Sun to Focus on Indian Retail and Govt.
By Sonal Desai
Mumbai, Jul 15, 2008

Sun Microsystem will tap the Indian retail and the government space in the next three years. The focus will also strengthen on its current strong holds --- the BFSI and the telecom sectors.

The projects will be on the lines of large corporate deals. The company has set up a global team to deal with these deals, said Anil Valluri, newly appointed MD and GM for Geographically Established Markets (GEMs).

The global team advises the local team on aspects such as services, remote operations, and innovations in finance, etc. "For example, in the managed services deals, they study the risks and rewards. They can tell how to go about that particular deal. We also have local executives, who work in tandem with the global team. Since these are multi-party deals, they have a long gestation period; the time is utilized towards planning, support and other logistics," he said.

Dhandhapani Finance, Catholic Syrian Bank, HDFC and ICICI are some of its customers in the BFSI sector, and those from the telecom sector include Reliance Communications and Bharati Airtel.

Valluri, said, "Pramanik has left a good legacy and I want to carry it forward. We want to grow in the Indian retail and government space in the next three years. We will continue our presence in the BFSI and the telecom markets."

Valluri replaced Bhaskar Pramanik, who has been promoted as VP, global volume business.

The other focus will be to increase the volume of the x86 servers market. The company also wants to retain the 30 per cent year-on-year growth in the service sector. "We are looking at garnering our market share by 5-10 per cent by end of this year. We will be on the third or the fourth spot. We will move a step or two up from the current fifth spot," he said.

Valluri reinforced Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz's sentiments in a May blog, in which he said, " The highlight of our quarter was our India performance, up 30 per cent year over year - and our chip multi-threading Niagara systems, which grew (billings)."

Valluri said that Sun will "not be like IBM. We offer infrastructure related services. Our customers get Sun's technology and IP." "Besides, we want to focus on large, complex deals."

On the investments, Valluri said, "Investments are a continuous process. We have doubled the head count in India in the last six months. We have increased presence in new cities. We will continue to focus on Intellectual Property (IP), training and solution centers."

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