Sun Microsystems has announced it has expanded the current NetBeans Partner Program for companies that are building add-ons to NetBeans and recommending the IDE to their developer communities. The expanded NetBeans Strategic Partner Program offers new marketing benefits, technical support and incentives for its growing community.

The expanded initiative provides incentives for members that have demonstrated full support of the NetBeans IDE and have met the business and technical requirements for invitation to the program. As members of the program, business partners will receive technical support, exclusive roadmap and planning briefings with the NetBeans team. In addition, partners are eligible for unique co-marketing opportunities with the Sun developer community including sponsorship and participation in NetBeans developer events, such as NetBeans Day, webinars for the community, and promotion on Sun and NetBeans web properties. Members of the NetBeans Strategic Partner Program will be identifiable by a special logo.

"NetBeans has been a great partner for Sony Ericsson in enabling Java ME developers to bring compelling applications to market for our device portfolio," said Mikael Nerde, head of Sony Ericsson Developer and Accessory Programs & Content Planning Product and Application Planning. "Joining the Strategic Partner Program furthers our ability to deliver solutions for our current developers and expand our reach among the larger community."

"As one of the earliest members of the NetBeans Partner community, we have been able to reach out to a large number of Java developers," said Jim Villano, co-founder and COO of InsiTech. "We believe that by joining the new Strategic Partner Program,we will be able to focus developments in our XTT Framework toward the needs of a wider range of developers much more effectively and we are pleased to be a part of this."

"With the success of the NetBeans/JBoss Application Server bundle, we are now excited to build on this relationship by joining the NetBeans Strategic Partner Program. This underscores JBoss’ commitment to supporting all platforms, giving developers choice and a wide range of complementary solutions when using JBoss middleware," said Shaun Connolly, vice president of product management, JBoss, a division of Red Hat.

"A Subversion plug-in for NetBeans is an important part of our strategy and we are excited to reach out to the NetBeans community with our extended offerings as a member of the NetBeans Strategic Partner Program," said Richard Murray, vice president of Engineering at CollabNet.

The NetBeans Strategic Partner Program recognizes the strength that partners bring to the overall NetBeans value proposition as well as the value in reaching one of the largest communities of software developers in the world. These companies are adding cutting-edge value to the NetBeans platform and are making it a key part of their strategy.