The Singapore infocomm Technology Federation (SiTF) and Nanyang Polytechnic (NYP) have joined forces to set up a SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) Centre to encourage wider adoption of web services technology in Singapore.

The NYP-SiTF SOA Centre located at the School of Information Technology’s Centre for IT Innovation in NYP campus, will provide a vendor-neutral facility to test a web service’s interoperability within an SOA. The total investment for the SOA Centre, believed to be the first of its kind in the region, is estimated at more than $2.5 million.

Altogether, 20 organistions have contributed hardware, software and other equipment to the centre. They include Accenture, Nanyang Polytechnic, BEA Systems Singapore, NCS, Cisco Systems, Novell Singapore, Crannog Software, Oracle Corporation (Singapore), Ecquaria Technologies, Parasoft, Hewlett Packard Singapore, SAP Asia, SiTF, Mecury Interactive, SQL View, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems.

The Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) will also provide funding for the centre for a two-year period.

The NYP-SiTF SOA Centre will provide web services interoperability testing services to IT solution providers or companies implementing web services built on multiple platforms. To jumpstart the centre, the SiTF industry partners will contribute 60 web services projects collectively for testing over a two-year period.

It will also become an effective testing platform and standardizes quality procedures for enterprises to achieve overall improvements to their software quality.

NYP will manage the operations of the SOA centre and provide the necessary lab facilities, as well as the necessary manpower required to enable the SOA Centre to undertake verification and testing services.

“Iinteroperability is a critical success factor in web services development today,” said John Tan, director of the School of IT, Nanyang Polytechnic.

“By providing a vendor-neutral facility to test a web services’ conformance to the SOA, we can provide web services developers and their customers the confidence that their product can work in a heterogeneous enterprise environment.”

At a recent web services seminar, the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore noted that the technology has continued to gain momentum here, stimulating some $70 million in investments. IDA said web services have created more than 290 jobs and generated $450 million in infocomm revenue over the past one year, and that the adoption of web services amongst businesses now stands at 14 per cent, up from 8 per cent in 2003.

Web services have been identified as a key engine of growth for Singapore. IDC estimates that US$2.3 billion was spent worldwide on total web services software in 2004, more than double the amount from the previous year.

IDC expects spending to continue to increase dramatically over the next five years, to reach US$14.9 billion by 2009.

SiTF is at www.sitf.org.sg and Nanyang Polytechnic is at www.nyp.edu.sg.