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NT Bureau
Chennai, Feb 3:
 

Rajesh Rege, director, Sales, Sun Microsystems India, addressing a press meet in Chennai recently.

        Sun Microsystems is expanding its sales operations in Chennai by ramping up its workforce at both its service facility and control centre to cater to its growing customer base in this region, especially in the small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

        Having a workforce of 1,400 employees in India, the company at present has nine sales and support offices in the country. Recently, its Pune office was expanded and the company has identified 18 Tier II and III towns for setting up and enlarging sales operations through a network of partnerships.

        An integrated provider of IT products and software, Sun Microsystems invested over $2 billion in research and development out of its global revenues of $13 billion to come out with newer generations and breakthrough products, said Rajesh Rege, director, Sales, Sun Microsystems India. Addressing a press meet in Chennai yesterday, he said the Control Centre set up in the city six months ago was primarily meant for servicing clients in Asia-Pacific region. But due to time advantage and large overflows from the EU markets, it was being positioned as a global hub for the company. Also, each month 5 - 6 professionals were being recruited to bolster operations at the Control hub in Chennai which has a capacity for 300 seats. While the service centre, an independent unit, hired nearly 20 people as of now.

        Rajesh said Chennai fitted well into the overall strategy of the company given its IT base and strong foothold in manufacturing with good concentration of auto and
ancillary firms.

        Sun's value proposition in terms of a range of PC servers, storage and data management products, software programmes and operating systems (Solaris) have contributed to revenue growth in the fiscal 2007 for its India operations, said Baba Sam, marketing director, Sun Microsystems India. As against the IT growth of 18-20 per cent per annum in India, the company grew nearly 40-50 per cent year-on-year through a combination of servicing large corporates and penetration of SMEs in tier II and III towns.

        In the second quarter (Q2), the company had a global revenue of $3.5 billion, with Asia Pacific region alone contributing 20 - 25 per cent of that income. The Chennai operations would focus on increasing sales across industrial spectrum, including IT / ITeS, automotive, engineering and manufacturing sectors in Tamilnadu and Kerala region.