Germany-based software giant, SAP, has recently signed an agreement with the management committee of the new and high-tech development zone in this capital city of southwest China's Sichuan Province on building a technical support facility in Chengdu.

The scheduled SAP China technological service center will be located at the Tianfu software park in the Chengdu new and high-tech development zone, according to sources with the zone's management committee.

The center will be the largest software investment project Europe has ever made in Chengdu, the committee claimed, but declined to give the exact size of the financial input.

According to Rui Xianglin, head of the China Research Institute of the world's third largest independent software supplier, next only to Microsoft and Oracle, the new technological service center plans to achieve three major goals in the coming three years. It will build itself into a world-class software development center, usher in the state-of-the-art management process and develop products to be put on the market in the coming three to five years.

Rui said that the center will provide software development services for its clients in the United States, Japan and the Republic of Korea. Such services will also be available for enterprises in Sichuan Province, Rui added.

The center will also help the local software sector meet the world standard in three to five years, Rui claimed.

(Xinhua News Agency January 7, 2006)