Found the solution as below…. posting it as it could help somebody else too 🙂
DateFormat format = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm:ss");
Date date = format.parse("2014-04-24 11:15:00");
GregorianCalendar cal = new GregorianCalendar();
cal.setTime(date);
XMLGregorianCalendar xmlGregCal = DatatypeFactory.newInstance().newXMLGregorianCalendar(cal);
System.out.println(xmlGregCal);
Output:
2014-04-24T11:15:00.000+02:00