HP is opening additional competency centers around the world to help customers looking to implement service-oriented architectures.The SOA centers-in Bangalore, India, Singapore and Cupertino, Calif.-are part of a larger $500 million investment HP is making in the technology, which calls for integrating services to create service-enabled applications tied together for specific business purposes.

The new services and competency centers build on HP's existing SOA consulting services and management software and follow the recent introduction of HP OpenView SOA Manager, a tool designed to manage the lifecycle of business services in order to achieve better linkages between business and IT.

HP offers the two critical elements for using SOA to run IT as a business: management software and professional consulting services.

"Companies can no longer afford to have disconnected technology and business processes that are not aligned to drive business performance," said Nigel Ball, vice president, worldwide marketing, Consulting and Integration, HP Services. "SOA is an ideal way to help customers effectively bring new products and services to market faster and increase IT governance while reducing IT complexity and costs of maintenance."

Sources: 1, 2

Prashanth Rai