Accenture sets up SOA development center in India

Accenture has established a center in India to build software applications based on the SOA (service-oriented architecture) model using technologies from Sun Microsystems.

The center, which is the first from Accenture to focus on Sun products, will develop composite applications that combine identity and access management technologies with the SOA model, Alastair MacWilson, managing director of Accenture’s Global Security Practice, told reporters in Bangalore on Wednesday.

The center will create reusable applications for key markets such as government and telecommunications, as well also custom applications for some customers, he said.

Accenture is off-shoring to India up to 60 percent of the work involved in delivering SOA applications to customers, to take advantage of the lower costs in the country, MacWilson said.

Sun will contribute some staff and technologies to the center, which will use its Identity Management Suite, Java Composite Application Platform Suite and Solaris OS, among other products.

Sun already has a development center in India with about 1,400 staff working on identity, access management and other technologies, said Don Grantham, executive vice president for global sales and services at Sun, of Santa Clara, California.

Accenture rival IBM set up SOA centers last year in Beijing and in Pune, India, that will develop SOA (service-oriented architecture) applications that can be reused across various customers.

Accenture announced in January that it will have more staff in India than in any other country, including the U.S., by the end of its fiscal year, which closes Aug. 31. The company’s staff in India will increase to 35,000 by that time, up by more than 52 percent from a year earlier, it said.