In our Content Management work we deal with all kinds of
data (text, music, video, as well as traditional corporate data).
Most of this data lives in file systems, object servers and
web sites rather than in databases, but our customers tell us
they would like to manage all their data like they manage their
database data. Therefore we invented DataLinks
to link this "other" data to database data and create a way
to manage the linkage to provide security, access control and
recovery (transaction) semantics for all the data. We are using
it in eLinks, a web asset management system for managing complex
web sites.
We
have had many successes by doing "research in the marketplace"
and by solving real customer problems.
We are
adding additional services like security and access control,
modeling, ingestion, indexing, searching and distribution
as part of Content Management and working on architectural
issues with our product development colleagues at the nearby
Santa Teresa Lab.
Some
of our customers need to protect data that they distribute
via the internet, so we are working on copy protection techniques;
both new algorithms and tamper-resistant software. We are
using these techniques for secure delivery of music and other
content and have participated in trials with consumers. others
would like to preserve their data for a very long time so
we have begun a new project called Data Archiving with the
challenging goal of being able to read, in year 2100, a file
one would write today.
In other
cases data compression is
needed, so we've developed the underlying technology, especially
one called JBIG that has become an international standard
for bi-level data. The work includes theory, software and
hardware VLSI chips, and the results are used in products
for banking, for data mining and for printing systems.
We also
have contracts with the Department of Defense for Content
Management (to evaluate our ideas and help some key customers)
and for the development of a secure workstation (to replace
many workstations on separate networks with one).
Some
of our recent work was in character recognition:
specifically reading mail addresses (printed and hand written)
for automating the sorting of large envelopes, magazines and
parcels. There are still some applications of this technology
used in portals and elsewhere.
Overall
we have had many successes by doing "Research in the marketplace"
and by solving real customer problems, and it helps us contribute
to many IBM products. Some of our recent customers have been:
the Vatican, US Department of Defense, Hollywood, the Library
of Congress, Boeing, Dassault systemes, IBM's product and
services divisions, and several European Post Offices, ....
all of which keeps our life quite interesting. |
