Type of Talk:  UTCS Distinguished Lecture Series

Speaker/Affiliation:  Dr. Harrick Vin/Tata Research, Development &a

mp; Design Center (TRDDC)

Date/Time:  Tuesday, May 26, 2009&

nbsp; 11:00 a.m.

Location:  ACES 2.402

Host:  Lore

nzo Alvisi

Talk Title:  "The Art and the Science of Compu

ting Services"

Talk Abstract:

Over the past decade or mor

e, we have witnessed the emergence of several new computing technologies a

nd products. Yet the tasks of designing and managing information technology
(IT) systems that meet business demands remain challenging. This is becaus

e, in most cases, there is a significant gap between the business require

ments and the capabilities of products. Further, because of the inherent c

omplexity of IT environments, determining the specific combination of tech

nologies and products to use (the what), under what circumstances (the whe

n), and the benefits (the why) have proved to be difficult. Today, IT ser

vice providers fill the gap between "solutions" and "tech

nology products"; however, this exercise is highly labor-intensive

and relies heavily on intuition and experience. In this talk, I will first
discuss what are IT services and what makes them difficult, and then desc

ribe the methodologies and tools required to covert this art-form to system

atic engineering and science.

Speaker Bio:

Dr. Harrick Vin is V

ice President (R&D) and Chief Scientist, Systems Research Lab at the

Tata Research Development and Design Center (TRDDC), Pune, India, which

is a division of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). He is also a member of th

e TCS Corporate Technology Board.

Before joining TCS, Dr. Vin

was a Professor in the Department of Computer Sciences at The University of
Texas at Austin. He was the founding Director of the Distributed Multimedi

a Computing Laboratory and a co-Director of the Laboratory of Advanced Syst

ems Research (LASR) at UT Austin.

His research interests are in
the areas of networks, operating systems, distributed systems, and mult

imedia systems. He has co-authored more than 100 papers in leading journals
and conferences. Harrick has been a recipient of several awards including

the Faculty Fellow in Computer Sciences, Dean''s Fellowship, National Sci

ence Foundation CAREER award, IBM Faculty Development Award, Fellow of th

e IBM Austin Center for Advanced Studies, AT&T Foundation Award, Nat

ional Science Foundation Research Initiation Award, IBM Doctoral Fellowshi

p, NCR Innovation Award, and San Diego Supercomputer Center Creative Comp

uting Award.