San Francisco, Mar 14 (IANS): To help enterprise customers in areas such as Business Intelligence, Big Data and Advanced Analytics, HCL Technologies on Wednesday announced a dedicated state-of-the-art technology development centre.

Based in Redmond, Washington, "Lab 21" will help HCL develop and deploy high-impact business solutions based on the Microsoft AI platform and Azure Cloud that will help accelerate adoption and increase value creation for enterprise customers.

"Our investments in 'Lab 21' toward developing deep competencies on Microsoft's Cortana Intelligence stack reinforces our commitment to bringing the power of superior Cloud and AI offerings to our customers through 'DRYiCE', our award-winning suite of AI solutions," said Kalyan Kumar, CVP and CTO-IT Services, HCL Technologies.

The 5,000 square feet lab houses a team of data scientists, architects and big data experts who focus entirely on vertical and domain solution offerings, using the Microsoft AI Platform.

"I am excited about HCL's strong commitment to our cloud alliance as their Lab 21 will provide a platform for building and showcasing industry vertical and horizontal solutions with the Microsoft AI Platform and Microsoft Azure," said Michael Angiulo, CVP, Microsoft Corp.