Center of excellence

A center of excellence (COE) is a team, a shared facility or an entity that provides leadership, best practices, research, support and/or training for a focus area.
Due to its broad usage and vague legal precedent, a "center of excellence" in one context may have completely different characteristics from another. The focus area might be a technology (e.g. Java), a business concept (e.g. BPM), a skill (e.g. negotiation) or a broad area of study (e.g. women's health). A center of excellence may also be aimed at revitalizing stalled initiatives. The term may also refer to a network of institutions collaborating with each other to pursue excellence in a particular area. (e.g. the Rochester Area Colleges Center for Excellence in Math and Science). In contrast, in the European defense community, the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats is a response to hybrid warfare on its periphery; the COE seeks to inform, and also protect its non-NATO components, as well as its non-PESCO members.
Organizations.
Within an organization, a center of excellence may refer to a group of people, a department or a shared facility. It may also be known as a competency center or a capability center. Stephen Jenner and Craig Kilford, in "Management of Portfolios", mention COE as a coordinating function which ensures that change initiatives are delivered consistently and well, through standard processes and competent staff. In technology companies, the center of excellence concept is often associated with new software tools, technologies or associated business concepts such as Service-oriented architecture or business intelligence.
Academia.
In academic institutions, a center of excellence often refers to a team with a clear focus on a particular area of research; such a center may bring together faculty members from different disciplines and provide shared facilities.
Australia.
In Australia, the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centres of Excellence link a number of institutions with a country and internationally in a specific field of research, funded by government grants.
Philippines.
In the Philippines, a center of excellence (COE) is a certification given by the Commission on Higher Education to departments within a higher education institution (e.g. a college within a university) which "continuously demonstrates excellent performance in the areas of instruction, research and publication, extension and linkages and institutional qualifications". Candidates for this certification are referred as centers of development (CODs) by the education body.
Russia.
In Russia, the Center of Excellence status (in Russian it is used notion "Leading scientific school") is granted by the Council for Grants of the President of the Russian Federation since 1996. To obtain the COE status, a group of scientists, usually based on a department at a university or a laboratory at an academic institute, and its leader should have a high scientific reputation and should submit an application, which presents a plan of scientific and educational work for the period of two years, to the Council. The Council issues a special certificate of the COE status to the leader of the group.
Business.
Walmart is designating certain employee healthcare venues as Centers of Excellence. In 2013 several regions of the country (Dallas-Fort Worth; Northern Arkansas; Orlando, FL) Walmart is offering employees free treatment when they use the designated Centers of Excellence. Treatments are administered to covered employees, who travel to the Centers, along with a caregiver, for a course of treatment at the Center. Depending on the budgetary outcome, Walmart will be sharing its operational results with other employers, as a method of controlling its healthcare costs. 
Ford Motor Company has announced a battery center of excellence, meant to centralize a cross-functional team to accelerate the development of battery and battery cell technology. Electrical batteries would then serve as the basis for all-electric vehicles. The Center of Excellence is called Ford Ion Park.
Northrup Grumman has invested in its Manned Aircraft Design Center of Excellence in Melbourne, Florida. This investment uses modeling and simulation tools at the Center of Excellence which predict the performance of its test-bed aircraft, as a method for reducing risk during the process of developing the B-21.
Huntington Ingalls Industries is building out an Unmanned Systems Center of Excellence, which is working on Boeing's project for the Navy’s Extra Large Unmanned Undersea Vehicle.
Similarly Alliant Techsystems, Otis Elevator, Alcoa, Greatbatch, and GE have all used Centers of Excellence as organizational mechanisms to gain economies of scale, when discovering and sharing efficiencies of operation. 
Healthcare.
In the healthcare sector, the term often refers to a center that provides sufficient and easily accessible medical services to patients.
In the NHS, the term is almost always used sarcastically, following its popularisation by Dr Peter Gooderham on the Doctors.net.uk fora. It can often be heard being used to describe tertiary centres by staff working in district general hospitals.
United States Army.
The Army maintains a Center of Excellence (CoE) and associated Capability Development Integration Directorate (CDID) in:
TRADOC oversees ten of these Centers of Excellence, each focused on a separate area of expertise within the Army. These centers train over 500,000 Soldiers and service members each year.