IBM has officially opened its global delivery centre in Chengdu, its fourth such outsourcing facility in China.

The official unveiling follows the signing of an agreement with Chengdu's High-Tech Zone last year -- see this earlier story.

The centre will support IBM clients globally and will also run as a regional operations centre for IBM's global procurement centre, which was shifted from the US to Shenzhen last year -- see this EngagingChina story for more on that radical move.

At the same time as unveiling its new Chengdu facility, IBM also opened a global delivery centre in the Vietnamese capital of Ho Chi Minh City.

We have written several times about how Vietnam is now starting to appear on the radar of hi-tech multinationals -- see here for example. While it will be a long time before Vietnam can challenge China in the outsourcing stakes, its clearly a trend to watch.

The two new centres, which expand IBM's global network of service delivery centres to more than 30 countries, will focus on development, operation and maintenance of application systems for clients based in Europe, Africa, the US and the Asia Pacific region.