SAN FRANCISCO, MAY 23: Information Technology (IT) Minister Pramod Mahajan today succeeded in roping in two US IT giants Sun Microsystems and Cisco Systems to invest in the country with the two signing agreements with Ministry of Information Technogy (MIT).The agreements were signed during the week long visit of Mahajan to sell India as the Gateway to the IT revolution. As per the agreement, Sun would make substantialinvestment to increase its presence in the growing IT market in the country, which is poised to touch export of $ 60 billion in the next eight years.The agreement between MIT and Sun envisages launch ofthe latters'"iForce" initiative in India to provide easier and broader access to the company's technology and services to dotcom companies. Sun would invest several million dollars in the initiative and work closely with partners to help Indian organisations dotcom themselves for the new economy.During the discussion between Mahajan and Ed Zandar, president and Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Sun, the company announced that it would also pump-in additional investments into India for expansion including setting up of offices in New Delhi and Mumbai and expansion of engineering centre in Bangalore.The Ministry also signed a Memorandum of Unedrstanding(MoU) with global networking giant Cisco Systmes for strategic collaboration on advancing training and research in networking and internet technologies.Under the alliance between the MIT and Cisco, Educationand Research Network (ERNET India), an autonomous society under the Ministry would build the infrastructure for a centre of Excellence that would showcase State-of-art technologies, including the company's leading networking solutions.The main aim of the center would would be to raisetechnology awareness in the country, especially amongst government organisations. Both ERNET and Cisco would also explore various means of providing networking and internet training in the country to support MIT's strategy of increasing the number of IT trained professionals.The MoU was signed between Mahajan and John Chambers,president and CEO of Cisco.The networking giant has also committed additionalinvestments for increasing its presence in the country, besides helping India to build a world-class networking infrastructure.The contributions of ERNET to bring the Internet to Indiainlcude building a large network that provides various facilities to the research and education community.
