HP sets up R&D lab in Singapore
By Jonathan Peeris, Channel NewsAsia | Posted: 24 February 2010 1615 hrs

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SINGAPORE: Just two days after the government announced a major push for research and development in the Budget 2010 Statement, one multi-national company has taken the first step.

US computer giant Hewlett-Packard officially opened its new advanced research facility in Singapore on Wednesday with an investment of S$50 million over five years.

HP Labs Singapore joins other corporate labs of companies such as Nitto Denko, Vestas and Seiko Instruments to set up shop in Fusionopolis alongside A*STAR's public research institutes.

Trade and Industry Minister Lim Hng Kiang, speaking at the opening of the HP facility, said these labs are prime examples of the public-private collaborations the government hopes to foster in Singapore's bid to become an R&D hub.

"With the establishment of HP Labs in Singapore, HP has now gone a step further to expand its full value chain of activities here into upstream R&D," said Mr Lim.

"It is also a strong indication of the growing role of Singapore as a Global-Asia Hub where MNCs, global mid-sized companies and Asian firms innovate, manage and integrate their Asian and global business from Singapore."

The first key focus of the lab will be upstream research in cloud computing and software services. Cloud computing is a way of computing, via the Internet, that broadly shares computer resources instead of having a local personal computer handle specific applications.

HP's managing director for Singapore, Tan Yen Yen, stressed that the lab will not just focus on research but also on how to create commercial value for the R&D through practical applications.

She added that HP will engage customers and business partners in a bid to create an ecosystem where all stakeholders play a part.

She said: "Cloud computing allows us to reach out to a new segment, particularly the small and medium enterprises, where they do not want to set up their own infrastructure to run their IT support.

"Instead cloud computing allows them to actually tap at it as a utility, and also buying it as a service and also scale according to the demand that they need."

The Singapore lab will support a number of key cloud initiatives already underway, including the OpenCirrus project - a collaboration between HP, Intel and Yahoo - to provide an open source test bed that encourages cloud computing research.

According to industry estimates, the global market for cloud computing services will increase to US$150 billion by 2013.

HP Labs Singapore is the company's seventh research lab worldwide. While HP did not disclose the number of researchers who will be working here, the firm said the Singapore lab will be one of the biggest.

- CNA/ir