IBM has announced plans to open a SOA Leadership Centre in India designed to address the growing demand for skills needed to solve customer business challenges using Service Oriented Architectures (SOA). The centre will be set up in Bangalore and would be the first of its kind in Asia Pacific and the fourth of a series of SOA Leadership Centres planned across the world. The Centre will become fully functional during the first quarter of 2008.

The SLC centre in Bangalore will be staffed by IBM’s Global SOA experts and will focus on three key areas: SOA education and training; SOA implementation support; and SOA exhibitions and demonstrations, thus benefiting IBM customers, business partners and University students.

The Leadership Centre will serve as a focal point to harness the SOA skills and expertise from IBM product and services teams and IBM Business Partners.

"Opening this centre is a direct response to what our customers in India are demanding," said Panini Dwivedi, country manager - WebSphere, Software Group, IBM India/ SA. He added, "IBM has helped thousands of early SOA adopters around the world successfully overcome some of today's most challenging business problems using SOA. Now the SOA Leadership Centre can help customers develop the skills and knowledge to help enable them to use an SOA to attain business goals.”