"The server market is worth about 150 million dollars and the NT (network) servers (of Microsoft) constitute 60 million dollars," said Bhaskar Paramanik, managing director of Sun Microsystems India Pte. Ltd.

"The focus (of the alliance) is to further (both companies') growth in the NT market as our customers tell us they would like to mix and match (Microsoft and Linux software applications)," Paramanik said.

Linux, a freely available operating system used mostly by businesses, has been posing an increasing threat to Microsoft.

"This is not a religious battle between Linux and Microsoft. The customers know they can benefit from both," Paramanik said. "Microsoft dominated the NT market. Now it is open to us and there is an opportunity to sell low-cost solutions."

The alliance will also address India's fast-growing banking, financial services and insurance markets, Paramanik said.

"Based on our open source platform the costs can be driven down," he said.

Paramanik said the costs of Microsoft's products such as Microsoft Office are about 13,000 rupees (276 dollars) per user while the same product run on Linux's open platform would cost 2,000 rupees per user.

"There is a saving of 75 percent overall," he said.

The alliance will deliver new generation software for Linux users.

Shekhar Dasgupta, managing director of Oracle India Private Limited, said total revenues of companies in the banking, financial and insurance sectors in India was about 34 billion dollars.

"These companies spend about one to two percent of this on information technology," Dasgupta said.

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