C-DAC - An Organisation Par Excellence - I

There are few organisations in India which has faced the pluralistics pressures and yet have come out with a great missions and achievements throughout. I may be biased being a member of C-DAC to say this. But my impartial public-policy and technology research view point gives a clear A plus to the success of C-DAC.

There is a lot to say about this organisation. A lot can be found at www.cdac.in. What cannot be found is the culture and the stream of achievement motive as lifeblood of the organisation. Started by Dr. Vijay P Bhatkar and the follwed by Mr. R. K. Arora and recently in the hands of Mr. S. Ramakrishnan as the Director General, C-DAC has gone through a lot of transformation. The main being the merger of other socities into it; the rules and regulations, the governement interventions, widening of activities and spread of research area. The beauty is still the mission oriented culture prevails in C-DAC.

At the corporate headquarters of C-DAC, one will find still young people in the night hours working or learning the extra niche in the technology; with a cup of coffee.

C-DAC has emerged as the premier R&D organization in ICET (Information, Communication and Electronics Technologies) in the country working on strengthening national technological capabilities. In that process, C-DAC represents a unique facet working in close junction with Department of Information Technology, Governemtn of India to realize nation’s policy and programatic interventions and initiatives in Information Technology. As an institution for high-end Research and Development (R&D), C-DAC has been at the forefront of the Information Technology (IT) revolution, constantly building capacities in emerging/enabling technologies and innovating and leveraging its expertise, caliber, skill sets to develop and deploy IT products and solutions for different sectors of the economy, as per the mandate of its parent, the Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Government of India and other stakeholders including funding agencies, collaborators, users and the market-place.

C-DAC Core competency and intellectual property developed across its various centres and groups have been broadly classified into the following seven areas:

· High Performance and GRID Computing
· Multilingual Computing
· VLSI Design and Embedded Systems
· Software Technologies
· Health Informatics
· Cyber Security
· Ubiquitous Computing

C-DAC is a multi-locational organization having 11 centres in various parts of the conuntry.
I will continue this series of blogs with various small and big incidents of my life with C-DAC and the cultural wave inside the organisation. Idea is to bring out the essence of a achievement, a mission and a strong vibrant organisation for other organiastions to follow and learn.