New Delhi: Technology giant IBM today said it has partnered B-school Indian School of Business (ISB) for research in service science.

IBM and ISB have been working closely on service science research for the last few years and this ‘collaboratory’ marks the beginning of a new phase of an expanded relationship between the two organisations, IBM said in a statement.

The IBM ‘Collaboratory´ is a laboratory where IBM researchers co-locate with a university, government, or commercial partner to share skills, assets, and resources to achieve a common research goal, it added.

“We expect Services Management to be a huge area of focus for leading companies and we are delighted to collaborate with IBM on this initiative,” ISB dean Ajit Rangnekar said.

The ‘Collaboratory’ will initially have 10 full-time researchers, five each from ISB and IBM Research (India), who will focus on developing foundational techniques in service science, including modeling, measurement and optimisation of ‘service systems´.

“This Collaboratory will expand our expertise in these areas to further differentiate IBM’s services offerings in the global marketplace,” IBM research (India) director Guruduth Banavar said.

Service research is multi-disciplinary in domains like management, operations research and economics and the focus of this research is on business-to-business services.