Sun signs Australian StarOffice trainers

Sun Microsystems has appointed New Horizons Computer Learning Centres and Cybersite Consulting as the first Australian trainers for its StarOffice software.

StarOffice is an office applications package for Linux, Windows and Solaris operating systems.

John Roker, GM of education services at Sun, said pilot StarOffice deployments in corporate and government were expected to lift demand for training on the package in Australia.

'More customers are responding to StarOffice. The single user licence is very affordable. It's easy to use and based on open standards,' Roker said.

Roker said that New Horizons was the world's largest independent IT training company and had a history of excellence in delivering desktop training.

Cybersite was already a Sun iForce partners and had skills in open standards systems integration, Roker said.

Jonathon Coombes, MD at Cybersite, said StarOffice training was a natural move for his open-source-focused firm.

'Cybersite has been involved in the development of StarOffice's open source version and is already supporting government and business users who are using StarOffice or integrating it into their existing business systems,' Coombes said.

Alan Golombick, MD at New Horizons Australia, claimed his company wanted to get in early with StarOffice training, since that package had the backing of a large vendor such as Sun.

'There are a lot of other products out there but they don't have that backing and that price point,' Golombick said. 'Three or four years on from the bursting of the tech bubble, people are looking for more cost-effective IT. We expect StarOffice to appeal to organisations across the market.'

However, New Horizons had a particular interest in government and large corporate needs, Golombick added.

New Horizons has started a StarOffice training program.

Cybersite planned to begin training corporate and government customers in February.