Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz says Sun has more to offer developers than others.SAN FRANCISCO—Sun
Microsystems is poised to win the next big battle for developers.
Already in many studies on developer platform choice, the battle typically
is drawn between the Microsoft .Net camp and the Java camp. But with the
emergence of a new set of qualifications around developer/designer workflow and
the advent of RIAs (rich Internet applications), the battleground is becoming
more cluttered with new entrants and different models. Sun hopes to be in that
fray.
At the JavaOne conference here on May 6, Sun President and CEO
Jonathan Schwartz said he is very passionate about developers.
Without yelling, “Web developers, Web developers, Web developers!” like
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer did at the
Microsoft MIX08 conference in early March in Las Vegas,
Schwartz conveyed his passion for developers.
And further, “to bring this back to an overarching context, there’s a battle
for that next great developer platform,” Schwartz said.
He said there are four fundamental technologies or parts of the equation as far
as Sun is concerned.
“First, our intent is to reach the most devices on the planet full stop,”
Schwartz said. “Second, we understand by making it ubiquitous that’s not
enough; we have to make it compelling and accessible to developers and
consumers.”
The third part of the equation is “we’re placing a stake in the ground,"
Schwartz said. “The Java platform will give you more insight. We will allow
developers to instrument what they build so they can see how people use their
stuff.”
And four: “This is all going to be free … so it can travel wherever the
market should go.”
Schwartz said Sun’s overall open-source play with its run-time software is
all about developers and empowering developers to build compelling
applications.
Meanwhile, Rich Green, Sun’s executive vice president for software, said
usage of the NetBeans IDE (integrated
development environment), the core Sun open-source development platform, has
grown 44 percent year over year since last year based on the number of users
developing with NetBeans.
Application Development 
