Hyderabad
Open SourceThe Open Source and Linux Center of excellence was set up to address the needs of enabling Indian Language use of Linux, its applications, and in general the entire software and Internet ecosystem that the English speaking world takes for granted. Open Source is the best way to do this, not just due to cost reasons, but due to reasons of security, adaptability and customisability. However, since the technologies that are needed to achieve this are core technologies that are applicable for many other domains, we have been able to help other groups and practices within TCS with Linux and related issues. Our knowledge of Open Source in general and Linux in particular has made us more than just an "Indian Language Computing" group, even though our main focus is still the same. It has also developed a distributed content management system for the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), a respected NGO that works with the rural populations of India. In addition to Indian Languages Computing, the group is presently focusing on Virtualization research for high availability Linux clusters.
Indian Language ComputingInformation Technology is now a major enabler to any development. Villages equipped with computers in the local language can bring about a major difference to the rural majority in India. Taking information from the government's central repositories and giving it to the farmers can tackle problems like over production of a particular crop. Farmers have a lot to gain from information on banned crop varieties or fake or ineffective pesticides and seeds. Self help groups are already keeping their books using a computer, which could be far more painless if the computing infrastructure were available in a local language. There are plans to use geographical information systems to provide land records, information about soil, crop cultivation etc. Computers can also facilitate learning in schools by using the Internet and providing virtual laboratories. The work we do on Indian Language Computing is part of the corporate social responsibility. At the Open Source and Linux CoE we work on a variety of areas to improve the status of Indian languages in computing. The following are the broad areas we work on:
Distributed Content Management SystemAchieving ultra-high scalability of a CMS by creating a distributed, mirror-based network, is not difficult (technologically). However, there is a class of content management problem where all the content need not be available from all the locations. This stems from a need to optimize disk space and bandwidth needs, and to have the “mirrors” serve specific communities of interest rather than being true mirrors. In addition, there is the requirement that any node, even the smallest and most remote one, can be a producer of content, which means updates do not necessarily flow only one-way. We are creating a system that satisfies these characteristics, where an update to a database, in either direction, can happen even with a simple USB stick ferried between locations. As a bonus, the update/synchronization algorithms being developed are highly optimized. This system can be used for any geographically distributed organization where the content is subject to widely varying, and even overlapping, distribution needs. Virtualization Monitor(a joint R&D with Hitachi) Virtualization monitor is used to setup, configure and monitor Linux based High Availability (HA) clusters based on dynamically gathering information about the running Linux instances in a virtualized environment. This is useful in monitoring the health of the cluster nodes and in early detection of faults, so that the services or guests can be migrated quickly to the some other node, reducing down time to a bare minimum, if not eliminate it entirely.
|
Google
Facebook
Twitter
del.icio.us
Blogger
Rain Concert
TCS is a member of the Tata Group 