Sun Micro partners BIT

Sun Microsystems has tied up the city-based Bannari Amman Institute of Technology (BIT) to set up an academic centre of competency (CoC) on its campus at Sathyamangalam.

The CoC, said to be the first of its kind in the Coimbatore zone (which comprises Coimbatore, Nilgiris, Erode and Dindigul), would focus on enabling Solaris and Java competencies among the students.

Addressing a press conference, K S Sundararaman, director, BIT, said through this alliance, BIT would have access to the latest Sun technologies, tools, technical resources and curriculum on Java and Solaris platforms.

"In addition, training will be provided by Sun's engineers for students through workshops for skills development and in the first phase, 60 students are likely to be benefited from this initiative," he added.

As part of expanding its out-of-curriculum reach to its students, BIT has also plans to open three laboratories in partnership with Sun Microsystems for grid computing and Open Solaris applications.

The labs, to be set up at a combined area of 3,800 square feet on BIT campus, would cost around Rs 1.2 crore that would be borne completely by the institute while the technical know-how would be provided by the engineers from Sun.

Meanwhile, Sun Microsystems also announced the launch of its operations in Coimbatore through its partner, Accel Frontline Ltd.

Sudhir Nayar, director, partnership sales, said that Sun will reach out to a wider base of customers in segments such as education and research, manufacturing and healthcare, besides a large number of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in and around Coimbatore.