Operation will focus on network management BANGALORE, INDIA – Lucent Technologies announced Wednesday that it is setting up a research and development (R&D) operation in Bangalore, India.The new R&D center will be a part of Bell Laboratories, the R&D arm of Lucent in Murray Hill, New Jersey.“There is a global search for talent, and in India there is the opportunity to hire some of the world’s best and brightest PhD-level researchers,” Jeffrey Jaffe, president of Research and Advanced Technologies at Bell Laboratories, told IDG News Service. Bell Labs Research in India will research network management, network operations software, data management and computer algorithms, Jaffe added.The Bangalore center will, for example, handle a project to develop Operation Support Systems for voice-over-IP (Internet Protocol) networks, he said. The technology is designed to let service providers offer carrier-grade voice and other QOS (quality of service) sensitive services over an IP packet infrastructure.The center also will develop software tools that can simplify the process of generating mediation adaptors or device drivers for multivendor network devices in a service provider network, Jaffe said. “Network management is one of the most fundamental issues that face the research community,” Jaffe said. In India itself, tremendous growth in telecommunications has created network-management challenges, he added.In addition to doing research, Bell Labs Research in India will support the work done in Lucent’s development labs in Bangalore and Hyderabad, India, and assist as needed in meeting the needs of Lucent’s customers. With over 1,300 software engineers currently on staff, India is already a major development hub for Lucent.Besides its R&D center in the U.S., Bell Laboratories also operates R&D labs in Beijing and Dublin. The new Bangalore R&D center will have a staff of about 25 people over the next 18 months, Jaffe added. Technology Industry