IT giant Sun Microsystems on Friday resented restrictions imposed by the US government on the issue of HIB visas.

Talking to newspersons in Bangalore, Sun Microsystems chairman Scot McNelay said he had different views to that of politicians.

''I don't think legislators do different things. I have a different view than politicians. Key to the growth of Sun Microsystems had been people who had not originated from the US. However, I feel that those who come to the US and get a graduation in that country, should stay...Ideally, I want you to get married and settle in the US,'' he joked.

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Expressing his keenness to engage with the Union and state governments, he said, "We want to forge partnerships with the governments in this country as well as with Internet, mobile phone and financial service providers''.

On the II tier offerings, healthcare and retail would be the company's priority, he said, adding that while healthcare was still fragmented in this country, both the services were getting consolidated. ''Security is our forte and this bodes well for government services in India,'' he noted.

On Sun's focus on India, McNelay said the country was the number one non-US engineering site for Sun Microsystems. ''You have the fastest growing revenue market. The other advantages I see are top quality mind power and very friendly place to work in. We had talks with government officials and we are excited because they are very happy with our outsourcing policy,'' he added.

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He said Sun Microsystems did not believe in protecting its products or the IPs. ''We believe in sharing and innovation, and not just protection. Protection is not our philosophy. As many as 7.8 billion downloads happened just during last year,'' he said, in an indirect dig at his competitor Microsoft.

McNealy said its Indian facility, which housed 1,500 professionals, was important for Sun Microsystems. ''There is no way that we are going to downsize our presence in India. Taking a carburettor to a mechanic makes sense and proves valuable, than taking it to any other place. This is what happens in India. This is the place for IT development and we are here to stay,'' he said.

Brushing aside the loss made by the company last year, he said Sun Microsystems was sitting on 5.5 billion US Dollar cash reserves and spent two billion Dollars on research every year. ''Thirty-seven per cent of the world data is residing on our platform like Java and NFS. 90 per cent of the mobile services runs on Java and our future lies in this technology.''

The outspoken chief of Sun Microsystems said the two challenges faced by Sun Microsystems were getting developers and outfitting the data centres (infrastructure). ''We are in a fight with Microsoft in the first challenge and the second against the IBM. IBM has a fragmented outsourcing policy, while ours is not,'' he said.

McNelay said the company's desktop computing solutions 'Sunray' offered best security platform and Government users had emerged as the most important users. Its new product 'Blackbox' was the world's first virtualised data centre built into a shipping container containing eight racks and optimised to deliver extreme energy, space and performance. It had started shipping Blackboxes in the US and they would arrive in India in six to nine months.

He said network.com was the 'software offered as a service' and this open source policy was the main cause for the popularity of the company's products.