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SUN MICROSYSTEMS Follow The Dot 

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DQI Bureau
New Update

ors lock on to the same target.

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PERFORMANCE HIGHLIGHTS

  • Wipro made up 65% of Sun’s sales
  • Revenues crossed Rs 250 crore
  • Recorded 33% growth
  • Users comprised big ISPs and dotcoms
  • Launched iForce for dotcoms.
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The dot in dotcom? The 18-year-old

California-based Sun is the big systems vendor on the net. Its ‘The network is

the computer’ jingle long-preceded the internet boom.

With one distributor, Wipro, Sun India

was a small branch office. In 1998 it became a subsidiary, and added a

distributor. 1999 saw three more. DQ estimates that Wipro accounts for 65% of

Sun’s sales, CDAC does another 10%, Tata Infotech does another 9%, and the

rest is divided between Accel ICIM, CMC and direct imports.

Sun

notched up Rs 253 crore in 1999-00 (DQ estimates). Last year we put it at Rs 135

crore, but with later inputs DQ has revised Sun’s 1998-99 revenue to Rs 190

crore. That means it grew 33% in 1999-00, taking it up 15 steps to #28 in the DQ

200. Almost all its revenues came from systems. Services got resellers about 12%

of the pie, but net revenues to Sun were low.

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Sun sells to software developers,

finance and banking–and the booming telco and ISP markets. Users

include VSNL, WiproNet and Bharti BT and, in the dotcom space, Indiatimes,

Satyamonline, Go4i, et al. It launched iForce, a package of Sun products,

services and solutions to help dotcom businesses.

So

is it the dot in dotcom? The internet’s top-level dotcom domain-name server

has now moved from Sun to IBM. So what? Well, Sun should worry that it has

dropped to #3 in the high-end server range ($0.1 million to $1 million), behind

HP and IBM. Sun’s aging E10000 Starfire’s replacement is delayed by the

UltraSparc III Cheetah chip till 2001. IBM’s S80 Condor Unix server

outperforms Sun, and HP should unveil its 64-processor Superdome server late

this year.

Yet, global demand exceeds supply, which means Sun can

pick key accounts and partners. They include Lucent, AOL, Sony, Nortel,

Motorola, Exodus, Alcatel, Nokia and Enron. That is a big list, and Sun has to

fight hard to protect it–as most systems vendors target the Net. DQ

Fact Sheet

START-UP YEAR: 1995 PRODUCTS AND SERVICES: Servers,

workstations, network solutions DISTRIBUTORS: 5  EMPLOYEES: 45* ADDRESS:

11th floor, Du Parc Trinity, 17 MG Road, Bangalore 560 001TEL: 509 2512 l FAX:

559 9598 WEB: www.sun.com.sg

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