From 126 to 10000 in seven years

BANGALORE - Sun Microsystems has announced the dates for the India leg of its premier developer conference - Sun Tech Days.

To be held on February 21-23, 2007, the three-day event will be anchored out of Hyderabad at the Hyderabad International Convention Centre and linked via satellite to Pune, Mumbai and Delhi.

"Sun Tech Days is a global brand for us held every year across various countries. It has existed for over nine years now," informed K.P.Unnikrishnan, director-strategic alliances and teleweb sales, with Sun Microsystems.

"Sun hosted the event for the first time in Mumbai back in the year 2000, which was attended by 126 people. In the last seven years, we have seen a pillar to strength growth not only in terms of numbers but also in the quality of people who attend it. This is the first time the event will be held across four cities; Hyderabad is the central hub with a live beam into Pune, Mumbai and Delhi," informed Unnikrishnan.

Sun is expecting close to 10,000 attendees this year, a hundred per cent increase as compared to last year's numbers. Attendee list includes a wide spectrum of IT professionals including students from engineering colleges. Developers working on Sun platforms, open source technologies as well as other proprietary software attend the event.

"We get developers from zero to fifteen years of experience at the event, in fact about three years back we had a 12 year boy, the youngest Java certified professional at the event. Sizeable chunk of the attendees fall in the 22-35 year age bracket," informed Unnikrishnan.

"This year we will be conducting Java University (JavaU) training as an ancillary event. JavaU is a separate session for the student community, which would educate aspiring developers and give them a macro level perspective of technology as well as hands on training on new features."

Attendees can get access to certification tests through training partners like NIIT. Sun products will be available to ISVs at a heavy discount at the event.

"There are interesting sessions on MS-Sun interoperability, which would be very relevant to students learning both the platforms as well as developers who use .Net as well as the Java framework and require seamless interoperability between the two," informed Unnikrishnan.

Attendees of Sun Tech Days can walk home with a lot of goodies from Sun as well as other partners including CDs, books, collaterals, white papers etc.

"The growth that we have envisaged in terms of numbers and response is very heartening. The Indian IT community has shown a passion for attending these kinds of events, clearly reflecting the professionalism and maturity of Indian developers in the global IT landscape, making all of us very proud," said a jubilant Unnikrishnan.

Based on positive feedback and overwhelming demand from developers across the country, the Sun Tech Days program has been expanded to 4 cities this year.

The plenary session on the inaugural day consisting of key note addresses by Mr. Ramalinga Raju, CEO, Satyam Computers Ltd and Mr. Rich Green, Executive VP, Software, Sun Microsystems will be beamed live in the three cities followed by separate tracks on the remaining two days.

Says Mr. K.P.Unnikrishnan, Director-Strategic Alliances & Teleweb Sales, "The developer community forms the backbone and a key determinant of the Indian IT industry's growth. With technology becoming increasingly important in shaping India's economic future, it becomes very important to ensure that this community is equipped with the latest tools and technologies."

Sun Microsystems' premier global developer conference, Tech Days, provides developers with practical, "how to" information on technical topics relating to Java technology, the Solaris 10 OS, NetBeans, OpenSolaris, open source, development tools and Web 2.0, which can help developers be productive immediately.

This year's event will have tracks on Web 2.0, Java ME, Java SE, Java EE, Solaris and open source.

Sun has added a new separate track dedicated to the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS), NetBeans and OpenSolaris developer days and the inclusion of Java University (JavaU) training as an ancillary event.

CIOL Bureau