IBM is today (Monday) due to officially announce the first two in a planned series of eight centres around the world designed to help build up local expertise in the service-oriented architecture (SOA) approach to IT development.

The move to create so-called SOA Leadership Centres is in response to customer demand, according to Jason Weisser, vice president and chief technology officer of IBM's SOA advance technology. While IBM has already established centres in China and India focused on developing reusable industry-specific web services, what users would like more help with is SOA education and training.