 USD 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 Steven Miller, dean, SIS, 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.”

The partnership combines TCS’s industry-leading IT services expertise and culture of innovation with SMU’s globally recognised focus on research and education and for the world of business and management across both the 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.

As well as being an intelligent city research centre, the iCity Lab will also be a digitally interactive user-experience centre where city managers and planners from the urban areas of surrounding countries can come to visualise and interactively explore scenarios for transitioning to the new generation of cloud-based information service delivery. The lab will also serve government and commercial organisations via the rapid development and prototyping of intelligent city solutions in the context of real-world scenarios.

The iCity Lab will leverage TCS’s existing suite of urban IT applications, as well as its large global organisation 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 also in the areas of business models for developing, scaling and operating cloud-based iCity solution platforms.

Strategically located in Singapore, a country recognised 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 output of the joint TCS-SMU effort will be to create holistic solutions and transition frameworks, service related process models, and working prototypes of new cloud-based IT service delivery solutions for delivering city services for health care, education, utilities, environmental management, transport, public safety and security, together with related G2C and G2B, and citizen social media services.