Date:01/11/2006 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2006/11/01/stories/2006110102361800.htm

Business

IBM sets up two SOA centres

Anand Parthasarathy

500-strong team of engineers will work on solutions

BANGALORE: IBM announced here on Tuesday that it is setting up two international development centres dedicated to creating the compelling SOA solutions of tomorrow. Service oriented architecture (SOA) is a collection of self-contained services that communicate with each other to deliver better value to the customer. One centre will be in Pune and the other in Beijing, China.

Why in these two places? Because, explained Jeby Cherian, Director of IBM's Global Delivery Centre in India, these two nations are `mini IBMs', encompassing a huge expertise across the board of IBM's business.

In a special briefing for The Hindu, Sudhir Sastry, leader designate of the Pune facility, added that the new centre would draw on the expertise of a 500-strong team of engineers who will work on SOA solutions in key business areas.

Ray Harishankar, IBM Fellow and SOA strategist, added that the global SOA market was seen as reaching $160 billion by 2008.

The company would be investing $1 billion this year to develop its service oriented architecture offerings.