Banking on cloud

06.08.2012

Last quarter, in Singapore, we set up a laboratory, a centre of excellence, inside Singapore Management University. We call it the iCity Lab-i stands for intelligent cities. That is generating lot of interest, initially in China and then we will take it to the rest of the world. There are two solutions that have caught people's attention. One is on healthcare, the other is on education. The healthcare solution involves first of all managing the entire solution of residents in a city; alongside with that, the solution provides a personalised page for individuals-health records, measurements, blood pressure, etc. The system generates early warning alerts (based on trends). So, the citizen can seek help proactively or the doctor can advise him.

The other solution that is gathering momentum is education. There are various forms of this. The solution that we have put on the table is on uniform content administration on the cloud.

So, there are many built-to-suit-all kinds of solutions. That is an area that is receiving a lot of attention.

On the third front in China is the banking product, TCS Banks. The more recent one we have done there is again based on a cloud environment for the village bank. I don't know if you are aware of our initiative in India. We have a company called C-Edge, a joint venture with the State Bank of India. What we have done in this company is that this company provides TCS Banks, the core banking product, on a cloud model to small cooperative banks and credit unions on a pay by use basis.

So, because of this, the same technology that powers State Bank of India is suddenly available to a small cooperative credit union in, let us say, Maharashtra--this bank could not have afforded an IT department. We have close to 3200 branches running on our cloud based environment in India.