Sun shines in Poland

After fiscal year 2006 saw IT company Sun Microsystems note a loss of $860 (zł.2,389) million from its global operations, the firm has bounced back with $437 (zł.1,214) million in net profit in the 2007 fiscal year (which ended June 30, 2007). Its revenue in that period grew by six percent, to $13.8 (zł.38.3) billion.

But in Poland the firm is growing even faster. "Our growth was twice as fast as our global rate," the president of Sun Microsystems Poland Piotr Wierzbicki said. Revenues in Poland reached zł.288.1 million - an increase of 12 percent year-on-year.

The company's sales structure is developing. While services amounted to 20 percent of the company's sales two years ago, today they represent almost half. "We are on our way to where the richest countries are, where the proportion is 60/40 percent in favor of services," Wierzbicki said.

Wierzbicki underlined that the company will now focus on SMEs. "This is the key word on the market right now," he said, adding that the standstill in state-administration tenders is helping the SME market grow. Sun Microsystems has teamed up with Intel to make IT products together. It hopes that this will help it become successful among SMEs. "Many companies are used to Intel, because a few years ago it was the only strong player on the market," Wierzbicki said. According to him the market for IT solutions for SMEs is growing by 30 percent annually. He still hopes for the revival of the public-administration market. "We hope the market takes a concrete shape - not stagnation," Wierzbicki said.