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I do not want you to think that we try to create patents. What we try to create is products and solutions

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DQI Bureau
New Update

The eighth IBM Research

Laboratory was set up in New Delhi during the period 1998-99. The New

Delhi lab is unique because it is the only one in the south Asian region,

and incorporates IBM’s global shared university program. As part of the

ramp-up process, the lab was visited by IBM’s worldwide head of

research, Paul Horn, who has been working with IBM for the last 19 years.

He directs the company’s worldwide research program across the Yorktown,

Almaden, Austin, Zurich, Haifa, Tokyo, Beijing and New Delhi laboratories.

Horn is a specialist in the areas of solid state physics, semiconductors

and storage. He has a doctorate degree from the University of Rochester.

Excerpts of an exclusive interview with him across a wide range of topics:

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How

are research areas decided between the various global centers? What are the main

research areas?

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We look at the laboratories and

see how best we can do the work, based on the skill-base in the local regions.

Electronic commerce and electronic business are the big focal items that we have

here. Work on little pervasive devices that allow you to



connect to the network and do business is another area. There is an outstanding
effort in what we call deep computing spirit with projects like weather

forecasting.

If you look across all the

laboratories just about 15% is what we call white space research...you have no

idea what the product is. Then about 25% is future work, which we are pretty

sure will impact servers or semi conductor storage. And the remainder is on next

generation products.

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Research

laboratories are generally well known for conducting activities with lack of

industry relevance. How is this discontinuity tackled in IBM?

This disconnect is rapidly going

away and in fact laboratories like ours are part of the reason why it is going

away. The industry has a connection with

individual faculties in the labs, and they work

on projects that they mutually agree upon, and are

both excited about. They purposely define the programs in a way that may well

lead to rapid

commercialization.

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In general, the key thing is that

you rapidly flow technology into the marketplace. Then it is irrelevant. You can

try to create all sorts of barriers

but in the end the best protection is the speed in utilizing it.

How

are research areas distributed across the IBM labs?

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There are laboratories that are

closely linked to the development or manufacturing facilities. For example–the

storage work–most of the time it is manufactured and developed in San Hose and

research work on storage is elsewhere. The semiconductor work tends to go in the

Watson laboratory. For solutions, the work is in many laboratories around the

world. Since IBM is so broad there are a lot of things going on.

How

do you encourage interaction with the academic community?

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We try to have exploratory

programs in all the laboratories, because often exploratory programs are the

ones that make the best contacts, for example, with the university students. We

use exploratory programs to flow in new knowledge and new ideas, and make

partnerships that allow flow of new knowledge and new ideas from outside.

It is very important to think

about research in the context of how the economies around the world are

changing. Let me give you some thoughts. We are rapidly moving into what many

futurists have called the information age. We have gone from an agricultural

economy to an industrial economy to an information economy. If you are in an

information age, the information that is available free is enormous. Success for

a company, for an individual,

or for a country is to find ways to flow in key information that one needs, and

to use that to distinguish oneself.

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How

does that apply to the research center at IIT Delhi?

In many ways the reason why we

created this laboratory was because we thought we could build great university

programs in connection with, first the IIT here in Delhi and then the other IITs.

IBM

files a large number of patents every year. Is there a planned program for

patent generation and technology licensing?

We work very hard at it. We have

valuable

technology, and one way to get a return for that

technology is to license know-how, patents and the technology.

Are

there any particular areas where patents are proliferating from IBM...

It is in all areas...

...What

about patents for the deep computing algorithm?

It is conceivable that you can

patent algorithms and sometimes we do patent algorithms–for example the

algorithms we have used to look at and understand the human intelligence.

The key thing–I do not want you

to think that when we go in we try to create patents. What we try to create is

products and solutions. Sometimes there will be patents as well and they may be

valuable. If you can understand a better way to get the underlying meaning of a

sequence that could be valuable to a lot of pharmaceutical companies, for

example, we would like to use that algorithm to



create a set of solutions for pharmaceutical companies that are interested.
Maybe there is a patent, maybe not.

