Rapid changes in technology make it imperative for IT companies to keep pace with the latest developments worldwide, and to develop new applications with the aim of enabling clients to improve their business. At CMC, finding newer and better ways of delivering value to our customers is a way of life.

CMC's state-of-the-art research and development centre in Hyderabad, India, conducts research in areas on the very frontiers of technology, and gives a cutting edge to CMC's operations. The centre, which is an integral part of CMC's medium- to long-term strategy, develops special hardware and software products which form the building blocks of the turnkey solutions offered by CMC. Some of CMC's offerings have found acceptance as standalone products.

A building management system installed at the Hyderabad centre uses computers to monitor and control facilities such as lighting and air-conditioning. Equipped with state-of-the-art HP, Sun, and NCR platforms, the centre also forms the nucleus of CMC's export activities, run from a private software technology park, and of the application-specific development centres (ASDCs) for supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) and fingerprint applications.

Our R&D division employs over 500 highly skilled professionals, qualified in diverse fields. Around 200 are involved in core developmental activities. Our R&D groups also interact and collaborate with many reputed educational institutes and external experts. Development efforts are strengthened by our interactions with customers and markets, as well as with academia, research institutions and our affiliates' research laboratories. Our people are actively associated with specialised journals and with conference events.

The objective of our R&D efforts is to develop commercially viable, high-quality IT solutions and services, by exploiting state-of-the-art technology. We aim to build competencies in identified core technology areas, which are then utilised to build reusable software assets. The reusability of our solutions helps us spread our R&D costs, and to deliver more refined solutions requiring less customisation and with greater predictability — which means substantial time and cost savings for our clients.

Our R&D activities play an important role in scaling up our offerings and help us execute large and complex projects in world markets.

Highlights

	Our areas of specialisation include image processing and pattern recognition, GPS-based applications for power utilities, advanced application functions in the areas of distribution automation and load despatch, real-time systems, process control (SCADA), OLTP, pervasive computing, real-time embedded systems, communications, computer networking and object-oriented methodologies.
	CMC has expertise in all aspects of networking — satellite, microwave, digital radio, fibre optics, VHF / UHF communications and networking products.
	We have major R&D projects in distribution automation, object-oriented design tools, internet commerce and electronic copyright management systems.
	The products being commercialised include an automatic street light control system, a system for the enhancement of fingerprint analysis and criminal tracing, a GPS-based vehicle tracking system, dispatcher training simulator (DTS), distribution simulator (DISIM), distribution automation application functions (DIYA) and a Java-based super automax.

The current focus of our capability development efforts includes embedded systems; e-security and e-payments; biometric solutions; POS and ticketing solutions; smart card solutions; networking products and network security; SCADA and process control; and PDA-based solutions.

The drivers of our capability development efforts are our customers' requirements. We interact with our customers to understand their requirements and develop solutions by assembling diverse hardware and other technologies in line with the customers' commercial objectives. This experience has helped us acquire in-depth knowledge of various industry domains and technologies, and has enabled us in subsequent commercial development of innovative solutions.

Development methodology
Having identified customer requirements, we create a prototype combining diverse hardware platforms and the required firmware and application software. The prototype goes through several trial runs and modifications, until it incorporates all the required features and functionality sets.

Our products can be distinguished by their complex problem-solving abilities. Some of the R&D division's products that have been commercially deployed include FACTS, an automated fingerprint identification system, Nirdeshak, a differential GPS-based vehicle tracking system, ARTS, an advanced railway unreserved ticketing system, a number of e-commerce products and many SCADA-based applications, such as OSKER, for the power sector, WINSPIRE for web services, and SETSS, a rail traction system.

We also work proactively on various state-of-the-art technologies to enable us to remain up to date with the current technological developments and offer innovations which enrich our solutions and service capabilities.