Infosys may ink pact with Australia's NICTA for research work

MELBOURNE: IT giant Infosys is likely to sign a deal with National ICT Australia (NICTA) for joint research work and exchange programme, says a news report.

Three areas of common research interest have been identified with NICTA -- software engineering, process management and "platformisation", adapting applications for myriad platforms, said 'The Australian' report quoting Infosys Labs global head Subu Goparaju.

"As a research group we do a disproportionately higher number of things in Australia compared with the business we do (there)," Goparaju said, adding, "We have been a member of CRC for several years and in that CRC model we work with many universities and NICTA is another very important chain."

Infosys co-founder and chief mentor N R Narayana Murthy is on the board of NICTA -- Australia's Information and Communications Technology Research Centre of Excellence.

Goparaju said if NICTA already had interesting intellectual property, Infosys would look at "leveraging those in our solutions".

He said the Australian Government's Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) programme and NICTA are "major vehicles" for Infosys to work with many universities and organisations in the country.

Infosys had talks with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation ( CSIRO), Australia's national science agency, about a similar initiative but NICTA was a "better fit", he said.

Disclosing some of the research projects that included "virtual try-on" for the retail sector, Infosys Labs associate vice-president Krishnan Narayanan said the project used Microsoft's Kinect for Xbox 360 to help shoppers try on clothes.

In the demonstration, a shopper could "select" the size of a dress and even change colours by standing in front of the Kinect console and tapping on icons, he said.

The try-before-you-buy concept eliminated the need for changing rooms. The products of Infosys Labs can be seen across industries such as mobility and financial services, he added.

Key software developed by the labs is at the centre of an ambitious 145 million Australian dollar plan to modernise India Post.

Infosys is also developing products with industry leaders under a "partner co-creation" concept.

Fabric, a subsidiary of WPP, and Infosys have developed a cloud-based platform for digital marketing dubbed as Infosys BrandEdge that uses a pay-as-you-go model.