Rockin' Robin: Robin Goldfarb Wilensky's Weblog

This one is not so much of a case study as it is about some cool things Sun is doing to promote the future of IT but I think you'll like it nevertheless...

Sun Microsystems Champions Student Developers in Higher Education - Read about it

About the customer

• Who's the customer? Well, in this case, it's the student!
  

About the DIFFERENCE

For Sun, the DIFFERENCE has always been the SAME - reach out to students and they will reach out to Sun. Plain & Simple. And it's the same message today. So, what's new?

• WHO: Today's Students
  
• WHAT: Sun has expanded its Campus Ambassador Program to 170 universities in 30 countries.
  
• WHY: "The next great technology innovation can come from anywhere," said Kim Jones, VP of Global Education, Government and Health Sciences for Sun Microsystems. "It's as likely to be invented by a student in China or India as one in London or Silicon Valley. Sun's goal is to empower academic developers through sharing, collaboration and open innovation—the key elements of what we at Sun refer to as the Participation Age. The Campus Ambassador Program lets students help each other gain hands-on experience with leading-edge, open source technologies. Not only will these students be prepared to compete in the global economy—they'll go on to create amazing new innovations, and we will all benefit."
  
• WHERE: Anywhere!
  
• WHEN: Now!
  

About the solution

HOW:

• By offering training and certification programs for the freely available open source Solaris 10 OS, Sun will empower academic developers to create powerful new applications. As part of this program, non-profit institutions (not individuals) become authorized, enabling those institutions to deliver training on Sun technologies to their faculty, staff and students.
  
• Sun offers academic developers free access to selected online courses through the Sun Learning Center.
  
• The freely available edition of NetBeans (produced by Sun in collaboration with the NetBeans community & the University of Kent UK) offers a seamless migration path for students transitioning from educational tools such as BlueJ to a full-featured, professional IDE.
  

This initiative is the latest in Sun's drive to provide academic developers with the educational tools and resources they need to cultivate important IT skills, participate in today's global economy, and contribute to the innovation of new technologies.