Sun officials also said it will expand staffing at its other R&D facilities located in Beijing, St Petersburg (Russia) and Prague. Sun however has no plans to expand expenditure in the US, where the company still maintains its largest engineering team.
The importance of India and China as major development hubs for Sun was underscored by senior vice president of global engineering Stephen Pelletier who reportedly said in a press conference: You can say Sun software products are all made in India. Its obviously cheaper to do business here.
However Pelletier also acknowledged that wage levels would converge more over the next five years. Sun pumped around $1.9bn in R&D last year. He also pointed out that India is also a growing market for Sun, driven by mobile telephony and banking sectors.
Sun’s investment will certainly be welcomed by India whose economy the Institute of International Finance (IIF) forecasts to grow 8% this year despite the rest of Asia slowing down due to high oil prices, rising interest rates and weakening exports.
