Sun signs StarOffice deal in India

Sun Microsystems announced on Wednesday a deal to supply its StarOffice productivity software to government workers in the Indian state of Haryana. The state has about 31,000 government workers, but Sun did not provide details on how many have PC access nor on how many seats the deal would cover.

The agreement follows a deal with one of India's largest insurers, United India Insurance Co., covering 10,000 seats of StarOffice. StarOffice and its open-source sibling, OpenOffice, while still trailing far behind Microsoft's dominant Office, have made notable gains with government customers in the past year.