NCR Purchases UW Computer Sciences Technology

Company also gives $500,000 for graduate fellowships

A major computer firm plans to sink roots in Madison and forge stronger ties with UW–Madison’s computer science department, thanks to a new technology the department developed.

NCR Corporation, an Ohio-based computer firm with 38,000 employees, announced Dec. 10 that it has purchased a new multimedia and parallel database technology created by UW–Madison computer scientists. The software could help future databases become much more versatile, allowing users to take greater advantage of pictures, maps, audio and video to answer questions.

In addition, NCR announced a donation of $500,000 to create two endowed graduate fellowships for computer science Ph.D. students. And the company is just starting plans to open a research-and-development lab in Madison, beginning with 12-15 employees, to commercialize the UW–Madison innovation.

The Graduate School will use royalty income from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation to match annual income from the endowment.

“This is very good for our department, for the university and for the community,” says James Goodman, chair of the computer sciences department. “We expect to develop a long-term relationship with NCR that will include support for our programs and additional employment opportunities for our students.”

The endowed fellowships are named after two prominent faculty in the department. One will honor Anthony Klug, a former professor who made major contributions to the department from 1978 to his unexpected death in 1983. The second recognizes current computer science professor Lawrence Landweber, who helped build the department and played a major role in the development of the Internet.

The new technology was developed by computer science professors David DeWitt, Jeffrey Naughton and a team of nearly two dozen graduate students and staff. Called “Paradise,” the software is specially designed for clusters of processors working together to handle databases too large for a single processor.

“Instead of mundane business data, this software could help store all the data for a business operation, from videos of products to maps of sales regions,” DeWitt says. “This makes complex information much more interactive and multi-dimensional.”

To visualize what the software can do, NCR spokesman Jim Mazzola used an example for a travel agency. If a traveler wanted a list of resorts in a country that are on the beach and have their own golf course, the data base would list not only their names, but pictures and map locations for each site, he says.

The UW–Madison prototype is one to two years away from commercial use, Mazzola says. But this type of software is expected to become the industry norm in five to 10 years.

The relationship with a major university is a first for the Dayton, Ohio-based firm, Mazzola says. “This is really a benefit for NCR and a recognition of the talent that’s in Madison,” he says.