Sun Microsystems Inc. has announced a number of new initiatives aimed at the Java technology developer community, as the company seeks to the needs of the approximately 4.5 million Java developers worldwide. These new programs will be highlighted in Sun's annual developer conference, JavaOne), which will open on June 26th in San Francisco with the first ever NetBeans Software Day.

"Sun has maintained its high level of commitment to the Java tecnology developer community throughout the past 10 years, and we will continue to drive innovation with new programs and initiatives that offer developers the opportunity to expand their knowledge and share information amongst their peers," said Joe Keller, VP, Java Enterprise Systems/Developer Tools, Sun Microsystems.

The NetBeans Software Effect

To complement the recent success of the latest NetBeans software release, Sun will hold the second annual NetBeans Software Day on Sunday, June 26. Kicking off the developer focused events for JavaOne, NetBeans Day takes place at the Argent Hotel in San Francisco. At this free event, participants can learn from the experts what's happening with the NetBeans IDE and other Sun tools built on NetBeans platform. Highlights include: the new GUI Builder, code-named Project Matisse, Project Looking Glass, Java Platform, Enterprise Edition 5 (Java EE) annotation support and NetBeans platform plug-in development. Jonathan Schwartz, James Gosling, Rick Ross and a host of Java technology luminaries will be in attendance. 

Among the new programs for developers featured at the main JavaOne event are:

Java User Group Program Expansion
Sun Microsystems is expanding its Top 25 Java User Group program to now encompass the Top 50 Java User Groups world wide, to be announced at the JavaOne conference. This program sets up a direct connection between Sun and named Java User Groups (JUGs) and will provide them with Sun speakers, technology updates, software, and other important information.

Java Technology Champions Program Creation
Sun is creating a Java Champions program for the Java platform to include a community of around 200, and eventually 1,000 world wide, of external Java advocates and industry luminaries including authors, professors, senior architects, and community members. This will become our "friends and family" program for the Java platform.

Sun Developer Network Growth and Enhancements
Celebrating its two year anniversary of the Sun Developer Network (SDN) Program,? Sun will be enhancing its offerings to developers by including the JavaOne Online content into the SDN membership benefits. The 2005 JavaOne conference technical sessions, including transcripts, will be available to all SDN Program members. SDN Program membership is free -- all that is required is registration into the program.

Since it was first introduced at the JavaOne conference two years ago, the SDN Program membership has grown to over 1 million developers worldwide, with over 25% of its membership coming from outside of North America. The SDN Program reaches out to developers daily through technical content, blogs, chats, newsletters, forums, and worldwide developers events such as Sun Tech Days. Over the past two years the SDN Program developer community has grown into an active vibrant community -- each Sun Tech Day averages over 1500 attendees, and monthly the developer sites average over 65 million page views, tools and JDKs average over 588,000 downloads, and forums average over 2800 posts.

New Collaboration Service for Java Technology Developers

Following the recent release of Sun Java Studio Enterprise 7 with Instant Developer Collaboration capabilities, Sun is launching a new collaboration server to unite developer communities around the world instantly, enabling them to collaborate on Java application development issues using Java Studio Enterprise. For more information see: http://share.java.net