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 Stans
Kleijnen is vice president of market development engineering
at Sun Microsystems and she works closely with Sun’s customer
base to adopt the latest technologies by porting, benchmarking
and performance tuning projects. Her group is also responsible
for developer technical support and for developer evangelism,
including the Technology Days. Stans spoke to Prashant
L Rao about Sun’s developer relations in India and the
future of Java
A billion Java-enabled wireless devices are expected to
be in use by 2004
Where do India and China fit into Sun’s overall developer
strategy?
Our focus in the Asia-Pacific region will be on China and
India. There are a million developers in China, and we’d
like to get them all to develop software on Sun’s platform.
In India, we have 200,000 registered developers. Indian developers
working on Sun technology tend to work on J2EE in areas such
as banking.
How has Java evolved over the years and where is it going?
Sun’s approach to Web services is evolutionary, based
on open standards and well-defined interfaces. Java is the
perfect platform for deploying Web services. There’s
a continued focus on J2EE and we are including Web services
into that platform.
A couple of years ago companies used to play up the slow
performance of Java. That’s no longer the case. There
is a lot of focus on looking at applications and optimising
the stack. We optimise each layer, be it the app server, JVM
or the Solaris operating system. Take the case of the Hotspot
VM. We optimised the byte code and frequently accessed code.
The Hotspot VM applies to the wireless space (J2ME) and here
the biggest need is for performance.
We see huge growth in wireless clients. PDAs and cellphones
are becoming Java-enabled. It took a couple of years for us
to develop the software and for the phone manufacturers to
build the products. A billion Java-enabled wireless devices
are expected to be in use by 2004.
How many ISVs does Sun work with worldwide?
Sun works with over 20 Tier-1 ISVs, more than a thousand
in Tier-2 and approximately 25,000 in Tier-3. We work with
1,500 ISVs in India. A tiered approach is used where we have
a very customised programme, including joint marketing and
dedicated engineering teams for Tier-1 high-end vendors like
Oracle, our number one ISV. SAP, Siebel, PeopleSoft and CommerceOne
are other Tier-1 partners.
Indian ISVs fall into the Tier 2 and 3 categories. Here
we have marketing collateral, success stories, joint Web seminars,
sponsorships and the like.
On this trip the focus has been on the Developer Technical
Support programme for ISVs and the developer community at
large. We offer high level architectural help in moving to
Java, re-architecting applications and new technology, as
well as traditional technical support via e-mail, phone and
face-to-face interaction. Technology, tools and how-tos form
the three sides of the tech support triangle at Sun. We have
a dedicated team in India for ISV and developer support. They
take the first crack at solving problems before they escalate
to the worldwide organisation.
What’s the size of the dedicated ISV and developer
support team in India?
The team is a virtual team, leveraging the 450-plus engineers
who work at the centre. The DTS (Developer Technical Support)
team in India is designed to respond to all technical questions
from local ISVs, but like all DTS engineers, the team in India
can call upon the other DTS teams worldwide to provide both
additional product expertise and experience in specific vertical
markets. Worldwide coverage also allows DTS to provide extended
hours coverage using a follow-the-sun model.
What are Sun’s initiatives with universities in India
and APAC?
Sun offers university grants to help them procure Sun hardware
at a fraction of the actual cost. Sun maintains incubation
cells at universities where student projects are incubated.
All universities and colleges under AICTE have access to Sun
products as part of their curriculum. Lastly, we are part
of several collaborative research programmes.
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