Wipro and Lockheed open Network Centric lab in Gurgaon

Gurgaon, Aug 11 (UNI) Wipro Technologies in collaboration with leading defence contractor Lockheed Martin today opened its Network Centric Operations (NCO) Centre lab in Gurgaon to develop, demonstrate and experiment with emerging network-enabled capabilities and applications.

Fast rising defence expenditure has meant that leading IT companies like Infosys, Satyam and TCS foray increasingly towards defence production. Christened as Ambar Jyoti, Wipro's new centre will look to leverage its embedded, telecom and enterprise expertise in creating data centric solutions for the future.

NCO is the next generation real-time battlefield management environment where all components of a force-equipment, command and control and logistics are integrated into a seamless operation.

Urging greater participation from the private sector of the country in developing technologies for the defence forces, Minister of State for Defence Production Rao Inderjit Singh said ''The age-old top-driven technology model needs to be changed and a need to emulate the global model is needed where private enterprises develop the technology and government procures it.'' Without devulging any financial details Wipro Technologies Chief Operating Officer A L Rao said Wipro will be investing in the IT space of the lab while Lockheed will invest in domain expertise.

This partnership comes amidst increased participation between the governments and the private sectors of India and the US.

''Lockheed is committed to expanding its India operations and have a long term vision in the country. The alignment of shared valued and Wipro's positive look on innovation makes them our natural choice as partners,'' Lockheed Martin President South Asia Rick Kirkland said.

NCO seems to be the buzz word for the defence establishment with the Indian Navy being interested in NCO with a proposed indigenous project in the Bangalore-based Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (CAIR).

The setting up of the NCO by Wipro and Lockheed Martin seems to be a stepping stone for the IAF's Optical Data Link (ODL) project, which is a part of the proposed overall NCO.

The other companies intrested in the project are Thales, IAI (Israel) and ST-Engineering. The request for proposal (RFP) for this project, spanning all phases, has already been issued and is likely to be in excess of Rs 1,000 crore with pre-bid negotiations being on.

UNI