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Sun to focus on services business, NEW STRAITS TIMES-MANAGEMENT

Posted on: Wednesday, 15 October 2003, 06:00 CDT

xfdws SUN-TO-FOCUS-ON sked Emerging Markets Datafile

October 13, 2003

NEW STRAITS TIMES-MANAGEMENT TIMES

MALAYSIA

ENGLISH

Sun to focus on services business, NEW STRAITS TIMES-MANAGEMENT TIMES

Ferina Manecksha

ASIA WorldSources, Inc. 322 MASSACHUSETTS AVENUE 2ND FLOOR, NE WASHINGTON, DC 20002 COPYRIGHT 2003 BY WORLDSOURCES, INC., A JOINT VENTURE OF FDCH e-Media, INC. AND WORLD TIMES, INC. NO PORTION OF THE MATERIALS CONTAINED HEREIN MAY BE USED IN ANY MEDIA WITHOUT ATTRIBUTION TO WORLDSOURCES, INC.

SUN Microsystems believes Malaysia offers the biggest growth opportunity for its professional services business, which is expected to double in value over the next two years.

Sun's vice president for professional services Doug Kaewert said apart from the anticipated economic recovery, Malaysia possesses skilled workforce who are receptive to tech development.

He said to tap further into the market, Sun will continue to adopt the partner-centric model, through which it will engage local partners who will collaborate with top technologists to implement projects.

''In essence, this partner-centric model gives us thousands more people dedicated to providing consultancy and professional services,'' he told Computimes in Kuala Lumpur.

Sun's professional services unit currently deploys 3,000 people and is worth US$675 million (RM2.6 billion).

Kaewert said Sun is also building a ``partner army'' and looking to extend worldwide its partner-centric model, which has been successful in Asia.

''Towards this end, we are making concerted efforts to work with partners to co-develop services, and are looking to strike up bigger and more strategic partnerships which will provide long-term business benefits rather than tactical ones.''

For example, he said, Sun recently struck a strategic deal with a worldwide partner to expand the delivery of its educational services, thus moving away from tactical account base deals to more strategic partnerships.

''Such partnerships are even more critical now as we look to move away from a solution-based model to one that is services-centric because the ICT (information and communications technology) industry landscape worldwide is changing to become increasingly more customer-driven instead of being driven by the vendor.''

On a related development, Kaewert said Sun's N1 initiative currently has about eight ongoing pilots, of which three are outside the United States.

The company, he added, is looking to implement at least 25 of such pilots within the next few quarters. ``There has also been tremendous interest in Asia, particularly from our key clients in the telecommunications sector.

These clients are expected to progress to the pilot phase soon,'' he said.

N1 is a crucial element to Sun's holistic computing strategy to provide customers a complete system rather than piece parts.

A member of Sun's new Java System software family, N1 is designed to unite computing resources into larger pools that can share work more efficiently than the separate computer systems that prevail today. To build N1, Sun has acquired Terraspring, Pirus Networks and most recently, CenterRun.

Copyright 2003 NEW STRAITS TIMES-MANAGEMENT TIMES all rights reserved as distributed by WorldSources, Inc.

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