Mr Kanodia added that the focus will not be restricted to just these areas but also on other solutions catering to the financial community, publishing segment, insurance and healthcare as well. He said that this relationship would allow them to leverage Sun's technology and give Sun access to their service providers with a presence in the international market.

Mr Peter Young, vice president, market development engineering Sun Microsystems, says "Ours is an opportunity-based model. Once the opportunity has been identified, we will invest in it through our i-Force initiative." Datamatics is currently talking to i-Force for membership either in India or the US.

In the telecom sector, Mr Kanodia said that there were several opportunities as some of their international customers, more so from Europe, have been asking for unique solutions that would require intelligent devices to communicate through a network of cells. Sun is working on a product that lays emphasis on embedding Java in devices.

This would be significant for the financial sector as every time data is transferred from one format to the other there is a danger of security violation through virus. Java technology is impervious to virus and makes it more secure. On the ASP and data centers sector, Mr Kanodia said that India is emerging as a hub for a lot of back office process and data centers or `IT-enabled services'.

Their customers would require computing partners and Sun would be able to play a central role. On the migration aspect, Mr Kanodia said that Datamatics proposes to promote Sun's Solaris as a platform of choice.