IBM (IBM) has signed an agreement with the Chengdu High-Tech Zone, to establish a Global Delivery Center within the Chengdu Tianfu Software Park.

Scheduled to be operational by February 2007, this new center will provide multi-lingual application development and maintenance services to clients globally in English, Japanese and Chinese, and to the IBM Global Procurement Center, recently located to the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen.

"As part of our transformation to becoming a globally integrated business, IBM is focused on amassing the right skills and expertise where they exist to deliver the right services to our clients. The presence of a vast talent pool, technical capabilities and business friendly economic policies make China one of our key locations to deliver world-class services to clients around the world," said Frank Kern, General Manager, IBM Asia Pacific.

The new center at Chengdu further strengthens IBM's existing network of global delivery centers in China across Shenzhen, Dalian and Shanghai. Established since 1999, China Global Delivery Services has been assessed at SEI CMMI Maturity Level 5, the highest in the industry, providing support to clients in America, Europe and Northeast Asia. IBM also plans to aggressively grow the scope of services according to client needs. The globally benchmarked Chengdu center will have local talent working with highly-trained staff from other parts of China and from IBM operations around the world.

Henry Chow, Chairman and CEO of IBM Greater China, said, "The expansion of IBM's Global Delivery Center network to Chengdu is a testament to our commitment to the talent and opportunities we see here."

IBM established the Chengdu branch office in 1996. The product and services have expanded rapidly in the last ten years for Chinese domestic clients covering across public, finance, telecom, distribution and industrial sectors.