Oracle Plus Sun Could Trigger Huge Growth In India

The CIO of a major Indian bank already doing significant business with both companies says Oracle's acquisition of Sun "will bring a lot of value" to his company, and the CIO of an Indian retail chain expects the acquisition to lower his costs for bundled solutions by up to 15%.With the two companies' combined revenue in India totaling $1.5 billion (Oracle about $1.15 billion, and Sun about $385 million), the combined Oracle entity could compete more effectively against IBM in what Forrester estimates to be the $34 billion Indian market for IT products and services, according to an article in the Economic Times of India.

"Since we have both Oracle and Sun as important vendors, this acquisition will bring a lot of value," Punjab National Bank CIO RIS Sidhu said in the article, which noted that the bank runs hundreds of Sun servers as well as Oracle databases. And the CIO at the Indian retail chain quoted in the article offered the following perspective:

"Oracle's Sun acquisition will lower cost of system integration and other services for customer like us, running multiple systems and application," said the CIO of a leading Indian retailer, requesting anonymity. "We hope that bundled solutions with Sun servers could bring costs down by at least 10-15%," he added.

Oracle has said the deal will not change its commitment to Linux or the strong industry partnerships both companies have.