WUHAN, April 10 (Xinhua) -- Electronic Data Systems (EDS), the world's leading IT service outsourcing company, is to locate a service center in Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province, a company official said Tuesday.

    The service center, first of its kind in China following the ones in India, South America, Eastern Europe, is an important part of EDS' global strategy, said Kevin Bonfied, vice president of Business Workforce and Capacity Management of EDS, at a software outsourcing service forum in Wuhan.

    The service center, located in a software development park in Wuhan, will hire 700 employees this year, and the number is planned to increase to 3,000 within three years, said Derek Sharp, vice president of EDS Asia.

    The service center will provide outsourcing services for EDS' global customers, as well as its local Chinese customers, said Sharp.

    Presently, EDS owns two representative offices in China, with another based in Beijing. But these two offices now functions mainly as a receiver of orders for EDS, so its latest investment in Wuhan will be the company's largest-ever investment in China, according to Bonfied.

    China's software outsourcing industry has been developing rapidly these years.

    Its software outsourcing market generated value of 1.43 billion U.S. dollars in 2006, a jump of 55.4 percent from the previous year, and the figure is predicted to top 7 billion U.S. dollars by2010, or 8.4 percent of the world market, according to a report by the China Market Information Center, a leading Chinese information service provider.

    Based in Texas, the United States, EDS is a leading global technology services company with 130,000 staff, mainly providing outsourcing services on information technology infrastructure, software system and business process for organizations and companies from 64 countries.