COMSWARE 2008

Day and Date: Monday, 7 January 2008
As mobile voice and SMS continue to reshape people's lives, what's next is naturally interesting. Are mobile search, navigation,
location-based services, mobile IPTV over-hyped? Is sufficient attention being paid to what might be interesting to underserved
populations? What technical challenges in I/O, reliable network access and computing need to be addressed? Are there incentives for incumbent providers to aggressively deploy novel applications or the policy framework "protects" them from intense competition (typically visible in wired broadband applications)? Is there room for new players who can provide "open access"? These are some of the crucial questions that will be addressed, one way or the other, in the coming years.

In this panel, we hope to discuss the road to life after mobile voice and SMS. How does it look? What road blocks exist? How could they be handled? Specifically, the panelists will attempt to answer the following:

What is the state of mobile applications? Where are they (e.g., mobile search, navigation, location-based services etc.) today in terms of promise and consumer expectations?
What are the applications that meet the needs of underserved populations? Does lower literacy actually translate to higher bandwidth needs?
What are the technical challenges in mobile I/O and communications design? Will mass consumers ever adopt qwerty keyboard? Is TCP/IP the right protocol suite after all for mobile applications?
Why should the incumbent providers feel compelled to deploy newer applications and services? What business reasons exist or are evolving, if any?
Are greenfield providers going to have an opportunity in reaching the millions? Is Wimax and WiFi mesh for real?

We expect each panelist to choose a suitable topic from above and prepare a presentation for no more than 10 minutes. The slides should be prepared to encourage a lively interaction with the fellow panelists and the audience.

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Day and Date: Tuesday, 8 January 2008
With the growth of software and services industry, research and other more advanced development activities are being targeted for next generation of growth. A number of companies have established research labs recently in India . What are the unique opportunities and challenges in establishing and running research labs in India? It is estimated that only 50 Ph.D.s are being produced every year in technology related areas. Is this sufficient to sustain or grow the research base in India? What can the Government and Universities do to produce more Ph.D.s? How do we spur more students to pursue research careers? Are there unique opportunities/niches that India can exploit to build centers of excellence?

Dr. Ashok Jhunjhunwala
Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai, India Prof. Ashok Jhunjhunwala is Professor of the Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai, India and was department Chair till recently. He received his B.Tech degree from IIT, Kanpur, and his MS and Ph.D degrees from the University of Maine. From 1979 to 1981, he was with Washington State University as Assistant Professor. Since 1981, he has been teaching at IIT, Madras. Dr. Jhunjhunwala leads the Telecommunications and Computer Networks group (TeNeT) at IIT Madras. This group is closely working with industry in the development of a number of Telecommunications and Computer Network Systems. TeNeT group has incubated a number of technology companies which work in partnership with TeNeT group to develop world class Telecom and Banking products for Rural Markets.Dr. Ashok Jhunjhunwala has been awarded Padma Shri in the year 2002. He has been awarded Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in 1998, Dr.Vikram Sarabhai Research Award for the year 1997, Millennium Medal at Indian Science Congress in the year 2000 and H. K. Firodia for "Excellence in Science & Technology" for the year 2002, Shri Om Prakash Bhasin Foundation Award for Science & Technology for the year 2004, Awarded Jawaharlal Nehru Birth Centenary Lecture Award by INSA for the year 2006 and IBM Innovation and Leadership Forum Award by IBM for the year 2006. He is a Fellow of Wireless World Research Forum, Indian National Academy of Engineering, Indian National Science Academy, Indian Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Sciences.Dr. Jhunjhunwala is a Director in the Board of SBI. He is also a Board member of several companies in India, including TTML, BEL, Polaris, 3i Infotech, Sasken, Tejas, NRDC, and IDRBT. He is member of Prime Minister's Setup Scientific Advisory Committee.

Prof. L. M. Patnaik
Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India L M Patnaik has been a Professor since 1986 with the Department of Computer Science and Automation, Indian Institute of Science,Bangalore. During the past 37 years of his service at the Institute,he has published over 500 papers in refereed international journals and conference proceedings.He is a Fellow of all the four leading Science and Engineering Academies in India; Fellow of the IEEE and the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World. He has received more than Twenty national and international awards; notable among them is the IEEE Technical Achievement Award for his significant contributions to high performance computing and soft computing. His areas of research interest have been Parallel and Distributed Computing, Mobile Computing, CAD for VLSI Circuits, Soft Computing, and Computational Neuroscience.

Dr. Guruduth Banawar
Associate Director, IBM India Research Laboratory, Bangalore, India

Dr. Guruduth Banavar is the Associate Director of IBM's India Research Laboratory, Bangalore, and also heads the Services Innovation and Research Center (SIRC). He started IBM's new research group in Bangalore, where a world-class team is now focused on developing innovative technologies for improving and differentiating the service delivery capabilities of IBM Global Services, and driving these technologies into other parts of IBM as well. This group has since developed innovations in process optimization, resiliency assessment, knowledge management, and solution development from reusable assets. Previously, Guru was the Senior Manager of the Pervasive Infrastructure Department at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center in New York, where he led a large research team working on several aspects of pervasive computing. He has also developed technology innovations in areas like synchronous collaboration, content-based publish-subscribe systems, middleware for content delivery, and platform-independent application development. Dr. Banavar has published more than 40 research papers, has filed more than 25 patents (9 US patents granted), chaired major technical conferences and workshops in the field, and served on 3 PhD committees. See http://www.research.ibm.com/people/b/banavar for more details.

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Panel # 3: Trends in Emerging Applications and related challenges for Networks
Day and Date: Wednesday, 9 January 2008

Over the last couple of years we have seen an explosive growth in different kind of applications and services - these have partly driven changes or advances in Networking protocols and architectures. We have also seen the emergence of different types of networks from BAN, PAN, LAN, Metro Ethernet to WANs and now P2P networks. These ever increasing applications are placing all kinds of demands on the networks of today, this panel would debate if current network architectures are good enough to provide the necessary quality of service for these applications. Are we at a point where we need to rethink networks to cater to the next generation of applications, how does mobility play an impact on this. What would be the next generation of applications? How important is Net neutrality in this regard.