Sun Microsystems announces landmark agreement with Haryana government

Sun Microsystems announced this month that it has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Haryana Government wherein its open source-based office productivity suite, StarOffice 7 will be adopted across the state government departments.

The agreement is a landmark event in the history of open source and open standards movement in India as this is the first time that an open source-based office productivity software has been openly endorsed by a state government.

"We are extremely pleased to enter into this agreement with Sun Microsystems. The MOU marks a landmark agreement for us in our efforts to drive IT adoption in the state. This deal with Sun will enable the government of Haryana to significantly ramp up desktop penetration within its departments, as the cost of installing desktops are expected to come down dramatically. Governments across the world are adopting open standards-based technologies in their efforts to free themselves from proprietary technologies that lock them into costly licensing agreements and haphazard upgrades," said Dr Harbaksh Singh, Commissioner & Secretary to the Government of Haryana, Electronics and IT department.

"The adoption of StarOffice 7 in Haryana will enable the government to bring down costs and divert these funds to other more pressing social concerns," he added.

"The Haryana government's selection of StarOffice 7 is in line with India's IT vision and the worldwide trend towards open-source based technologies," said Bhaskar Pramanik, Managing Director, Sun Microsystems India.

"With the availability of quality low-cost solutions, governments can look forward to tremendous savings. This can be deployed in other areas of development for the greater good of the country. The Haryana government has clearly shown the way to make Dr Kalam's vision a reality," he added.

StarOffice 7 is a complete, feature-rich and affordable office productivity suite, comparable to Microsoft Office. StarOffice 7 offers functionality to enable export to PDF, and to the Macromedia Flash format. It also introduces the new StarOffice Configuration Manager, the StarOffice Software Development Kit, a macro recorder, support for assistive technologies and complex text layouts. It also supports 10 languages.

Most importantly, for millions of potential customers in the country the follow-on to last year's impressive StarOffice 6.0 starts at less than one-sixth the cost of Microsoft Office 2003.

Aside from its lower price, one of the greatest advantages of StarOffice 7 over Microsoft Office is its cross-platform support. Where Office 2003 will run only on Windows 2000 and XP, StarOffice 7 supports Windows 98, ME, NT, 2000 and XP, as well as Linux and Solaris. It is testimony to Sun's commitment to open standards and supporting multi-vendor and multi-platform environments.

StarOffice 7 meets the day-to-day office productivity needs for a variety of users, from Governments and Global 2000 corporations to medium-sized enterprises and small businesses, home offices, home users as well as students. StarOffice 7 and OpenOffice.org together are the leading office productivity suites in the world on Linux and the Solaris OS.

Over the past few months, many large organisations have begun to deploy StarOffice 7 as their office productivity suite. Some have even replaced their installed office suites with StarOffice 7. Most significant among the wins is United India Insurance's 10 000 user licences of StarOffice 7.

Organisations deploying StarOffice versions 6.0 and 5.2 in India include leading banks like HDFC Bank, BPOs like ICICI One Source, new economy companies like Apnaloan, corporations like JK Corp, government organisations like Karnataka PWD, Department of IT-Karnataka, select government schools, colleges and India's defence organisations.

The government sector, the biggest spender on IT in India, is today seriously looking at StarOffice 7 as an alternative office productivity suite. The agreement with the Haryana Government and Sun expects to make further inroads into this sector.