HCL Research

Research is the hallmark of any organization that wants to develop thought leaders, analyze and
stay ahead of futuristic trends, and make significant contributions in critical domains. In this
section, we wish to showcase some of our key research initiatives from across HCL in various
categories, including whitepapers, technical research, high impact case studies, and reports on
emerging trends.

Mainframe Performance Management: Can Make the Dinosaur Dance

Businesses want to know how IT can help in expanding their company's customer base,
increasing products and services portfolios, increasing the profit margin, tapping into new
markets, identifying activities for outsourcing, and much more. The alignment of IT activities
and deliverables to business goals gains even more significance in the world of mainframes,
given the high investments associated with them. It is no longer enough to show mainframe
performance metrics only in terms of operational efficiency; we need metrics that can reflect the
extent to which mainframes help their organization fulfil business goals.

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Cost of Quality: Needs Your Attention Not Sometimes But Always

If the goal of software solutions is to improve the way a business is run so that it becomes more
profitable and healthy, then Cost of Quality (CoQ) is a key approach for achieving that kind of
improvement. The principles of CoQ are well established in the manufacturing industry, given its
long history. Their relevance in determining the quality of software solutions has been
understood only in the last couple of decades, mostly in the context of the costs incurred as a
result of delivering poor quality software. The main idea behind a CoQ approach is to increase
revenue and decrease operational cost by reducing rework and maximizing opportunities.

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xFIT: Framework for Integration Testing

Wherever there are two or more individuals, departments in an organization, or components in a

machine, common rules of etiquettes, communications, agreements, disagreements, and other
norms of integration are required in order for the whole to function in a harmonious manner.
Conceptually it is no different in the world of software. In a given company several applications
and solutions need to integrate without problems in order meet the demands of end users. To
ensure that it is so, integration testing has become an indispensable aspect of software
development.

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CRM Trends in the Insurance Industry

Contemporary CRMs in the insurance industry are expected to overcome the boundaries placed
by 'siloed' development of solutions, and to not only give a 'complete picture of their customers,'
but also interpret, analyze, and predict the behaviour of customers as well as facilitate strategic
business decision-making. Furthermore, as that 'complete picture' changes, CRMs are supposed
to keep up with those changes as dynamically as the changes themselves. This may sound like a
talk order (from IT) but that is the demand of insurers and customers.

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Thermal Design and Management of Servers

In today’s digital age of rapid knowledge development, an enormous amount of information is

being generated every day across the world. This data needs to be stored, processed and secured
so the user can access this data quickly. Servers play a major role in this type of data-intensive
business applications. The advancements in hardware, software and miniaturization technologies,
along with the information evolution, has led to a vast increase in servers power densities and
computing power. To improve the reliability and to enhance performance, thermal management
needs to be performed in servers by removing the heat generated by the devices.

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Thermal Management in Electronic Equipment

Development in the electronics industry has come a long way from nascent low performing
devices to advanced devices with high computational speed and power. The advancement in the
industry led to an exponential increase in power densities, which in turn drove the innovation of
smarter and smaller products. These advanced technologies, coupled with miniaturization
requirements, guided innovation-driven thermal management in electronic devices. Thermal
management is essential in electronics, as it improves reliability and enhances performance by
removing heat generated by the devices.

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Application Security - An SDLC Imperative

Businesses, institutions, and government organisations are now acknowledging the fact that it is
not enough to protect only their IT infrastructure with firewalls and various intrusion detection
systems (IDS). Since the focus of attackers has shifted to exploiting vulnerabilities in application
design, source code, runtime code, and deployment configurations, there is a consensus among
software experts that security needs to become an integral part of the software development life
cycle (SDLC).

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Semantic Web Beyond Science Fiction

Although not new, Semantic Web is creating a lot of excitement among many techies and
businesses whose efforts have started to bear fruit. In fact, Semantic Web proponents are
predicting that we are likely to see the world they are visualizing, belong less to science fiction
and more to the real world we live in. Yes, Semantic Web is expected to be that pervasive!

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Green Edging Through Energy Efficiency

World’s economic activities are generating tremendous strain on natural resources in terms of
higher energy demand. Increased energy demand is being met by sacrificing our green planet,
through higher generation of pollutants and Green House Gases. This paper focus on abatement
of energy demand through Energy Efficiency and role of IT in enabling energy efficiency. This
paper is co-authored by HCL and Frost & Sullivan consultants and demonstrates an unique
example of industry level collaboration for green environment

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Intelligent APM for Enterprise Transformation

Optimal management of IT budgets has gained importance in light of the fact that IT
departments are being required to offer innovative solutions, while maintaining existing services.
Application Portfolio Management is a growing market that enables companies to create an
inventory of their applications and analyze which applications are useful and which ones are
redundant.

