Mumbai, Oct. 31: The Big Blue has some big plans for India. IBM, the world’s largest computer services company, is planning to invest close to $1 billion in its two services-oriented architecture (SOA) solutions centres in India and China. The new centres, at Beijing and Pune, will each employ 500. Some of the recruits in Pune will be freshers, Sudhir Sastry, leader (SOA Solution Centre) India told The Telegraph from Bangalore .

Sastry will head both the Pune and Beijing centres and will shift to Pune from Bangalore .

“The two centres will be working on two different industries. The China centre will be working on banking and local government, while the Pune centre will be working on the insurance and the healthcare sectors,” he added.

In October, IBM relocated its global procurement headquarters to Shenzhen in south China. The company has also made India a global delivery hub for software needs and client services.

IBM is focusing on services-oriented architecture, making it easier for businesses to find information that are stored in different formats.

The company sees SOA as a key driver of future growth and hopes the technology will help sell other products, such as server computers and consulting services.

IBM employs 43,000 in India, up from 9,000 three years ago, and 7,200 in China, which is the company’s eighth-largest market.

IBM, which derives about half its revenue from IT consulting and outsourcing, announced in June plans to invest nearly $6 billion in India over a period of three years.

“As we launch these solution centres, we believe there exists a pool of very capable resources to rapidly accelerate what we are trying to do,” Ray Harishankar, IBM’s global SOA strategic asset development leader, said.

IBM, which set up shop in India in 1992, has operations in 14 cities and a network of 2,500 business partners covering 40 cities.