Sun earmarks $10m. for Enterprise Services in India

BANGALORE: Sun Microsystems plans to invest $10 million in the expanding Enterprise Services in India. Announcing this, Michael J. Hunt, Vice-President, Enterprise services, Asia Pacific region, said, "Our aim is to provide Indian customers proactive services that maximize system uptime, deliver optimum levels of ongoing support, and value add with Sun Professional services and Sun Educational services to enable Indian companies to surge ahead in the new economy. Globally Enterprise division has contributed around 15 per cent of Sun's overall revenues and we are growing at 40 per cent." As part of this program, Sun has launched SunSpectrum Platinum and SunSpectrum Gold in India to provide customer support.

Under this initiative, Sun enterprise will expand from one central support hub, located in Bangalore, to five zonal locations in New Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta and Chennai. Along with this, the company is increasing its technical team of Sun Certified Partner Engineers to 300 within a period of two years. Complementing the Enterprise services division in India, Sun has also set up the Sun Professional Services division and Sun Educational Services division.

Speaking on the educational services, Bhaskar Pramanik, Managing Director, Sun Microsystems India said, "Sun India has seen substantial growth in this area, which includes increased base of authorized Sun Educational Centers from 22 to over 50 center till date and we are projecting to double the number of certifications to over 40,000 this year. Apart form this there is a growing demand for Solaris training in addition to Java training in India. Sun India has ambitious plans of setting up at least 25 Solaris centers this year." He also said that the overall investment from Sun in India for the year July 2000 to June 2001 would be around $25-$30 million.