The economic slowdown had contested the idea of sustainable people-linked revenue growth for IT services firms. This led to most Indian firms focusing on non-linear initiatives in a bigger way. At India?s second largest IT services exporter Infosys, the Software Engineering and Technology Labs (SETLabs), the firm?s technology research and innovation unit, has been playing a lead role in creating intellectual property (IP) that can be used by the company to build products and solutions. Subrahmanyam Goparaju, vice-president and head of SETLabs speaks to FE?s Goutam Das on the unit?s growing importance. Excerpts:

Has SETLabs? mandate changed over the years?

The main mandate for SETLabs is to look at emerging technologies on a regular basis and then look at ways of exploiting those technologies in the context of both our clients and for Infosys. Every technology brings engineering challenges. Handling all these challenges is the second aspect. This mandate has remained the same since inception. We try to produce significant intellectual property so that it can be leveraged in different ways. However, strategies change. SETLabs started as a technology competence group?it did not stay in that model for too long. Initially, we focused a lot on engineering effectiveness?helping the organisation do projects. As we embarked more on solution driven strategies, we started looking at building platforms that help industry units build their solutions better. Today, our focus is more on driving an overall research and innovation ecosystem, bringing the right kind of partners in, raising significant IP, protecting that IP, and ensuring that the platforms are used in building new services, products and solutions aimed at our clients and new markets.

How has SETLabs contributed in Infy?s non-linear growth initiatives?

While business units are focused on delivering current services, we are looking into the future and identifying things that are going to be important. Many of the firm?s solutions are built on top of our platforms. Core banking product Finacle builds its mobile banking solution on SETLabs IP. Similarly, we have a data masking solution? core theme today in data driven services industry. We also have a ?three-screen convergence? product, being used in some of the non-linear plans. Our IP will be one of the core engines that help business units build products and solutions aimed at non-linearity.

What is ?three-screen convergence? and who is it aimed at?

While everybody uses several devices, most of the digital consumers deal with three screens?mobile, laptop or desktop and TV. Today, the content accessed is different in each of the three. Is it possible to access anything from any device? We have significant IP around this. We have created some applications on top of our IP. If you are shooting a picture through the mobile phone and want to share it, you have to sync it with the laptop and then upload to a site. In our solution, you just have to click and the photo will be available to a set of friends and family depending where you want them to see. Your mother could watch it on the TV screen. It is a cloud-based solution. There is lot of engineering involved to make sure that whatever device you watch it in, there is sufficient clarity. The solution is aimed at some of the communications providers.

How do you measure success at SETLabs?

Measures may differ every few years. We have measures around output and outcome. Output is the number of research papers we produce, the number of patents we create, the number of platform and tools that we have created. Outcome is what impact they have made.

For instance, if we have created a tool for engineering effectiveness, what kind of productivity improvements did it create?

Last year, we presented 60 research papers in tier I and tier II conferences. Our patenting activities started in the last three years in a big way.

The patents have been filed in which areas? Are they mostly defensive?

Patents have been filed in enterprise IT and software engineering. Enterprise IT is core technologies that have an impact on enterprises?digital convergence, mobility, security, distributed computing, and analytics among others. These are the broad areas. Depending on the organisation?s business model, the strategies change. To some extent, you are right. At this point of time, we are looking at protecting all our intellectual assets. We don?t have a business model that is aimed at licensing our patents out. But this does not mean that in the future it wouldn?t be there.