iForce to Help Sun Out of Box

Sun Microsystems Inc.s Reference Architectures provide powerful e-mail and data warehousing systems, but the company must bring more solutions to market if it wants to melt its reputation as just a big-box vendor.

The companys iForce initiative is designed to do just that.

Unlike Suns Reference Architecture strategy, which produces large-scale, generic enterprise systems, iForce aims to create pre-built systems tailored to companies particular markets.

The iForce initiative is gaining ground now and might be the key to making the company a bigger player in the services and solutions market. iForce, first unveiled in March 2000 with a dot-com focus and revamped to offer solutions for other markets last year, aims to deliver solutions by leveraging vendor and integrator partnerships.

By taking advantage of partnerships and working closely with vendors, Sun hopes to design and deliver customized systems for specific markets, including e-government, financial services and health care.

Current iForce offerings include customer relationship management systems from NIIT Ltd. and telecommunications packages from Noblestar.

Another interesting development (notable because Sun is not usually associated with wireless technologies) is a wireless Mobile Portal and Customer Self Care solution from Idea Integration Corp.

Only time will tell if these solutions pave the way to sales in these markets, but our initial impressions of these solutions are favorable.

The current roster of Sun iForce solutions can be found at www.sun.com/executives/iforce/solutions.

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