Thailand and IBM to Create Nationwide SOA Center of Excellence

Thailand and IBM to Create Nationwide SOA Center of Excellence

Thailand’s Office of Computer Clustering Promotion (CCP), under the National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA), today announced it will create an SOA Excellence Center with IBM (NYSE: IBM). The SOA Excellence Center will train and develop Thailand’s IT resources around service oriented architecture (SOA), a way of reusing a company’s existing technology to more closely align with business goals helping to result in greater efficiencies, cost savings and productivity.

Assoc. Prof. Dr.Sakarindr Bhumiratana, President, National Science and Technology Development Agency, said, “National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA) plays an important role in supporting research and transfer of technology to help the private sector enhance technology utilization. Nowadays, information technology is the key factor to increase our competitiveness and promote country development to have presence in the global market. To achieve that goal, our country needs to have the depth of knowledge and understanding of how to adopt the technology. On behalf of NSTDA, I am very glad to see IBM, as the global technology leader, realize the importance of creating an SOA Excellence Center with the Office of Computer Clustering Promotion (CCP). This center will help promote SOA adoption and accelerate the technology transfer to the public. I hope Thai developers and researchers will capitalize the Center to create SOA project showcases in our country with the global quality.”

The new SOA Excellence Center will be located at the Thailand Science Park. The Center’s mission is to develop skilled IT resources in Thailand in two tracks: Academic Initiative Track — The establishment of an IBM Academic Initiative to enable the IT workforce to be competent in high value SOA skills and related IBM’s industry-leading WebSphere software, using CCP and IBM’s curriculum and courseware. DeveloperWorks Track — The establishment of an SOA Community of local IT developers to assist the local IT industry to adopt SOA technology and to nurture local industries to develop innovative SOA-based products, applications and services. IBM’s software will be used where applicable at the Center.

The areas of collaboration in the Academic Initiative Track are to develop 1,000 high-level trained professionals and another 2,500 IT professionals over the next five years (2006-2010) in SOA capabilities to serve the future demand in high-value SOA skilled resources. The Center will provide incentives to IT professionals to be certified as SOA experts, and also offer students the opportunity to learn IBM’s latest technologies that will make them more marketable in the business world — and differentiate among themselves.

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