Sun Application Developer Day highlights importance of Open Source

This means a demand for more developers; requiring them to leverage new technology in development to help their organisations achieve real business benefits.

To address these challenges, Sun Microsystems provided applications developers from across the region with a platform to discuss and understand more about cutting edge open source development tools, through its Sun's Application Development Day.

Experts from Sun Microsystems and the Java Users Group were at hand to share knowledge and information on the latest development tools. More than 60 developers from the UAE participated in and exchanged ideas on using different technologies for creating rich Internet applications and highly interactive web applications for enhanced end user experience.

"Through this forum the participants discovered how Sun is contributing to Open Source and learnt more about Sun's key open source initiatives such as NetBeans, OpenSolaris, Glassfish and OpenOffice," said Michael Geisler, Software Sales Manager, Sun Microsystems MENA.

"Open Source is the ideal development and business model for today's massively connected Participation Age economy, because it offers freedom to every user and developer by encouraging genuinely collaborative innovation."

"Sun's open source model offers an entirely new way for developers, and increasingly knowledgeable interactive users to collaborate and build upon the best of the commons. The result: open source is reaping tremendous leaps in innovation, and standards-based, interoperable solutions," added Geisler.

A Sun Developer Day was also held in Cairo, Egypt, where more than 600 software developers from the across the country attended. This was one of the most successful developer conferences ever to be held in Egypt where the president of the Egyptian Java Users Group community attended and presented.

During the forum, developers discovered what's new in NetBeans Mobility Pack - the ultimate tool for creating mobile applications, and Java. Java is a very popular among mobile applications developers. It connects the largest and smallest businesses to their employees, customers, and data. It secures the vast majority of electronic transactions in retail, finance, government, science, and medicine.