IBM on Wednesday announced plans to open a Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) leadership centre in India to address the growing demand for skills to solve customer business challenges.

The centre will be set up in Bangalore and would be first in Asia Pacific and fourth set up by the company across the the world. The centre will become fully functional during the first quarter of 2008, a company statement said.

The centre 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, benefiting IBM customers, business partners and university students, it said.