Do

you see the deep computing algorithms being used in the commercial and business

space?

I think because there is so much

data freely available on the internet, there is going to be a very big problem.

As an example, we have in IBM, within one company, one and a half million pages

on the internet. We had to do a research project to find out how many pages we

had on the internet and the intranet. Now there are probably three or four pages

that you have got to read, but you never know how to find the way to those three

or four. Deep computing will allow you take this massive amount of data that is

getting collected–for example about customers doing work on pervasive devices–and

make some meaning out of it. Datamining technology, algorithms for patent

matching–these kinds of things are going to be absolutely critical for

business.

Will

the advances in algorithms help in the development of artificial intelligence?

I do not think artificial

intelligence is the right way to think about it. It will be a set of tools–business

intelligence tools among other things, and algorithms–that will allow meaning

out of massive amounts of data domains. You are starting to see those tools.

What

about research in the area of internet and ecommerce?

We are looking at everything from

understanding economies to digital economies, understanding how they operate to

actually building portals and websites. For example, there is a paper company

that auctions off paper from a variety of suppliers. Now imagine you can do that

online–so if you want to buy paper from a mill you go to their website. On

their website, all suppliers that have paper available in their mills list what

they have. You could pick and you could bid. We are helping them do that.

Are

your e-com models sufficient to predict changing consumer preferences?

That is a hard question. I do not

think anyone can really predict the changes in the future very well. The changes

are so great. We have some thoughts but I think you have got to believe that the

changes will be so phenomenal that it is hard to predict how consumers and

society will react to them. 

What

is the most critical edge for organizations in the information age?

For any company in the internet

space, it is going to be to find ways to make sense out of all its data.

What

are the activities in the area of consumer information appliances?

Lots of neat things. I will give

you an example of a neat project. There is a pilot project we built with a

supermarket called Safeway in United Kingdom. This project deals with giving a

palm pilot to a bunch of their customers. This is a standard palm pilot, except

the palm pilot lists what is available from Safeway. What they do at home is

whenever they want something, instead of writing it on the refrigerator, they

just check it on the palm pilot. When they are ready they put the palm pilot in

the cradle saying when they want to pick it up. It gets transmitted to the store

and is already in a bag for you when you get there. So this becomes a consumer

appliance that allows you to connect over the internet and order your groceries.

Is

IBM looking at moving into the consumer appliance area?

Well, we may or may not actually

build a palm pilot–we now have what is called an IBM workpad. In order to

operate in a pervasive space you may not need a fundamentally new client but it

would be good to have the software focused on some solution.

Around

what OS is IBM looking at building its appliances?

Essentially you have got Windows

CE, which is what the IT vendors would prefer. But it is not going to be like

the Windows dominance in the desktop. You are not going to have Win CE down on

smaller devices–it is just too big.

How

are graduates from IITs recruited into the IBM India lab?

We send a letter to the heads of

departments of computer science and electrical engineering of all the six IITs.

Essentially, we take the top three people by their grade point average from each

of the departments. Typically, what happens is that IIT Delhi may get a couple

of more students in because they may be working on projects during the year, and

automatically get absorbed. Starting next year we are hoping to get five top

guys from all computer science departments of all the six IITs, and two each

from the electrical engineering departments. We will assign a researcher from

the lab who will work with them, advise them, and mentor them as they go along

because they have had no experience whatsoever in doing research.

Is

it correct that Indians form or are likely to form the largest share of

employees recruited in IBM laboratories?

I do not know how you define the

largest number. Right now this is a tremendous environment for bringing in new

talent. You can just say that the calibre of people we have been able to get has

really been outstanding.

Does

China have the ability to compete with us in terms of infotech professionals?

Yes. We are able to get wonderful

people there. There is more competition in information technology in Beijing

because there are other research organizations. Here there is really

nothing. Ours is really a unique opportunity. I expect eventually that other

companies will enter.

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