In his second visit to India , Scott McNealy, Chairman and Cofounder, Sun Microsystems has reconfirmed his commitment to empowering academic developers through sharing, collaboration and open innovation – the key elements of what Sun calls the Participation Age. Carrying forward his mission to evangelize ‘open everything', Scott met with several high profile government officials and bureaucrats where he pushed for the use of open standards and open policies to drive economic and social progress and discussed ways and means of bridging the digital divide in the country.
During his meetings, Scott also introduced to them the concept of Curriki, a project spearheaded by him in 2004.
The first online education resource that is open to anyone, anywhere, Curriki, short for curriculum and wiki, is a world class-learning environment that is community developed and supported. Curriki is a global education and learning center, which improve education around the world by empowering teachers, students and parents with user-created, open source curricula. Curriki is based on the open source model, a strategy that has been at work at Sun since 1982.
“Students today are raised on technology, fundamentally changing the educational environment and how students interact, learn and share," said Scott McNealy. "Continued focus on eliminating barriers to education by leveraging technology and the network will help bridge the digital divide and deliver world-class education to everyone. With 33% of India 's population less than 15 years of age which translates into 71 million people entering the workforce in the next 5 years, it is our duty get workforce of tomorrow connected and educated to shape the future."
Campus Ambassador Program
With a variety of programs and offerings, Sun is proving its dedication to providing the next generation of 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. These resources include Sun's successful Campus Ambassador Program, which supports more than 180 student evangelists in more than 30 countries who are introducing Sun technologies and open source projects to academic developers. Sun India has 26 Campus Ambassadors in 26 Engineering Colleges under Sun's Academic Initiative. These ambassadors promote Adoption of Java, Netbeans, Open Solaris and CMT technology in the country. In selecting candidates for the Campus Ambassador program, Sun is choosing from among the most original and innovative young minds on campus today. Anil Gulecha, a Campus Ambassador from India , invented a way for Solaris to be booted off a USB drive.
Sun's Academic Initiative (SAI)
Other programs include Sun's Academic Initiative (SAI), a collaborative program between Sun and academic institutions, whereby Solaris 10 OS developers can gain the skills they need to meet immediate business challenges and to gain industry-recognized credentials. As part of this program, more than 2,500 educational institutions have become authorized to deliver training on Sun technologies to their faculty, staff and students.
Sun also announced increasing adoption of the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS) by student developers and growth of the OpenSolaris project community on campus. Today the number of Solaris downloads is touching 8 million. These students are preparing for the web-based business world by learning how to develop on the most advanced operating system on the planet with its advantages in security, virtualization and performance. Here again, Sun has been active in providing Solaris training and support with programs such as the Campus Ambassador Program, and by posting Solaris curricula on opensolaris.org for any teacher to use. As a result, more than 100 universities have adopted Solaris OS education into their curriculum.
Sun has also held several Solaris training events around the world: In India, faculty members from the country's National Institute of Technology institutions were trained on the Solaris OS at a workshop in January. Sun has also expanded its relationship with Asia 's largest IT trainer, NIIT in March this year to offer training in the growing Open Source Computing, through Sun Solaris Training programs. As part of the alliance, NIIT will offer specialized training programs through its network of education centres as well as specialized Solaris labs to be set up in key metro cities, to a large population of students and software professionals in the country.
A strong advocate of educational development, Sun hosts WWERC annually, bringing together thought leaders from around the globe to address the future of education and the role of technology.
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