Friday, 14 December 2007

Japan Government leverages Sun IT Services

The Government of Japan has chosen to work with Sun Microsystems to create an open, Web 2.0 architecture aiming to better leverage IT in order to deliver better government services to citizens.

Sun was chosen to create an integrated and inherently secure network, called Trusted Network, which comprises of OpenSolaris OS, Sun Java System Identity Manager software, Sun Java Composite Application Platform Suite and Sun Ray thin clients.

"Until recently, many government agencies opted not to gamble with any level of open access," said Crawford Beveridge, EVP and Chairman EMEA, APAC and the Americas, Sun Microsystems, Inc.

"But in a changing world, providing personalized, citizen-centric and business-centric benefits and services that maximize the value of taxpayers' money is a shining example of the vision for Web 2.0.”

Beveridge also said that the use of such technologies will help pave the way for governments to improve prosperity and welfare for its citizens, allow for a more open and transparent communication between the government and its citizens and reduce administrative costs of providing services.

Sun said in a statement that Governments around the globe are looking to use IT to give their constituents a single point of access to available governmental services. Open Source technologies, such as the OpenSolaris operating system (OS), help foster a strong ecosystem of developers and independent software vendors (ISVs) that can be leveraged by governments as it looks to scale the initiative and provide more services to the country.

Singapore and Norway have also joined the growing list of governments that have already turned to Sun for similar technologies.