In a major step to its education initiatives, Sun Microsystems on Tuesday joined hands with Aptech to train 30,000 students and 5,000 IT professionals, besides enterprises, on Sun technologies and products.

The new learning alliance will see Aptech investing into setting up two training centres to impart training on Sun technologies and products for its customers, partners and employees besides students, a Sun release said.

The tie-up will advance and extend Sun's overall enterprise learning portfolio of content technologies and services to help businesses improve performance and gain competitive advantage.

The alliance with Aptech help Sun address close to 30,000 students and 5000 IT professionals in the first phase through Aptech education programmes spread across the country, the release said.

"This partnership will significantly add value to our education focussed initiatives in India. Sun's Java computing strategy will thrive in the education market. It will help enterprises in India to develop the talent they need to drive competitive success," S V Krishna, director, Sun Educational Services, said.

We are currently seeing an upswing in the education market and this tie-up will further enable us to offer world class curriculum certified by Sun Microsystems to a large pool of customers, Aptech CEO Pramod Khera said.