Australia will host a new 'centre of excellence' under a plan announced by Newscycle Solutions' Preston McKenzie.

The company says formation of 11 such centres for product, services and hosting teams is part of efforts to improve product innovation, software quality and advanced professional services.

Located in North America, Europe and Australia, the centres "will focus on functional areas vital to Newscycle's mission-critical business", including product development, quality assurance, hosting, application performance, project management, implementation services and customer support.

The model will enable Newscycle to establish best practices across its entire product and services portfolio. For product teams, the centres will concentrate on agile software design, development and delivery, with the focussed approach helping optimise collaboration, predictability, flexibility, code reuse and support for open integration standards, the company says.

Primary development teams will be based in Newscycle's US offices in Bloomington (Minnesota), Melbourne (Florida), and Lindon (Utah), with secondary development and software resource teams based in Denmark, Sweden, Germany, the UK and other regional offices. Quality assurance teams will be located in Bloomington, Melbourne and Lindon.

More resources are being dedicated to hosting, project management, implementation services and customer support efforts, with these centres based in Minnesota, Florida, Michigan, Canada, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, the UK and Australia.

Chief executive Preston McKenzie says the "transformation model" is designed to address clients' changing needs: "We believe the Center of Excellence model will provide Newscyle with the focus and best practices necessary to deliver the most dependable, reliable and truly breakthrough solutions for our global customer base."

Newscycle recently introduced strategic partner programmes and customer enhancement forums designed to provide interested customers with greater insight into product roadmapping and development.