Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has made a foray into what it calls is its next strategic focus area, bio-informatics.
The Tata group's IT arm has entered into a multi-layer collaborative agreement with the Hyderabad-based center for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD), a leading R&D laboratory under the Department of Biotechnology, government of India.
As per the memorandum of understanding, TCS and CDFD will work together in the evolving area of bioinformatics, which is an interdisciplinary science where computational methods are used to analyse biological information.
"TCS has always been exploring new areas on a continuous basis and has been pioneering research for over 20 years. As we go into multiple domains, intersection of biological sciences, life sciences and information technology poses interesting situations," S Ramadorai, CEO of TCS.
He added, "The bioinformatics area has huge potential and as a country and as well as a company, we cannot lag behind."
The agreement with CDFD will collaborate into bioinformatics and genomics-related areas. It has three specific areas of collaboration --development of niche software products in the areas of biotechnology, to offer training of manpower in bioinformatics which include training of biologists and IT personnel.
TCS will conduct these training programmes and to select TCS trainees, as they prepare to undertake contract research and enter into partnerships with leading biotechnology firms worldwide. And lastly, the agreement includes TCS acting as a funding agency for CDFD, wherein it will fund their projects for long-term research and development activities.
TCS as a company spends five percent of its total turnover every year on research and development. A substantial amount of this investment will be going into the research development of bioinformatics as the situation may demand.
While, the niche products developed will be marketed by TCS, it will be paying a royalty fee to CDFD for the product. However, the IPR of the software product will be held by both TCS as well as CDFD.
With regard to manpower strength, TCS is initially looking at a around 25 trainees in the first year. It is estimated that the bioinformatics area will require 20,000 professionals within the next five years and the estimated trained professionals at the moment in the industry are just about 1,000.
The company will be conducting a nine month comprehensive training course beginning October 2001. TCS, eventually expects to make bioinformatics a separate industry practice like it has done with security and banking solutions.
With an increasing number of genetic data being produced, bio informatics is being seen as the next boom sector. Industry experts predict that the bio-informatics market could be $ 30 billion in the next two years.
Is first firm to get PCMM Level 4
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has become the first company worldwide to achieve level 4 of the People Capability Maturity Model (PCMM Level 4 ), a conceptual model based on state of the art workforce practises. This model has been developed by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) on similar lines as the SEI CMM for the Information Technology domain.
The assessment process covered TCS 4 centres namely at Noida, Gurgaon, the Tidel Park at Chennai and the Kolkata Centre. These centers were taken as a sample out of the 17 centres of the company and involved the assessment of totally around 2000 employees out of the 16,000 strong consulting workforce of the organisation. The new PCMM Level 4 will enable the company to maintain and further grow its competitive advantage, increase productivity and thereby drive the margins.
