'We bring what we have for the enterprise down to the level of the [small firm].

'We run seminars, we have local partners. We localise products.'

Microsoft has about US$70 billion in financial assets and uses this balance sheet to help drive corporate information technology decisions in its favour.

Sun, with its enterprise-scale and higher-end technology image, has suffered from being seen as too far up the ladder for SMEs.

For example, Sun's Star Office suite, which rivals the ubiquitous Microsoft Office suite, runs on Wal-Mart's own-brand PCs in the United States.

IBM suffers from a similar plight in that its branding, while drawing a customer base that insists on reliability, is more attractive to a buyer willing to spend.

Dell and Hewlett-Packard are known as PC vendors, but they are spending a lot on advertising to recreate themselves in the buying public's mind as firms which can be approached for computer systems that include servers and storage facilities.

Sun and IBM must almost play down their high-ranking image to reach the SMEs.

At one time, most of the money was with enterprise-level operations - big companies with big budgets - particularly those in the ever-buoyant financial services industry.

However, the large IT vendors have had to shift their focus as SMEs emerge as the largest-buying sector.

Within this context, Mr Kalajakis is travelling around the Asia-Pacific region with a set of localised brochures for Sun's One-Touch business solutions.

Knowing the tight budgets of most smaller businesses, Sun now offers delayed payments, leasing deals and interest-free (for 90-days) migration programmes.

These are mainly directed at the corporate clients of rivals HP and IBM.

Sun hopes to climb the ratings in server sales (it is third behind IBM and HP). Dell is next in line behind Sun, according to research firm Gartner, while China's Legend is approaching rapidly.

All of these rival companies are offering deals that impinge on each other.

'Sun's deal is to offer more than just a server but the possibility of clustering, Java deployment for web or applications services, database management and even grid computing, which can maximise on hardware resources,' said Mr Kalajakis.

The offers focus on the Sun Fire V202 server running Linux or the Solaris operating system.

With the addition of software, storage and services geared to a specific industry, this unit becomes an 'office in a box', or an 'ERP in a box' (enterprise resource planning), capable of handling everything from frontline to back-office operations.

Prices range from US$10,000 for a firewall with all the whistles you could want, a web server for $15,000, internet security for $28,000, network security for $49,000, backup for $15,000, e-mail defence for $68,000, to content life cycle management for $24,000.

The one-price-fits-all software model also helped, said Mr Kalajakis.

'Procurement officers now love Sun Microsystems as they get unlimited use per employee for $100 each. They are asking competing vendors what they are going to do for them to match or beat that.'

The prices are affordable by industry standards, but certainly begin to mount when one thing is put on top of another.

For example, as you cannot intelligently have half a security measure, it appears that the way to go is add modules as they can be afforded and seen to be needed.

This gets more expensive, and is exactly why Sun, IBM and HP are so keen to recruit the chief information or technology officers at small but growing companies.

With one vendor making similar promises to the next, the initial price of a system is not always the most significant factor.

A chief technology officer has to be convinced that his supplier has a development plan, a history of support and product innovation.

In this sense, Sun as a big player, can boast of a significant track-record, but so can IBM.

Mr Kalajakis will certainly have to accumulate a lot more Asia-Pacific miles to see the Sun shine.