Sun Micro developer community to outgrow Microsoft's in 3 years

With growing interest in open source web-based applications and mobile-based applications, the developer community at Sun Microsystems is set to outgrow the Microsoft developer community in the next two or three years.

Matt Thompson, director, technology outreach and open source programs office, Sun Microsystems shared this projection with Business Standard at a conference on Thursday.

"The developer community globally consists of 12 million developers. Last year, Sun registered 10 per cent of the global developer population with a million developers joining the Sun developer community. It is the single largest number joining any technology platform," said Thompson, who was in the city to host its day-long programme for developers, "Developer Day".

Currently, the company's developer community has over two million members and is optimistic of overtaking the registered developer base of Microsoft. Thompson said, "If we register one million developers each year for the next 2-3 years, we will overtake the Microsoft developer community soon."

According to Nasscom, the total developers community in India is estimated to be 8,00,000-strong. "The country ranks third after Ireland and Eastern Europe in terms of highest usage of open source technology," said Thompson.

On the Indian scenario, he said, "We have a strong base of 5,00,000 developers here and our single largest development community globally. It grew at 40 per cent last financial year."

He further said that in terms of technology adaptation, "Developers here are amongst the senior most. They are at par with their North American or Western European counterparts and ahead of Japan," he noted.

He further highlighted that India is in technology transition from usage, which is important for cutting development costs. He pointed out that the top five IT companies have an internal open source software development policy.

Worldwide the company hosts 150 programmes each year of which, in India, it holds three or four Developer Days every quarter in different cities in addition to its three or five day-long annual Techdays event.

"We will hold our next Techdays event at the Hitech International Centre in Hyderabad in February 2007," shared Thompson.