Sun Microsystems is doubling its investments from $25 million to $50 million in India in the next one year to build more infrastructure resources, set up new offices in Chennai and Hyderabad and for supporting educational programmes.
Angshuman Bonerjee, March 12, 2001
Sun Microsystems is doubling its investments from $25 million to $50 million in India in the next one year to build more infrastructure resources, set up new offices in Chennai and Hyderabad and for supporting educational programmes.
The US-based $17.6 billion company is also putting India on its R&D map, giving their Indian facility the responsibility of developing a complete stack of high-end servers for its global market.
Sun is also launching a range of new servers including the Cobalt Qube 3 servers and other low-end servers in India. The company has also launched Sun Open Net Environment (ONE), a new generation of software for open, smart web services through a complete product portfolio that helps companies to web-enable operations.
Masood Jabbar, executive vice-president, global sales operations, Sun Microsystems Inc, said: "India is a key market for Sun Microsystems and we will be doubling our investments in the country. We are in fact looking at giving our developers in India a complete project of developing a whole stack of servers."
Speaking at the Sun Microsystems 8th Media and Analysts Symposium in Singapore, Jabbar added that despite the slowdown in the US economy, Sun will not reduce spending on key areas like R&D and education.
Giving a perspective on future trends in the networked world, Jabbar said that India will soon become one of the major development centres in the world. This may lead to the country losing its advantage of having cheap manpower as IT professionals who are scarce globally will attract a premium.
"Knowledge is India’s oil. As the web economy matures, wages across the world will equalise and Indian will lose its cost advantage. The talent and skills of IT professionals in India will fetch a premium," he said.
Jabbar said that India will be a key player in the emerging global new economy, with companies increasingly outsourcing non-competency areas to service providers. India being a market of service providers will be a big player in the new economy as companies would look at outsourcing non-core areas like ERP implementation, said Jabbar.
Highlighting the agenda for Sun Microsystems Inc’s global operations for 2001, Jabbar said that the company will drive new leadership products like low-end servers and drive new areas of revenues growth like software for the telecom sector.
Towards achieving this, Sun has identified ‘Three Bets’ which includes providing a massive scale from low-end to high-end products, provide an integrated stack of both software and hardware products and focus on products that provide real-time solutions like the mobile Internet.
The two-day annual symposium organised by Sun Microsystems focussed on the new economy — a snapshot on the realities that will impact business.
The symposium, attended by journalists from most of the South Asian countries including India, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, saw presentations from some of the top executives of Sun Microsystems.
This included John Loiacono, senior vice-president & chief marketing officer, Sun Microsystems Inc, Lionel Lim, vice-president & managing director, Asia South Sun Microsystems, and Marc Hamilton, director of technology, worldwide education and research, Sun Microsystems Inc.
