IBM is establishing a technology centre in Vietnam that will help its financial services clients build and deploy core banking applications and modernise IT systems.
The Banking Centre of Excellence will be established in Hanoi in the first quarter of 2008 in IBM's Vietnam headquarters in Hanoi and staffed with banking and technical employees.
IBM says the centre will help Vietnam's banks improve core systems, increasing efficiency, flexibility and the ability to scale to support the country's banking industry growth.
It will assist clients with business and technology design, vendor and package selection, modelling, proof of concept, benchmark testing and system migration.
The vendor says it also intends to invest heavily in a framework based on service-oriented architecture to help banks modernise core systems.
Clients will be able to use IBM open infrastructure technologies including Web services and virtualisation, as well as software tools such as DB2, WebSphere and Tivoli.
Steve Mills, SVP and group executive, IBM Software, says: "Vietnam's growing economy represents a great opportunity for IBM and the country's banking industry, as it looks to deliver new products and services to meet the growing financial needs of consumers."
The Hanoi centre is in addition to three others established by IBM in 2007. Two of the facilities have been opened at IBM's existing labs in Silicon Valley and Poughkeepsie, New York. The third is part of IBM's new lab in Seoul, Korea.