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Embedded GUIs : Can Impact the Bottom Line of Your Business

How many of you software developers feel that if only users were willing to educate themselves
about your application, then it would work like a charm? How many of you (end) users feel that
if only software applications could do their job without you having to acquire IT skills, then
there would be no problems at all? The gap between the two communities can be bridged by a
well–thought out and-designed (i.e., highly usable and easy-to-use) Graphical User Interface
(GUI).

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Rich Internet Applications in Perspective

If you are at the receiving end of the high-tech revolution, as a user, then do you feel
overwhelmed by some of the current high-tech trends and the debates as well as the acronyms
that accompany them? If so, then you are not alone, but what is important in such moments is to
not throw out the baby with the bathtub! There is, indeed, a lot of hype about Rich Internet
Applications (RIA) among software engineers, some of which has to do with 'techies getting
excited over technological breakthroughs' but more importantly the real excitement about RIA
pertains to what it can do for end users and various lines of business.

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MDA Approach: Foundation for Designing Software the Intelligent Way

Today’s consumers do not appear too interested in getting to know the internal workings of
products or services; what they care about the most is their practical use(s). So when it comes to
business (domain) solutions, clients don’t much care about its technical sophistication; they
simply want to know if, for instance, that solution will give them greater flexibility, faster time-
to-market, increased productivity, interoperability, reusability, portability and the like options.
To cater to the demands of such clients, the software community has been considering alternative
ways of developing software. This is the context for the emergence of Model Driven
Architecture (MDA).

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Service Innovation: New Kid on the Block?

Innovation and profitability are two sides of the same coin for companies that wish to stay
competitive in the market place. In fact, innovation is the mainstay of companies that aspire to
lead in their area of expertise, irrespective of whether they are offering products and/or services.
To read more, click here

Web 2.0 - The Evolution and Growth of the Interactive Internet

Today's generation is spawned in the digital age and is extremely comfortable with the concept
of collaboration. Using the Web as a platform to facilitate that collaboration fits rather well with
the Web 2.0 approach. This paper takes the reader through a brief description of Web 2.0 and its
components and explains how Web 2.0 has thrown open new opportunity areas for business in
domains such as pharma, retail, travel, mobile, tourism, and entertainment to mention only a few.

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True Relationship Based Pricing Engine

The act of reciprocating is age old. In fact, it is something we all do unconsciously and we don't
think of it as a big deal, but in the commercial world it is taking on a whole new meaning.
Financial institutions, especially banks are taking customer relationship to another level. Have
you heard of Relationship Based Pricing, Relationship Based Profitability, or Relationship Based
Billing? No! Well, then you will find this paper quite fascinating.

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Data Profiling: A Quick Primer on the What and the Why of Data Integration

A company's database contains information that touches most aspects of its business activity, and
since it is also the basis for decision-making, companies are turning to Data Profiling to ensure
that the data in the database be consistent, accurate and reliable.

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Taming the SaaS Delivery Channel

Fueled by the popular interest generated by some recent offerings, Software as a Service (SaaS)
has emerged as one of the buzzwords of the Web 2.0 lingo. The SaaS channel holds a special
promise for ISVs, since it provides them with a mode of reaching out to a wider customer base,
including small and medium businesses (SMB), whose collective strength is significant.

Agora is HCL's service delivery platform. It is designed to give ISVs a head start by automating
critical aspects of SaaS enablement.

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Content 2.0: Network Publishing Platform for New Age Publishers

Content 2.0 is HCL’s Network Publishing Platform. It is a comprehensive framework that

integrates the existing tools, editorial and production applications, and that implements a
workflow driven environment on one platform. Consequently, Content 2.0 not only protects
investments already made in specific technologies, but also acts as a launching pad for entering
the era of new age publishing via XML technology for digital readiness.

Click here to download this paper

Reaching Across: Guidelines for Globalizing Web Resources

Winner of the Award for Merit in the 2007-08 STC India Technical Publications
Competitions.

This research paper focuses on the linguistic, cultural, statutory and business aspects of
globalization, so as to give analysts and decision makers the real picture of the tasks at hand
when they set out to give their organization a global Web identity.

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Mobile Micropayment: Opportunities and Technical Considerations

In recent years, a number of articles and research papers have been published on the subject of
Mobile Banking and Mobile Payment, all emphasizing the point that whereas in 2000 consumers
were not ready for mobile financial and payment services, today they are.

Click here to download this paper

Disclaimer : The views expressed in above listed papers on the HCL-Research page are those of
the authors and do not represent the official policy or position of HCL Technologies Ltd.