BANGALORE: Tata Sky Ltd., the joint venture between Tata and Star, has selected Sun Microsystems, Inc. to provide IT infrastructure solutions and support for the launch of the company's direct-to-home (DTH) television service in India. Tata Sky is targeting a July 2006 launch of the service.

Tata Sky will be powered by a combination of Sun Fire E20 servers running 'UltraSPARC(R) IV+' based processors and Sun Fire Workgroup servers. The servers would run the Solaris (TM) 10 operating system with Sun N1 (TM) System Manager to ensure maximum up-time, fault recovery and load management, states an official release.

"We are delighted to have chosen Sun Microsystems," says Tata Sky Ltd CEO Vikram Kaushik. "Sun's offerings will enable us with a technology infrastructure that is best-of-class and geared to deliver high service level standards that we are targeting".

"We are proud to be chosen to offer the technology infrastructure needed by Tata Sky," says Sun Microsystems, India MD Bhaskar Pramanik. "Our products are highly scalable and reliable, making it easier for us to deliver mission critical applications for the most exciting new DTH TV project in the world".