Sun Microsystems, whose European Software Centre is based in Dublin, has announced it is to immediately recruit 20 new employees as it reported a 60 per cent rise in net income to $762.4 million (£508 million) for the year to June, compared to $476.4 million for the previous year.

Revenues for the year rose by 21 per cent to $8.598 billion from $7.095 billion, with net earnings per share increasing by 61 per cent to $1.96 compared with $1.21 for the previous year.

Sales in Ireland, through Sun's national distributor, Horizon Open Systems, showed record growth of more than 100 per cent on the previous year with revenues of £20.1 million.

Sun intends to immediately recruit a further 20 people in Dublin to work on software development and localisation. There are already 100 people working in the centre and this is expected to rise to 150 over the next year.

The centre is leaving its premises at Percy Place and relocating to East Point Business Park this weekend.

According to the company, the increase in Irish sales is due to "a major demand for Sun's business systems among organisations supporting commercial applications, and strong growth in the traditional workstation business".

Sun Microsystems worldwide showed a revenue rise in the fourth quarter of 26 per cent to a record $2.543 billion, compared with $2.018 billion for the same quarter last year.

Sun employs 19,000 people worldwide and its main products include workstations, servers, software and networking products.

The majority of products sold in the Republic are manufactured in Scotland.