IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced the first Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) center devoted solely to helping U.S. Federal agencies adopt and benefit from SOA Information Technology (IT) initiatives. The IBM Federal SOA Institute is focused on three important mandates -- innovation, solution development and testing, and education.

SOA is a way of architecting an organization’s IT technology to more closely align with business goals. By doing so, organizations gain greater efficiencies, cost savings and enhanced flexibility to meet changing business needs. At the Federal level, SOA initiatives have taken on greater urgency as agencies face budget constraints, security concerns and aging IT systems.