TCS puts might behind its artificial intelligence project Ignio

MUMBAI: "Have you seen the Matrix? Remember the scene where Neo and Trinity get into a helicopter and don't know how to fly it. So Neo just downloads the instructions into his brain and they're off ? This product is exactly like that," says Harrick Vin, vice-president and chief scientist at Tata Consultancy Services, describing the company's latest product.

The description itself is a shift for the industry. Indian IT firms, known more for their labour arbitrage model than innovative technology, rarely get to compare products to something seen in cult sci-fi films. But Ignio, an artificial intelligence platform that was in development for four years, may justify the comparison.

Ignio uses what TCS calls neural computing — a platform backed by machine-learning capabilities and the computing power of the Ignio uses what TCS calls neural computing — a platform backed by machine-learning capabilities and the computing power of the cloud that is meant to handle a lot of the work currently being done in managing IT infrastructure.

"We call this service-as-a-software. The old cloud platforms were software-as-a-service but this is a new paradigm. Service-as-a-software is where you have a set of people doing certain services like a compliance check — now Ignio can do that automatically," N Chandrasekaran, chief executive of TCS, said in an interview.

Once you plug it in, Ignio starts developing a 360-degree view of the IT infrastructure.

Once it builds that view and analyses the data, it can handle the tasks that normally require people. If there is something it can't fix, then it puts it in a queue to be solved by a person and then learns how it is done, Chandrasekaran said.

The product, which was launched two weeks ago, took over four years to build, with different teams working on different parts of the system and is controlled by a mobile app that can run off a phone or a tablet. It also has its own Twitter account with over 400 followers.

TCS is putting its might behind Ignio, having piloted it with six customers earlier this year.

"We are building a separate team to handle sales of Ignio. We have put Akhilesh Tripathi in charge of it. He has a budget and he is hiring," Chandrasekaran said. Tripathi was head of Canada for TCS before this. Ignio is housed in a separate building on the TCS campus in Pune and the teams are going to be incentivised differently, Chandrasekaran said.

Ignio will also have a pricing model unlike that of regular IT services. "There are about 200 modules that have been built for Ignio and more are being built. The pricing model is on consumption. When you plug Ignio in, it builds a list of what capabilities it recommends you should download, and based on what you use, you get charged. Not everyone will use the entire capabilility," Vin said.

TCS is also taking a different approach to monetising the platform, eschewing big revenue goals in favour of other metrics.

"Initially, it is not going to be about revenue, or just the number of clients. It's going to be about the adoption within clients. That's what we are focusing on," Chandrasekaran said.

The unveiling of the platform comes at a time when the industry is rushing toward artificial intelligence as a way to break the co-relation between revenue growth and headcount. IBM threw down the gauntlet with Watson — its game show-winning supercomputer. IPsoft, founded by Chetan Dube, has also been on the forefront of the artificial intelligence space.

However, analysts point out that since Ignio doesn't interact with an end user, with an avatar or a virtual assistant, it doesn't fully compare with Watson. But they rate Ignio quite highly. The product is currently being used in the areas of infrastructure services and business process services. But as the company continues to work on Ignio, more service lines could be added.