IBM announces SOA solution centre in India

Close on the heels of its acquiring the Webify Solutions, a Texas-based startup with expertise in service-oriented architecture (SOA) implementations in insurance and healthcare, IBM has announced the opening of two service oriented architecture (SOA) solution centres in Pune and Beijing.

As part of IBM's $1 billion investment in SOA announced for the ongoing fiscal, both these centres will house close to 500 SOA experts each.

The centres will develop, manage and deliver industry-specific business service to its clients globally, the company officials said here on Tuesday.

SOA helps firms create new business services across their existing IT infrastructure. IBM has an edge over others in the SOA market with a marketshare of 46 per cent (Wintergreen Research).

According to an internal research by the company, the SOA services market in expected to touch $160 billion by 2008.

Ray Harishankar, IBM Fellow and Global SOA Strategic Asset Development Leader, IBM Corporation said that the SOA solution centres will focus on addressing individual business problems.

"Using IBM's WebSphere Business Services Fabric, which is based on the technology recently acquired from Webify Solutions, the centres will create and manage a portfolio of repeatable, industry-specific services components," he said.

The SOA solution centre in Pune will initially develop repeatable business services for the insurance industry including home, auto rate quoting and services for healthcare industry such as claim filing and response. The IBM labs in Hyderabad will also support the development activity in Pune.

Meanwhile, the Beijing centre will focus on banking and local governments. These include developing financial and case management services for governments and services like real time and risk-based loan pricing for banks.

"In 2007, we plan to diversify to offer SOA solutions for telcos, retail and automative industries, from these centres. This will be done, without further scaling up our manpower," said Jeby Cherian, Head - Global Business Solution Centre, IBM India.

The new SOA solution centres will also work closely with the IBM Global Business Solution Centre, in Bangalore to create business solutions in about 50 key business areas.

These business solutions will be SOA-enabled at the SOA solution centres and delivered worldwide through IBM's global services delivery centres located in more than 20 countries, Cherian added.

IBM has about 3,000 SOA clients worldwide and over 2,500 SOA partners worldwide. ICICI, NIC and Bharti Televentures are some of its SOA clients in India.