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By Dinesh C Sharma, 13 January 2005 09:55

NEWS

Microsoft on Wednesday officially opened its research laboratory in Bangalore, India.

The facility, Microsoft Research India, will focus on geographical information systems, multilingual systems, sensor networks and technologies for emerging markets, the company said. This is Microsoft's third research facility located outside the United States.

Situated in South India, Bangalore is already home to a HP laboratory. IBM has a research facility located in New Delhi. Several other technology companies also have based their engineering and development centres in Bangalore and Hyderabad.

P. Anandan, managing director of Microsoft Research India, said in a statement: "The information technology research community in India is really blossoming right now, and the country's Ph.D. programmes are poised for strong growth as well. India is also a very active experimental test bed for new approaches to making technology more accessible to rural, underserved communities, which is a major long-term business priority for Microsoft. It just became more and more clear that Microsoft Research should play a larger role in helping India's overall research ecosystem continue to flourish."

Microsoft Research India has already signed a memorandum of understanding with the Ministry of Science and Technology to work on some joint projects.

The first such project aims at bringing non-sensitive government data to the public, by integrating satellite imagery and other geographic data in an indexed database. This data will eventually be made available to the public and could be helpful in responding to natural disasters, the company said.

"This is the first of many alliances we envision in India with the government and other research bodies to help solve some of the toughest problems in computing and accelerate the next generation of innovation in software and computing," Anandan said.

Microsoft said the lab will also finance academic research in communication and technology. Initially, it has awarded $250,000 for projects at the Indian Institutes of Technology and three other centres.

Dinesh C. Sharma writes for CNET News.com.