Sun Microsystems announced "Open Jive Challenge 2009"

Sun Microsystems has recently kicked off its annual Open Jive Challenge 2009 in SEA countries including Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand.

Organized by Sun Microsystems and supported by Software Park Thailand, First Logic and Elixir Technology, the competition is encouraging students to use open source technologies to build web 2.0 solutions that respond to businesses' needs to lower costs and increase business efficiencies. The winners will represent Thailand in the regional round.

"Open Jive reflects Sun's vision and commitment to open source software development, and its continuous support to Thailand's educational sector. As part of this, Thai students are encouraged to create IT innovations and participate in both national and regional contests," said Sun Microsystems (Thailand) managing director Rampa Manoonsin.

She also said "Seen from previous competitions, the country has proved to be an outstanding software development base for the region. We believe this year's Open Jive will help its IT education and young developers develop further."

According to Suwipa Wanasathop, director of Software Park Thailand, social networking is growing rapidly in Thailand and across the world in recent years. It is mostly designed and developed using open source technologies.

"The trend is in line with our mission to promote open source software among Thai users by providing the country's IT industry with a development platform for young IT professionals. It is expected to offer student developers the best opportunities to further their IT education and become extremely competitive in today's global IT market," she pointed out. 

"Open Jive will give students the opportunity to meet, share, learn and innovate on open source technologies. This will make developing new world's famous applications more exciting and challenging."

Werapon Udee, sService division manager of First Logic, said "In this globally economic tough time, the open source model is in the spotlight more than ever as it helps companies improve efficiency with less time and at a lower cost. It plays an integral role in managing today's learning environment and the world's evolving technology. Therefore, it is essential that we have to keep pace with the rapid change, and strengthen IT capabilities of our young generation to enable them to sustain their competitiveness in the global community."     

The Open Jive challenge is for university students. Participants will pit their skills against their peers on a national level in two challenges. Teams (3 persons each) which have their business cases selected will develop their Web 2.0 solutions using Sun's leading-edge portfolio of open source technologies such as Java technology, Open Solaris, NetBeans IDE, and MySQL database and have a chance to pitch it to a panel of judges comprised of Sun developers and industry experts.

The winning Open Jive teams from Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Singapore and Indonesia will compete on a regional level.

Teams will be judged on innovation and creativity, effective use of technology and its commercial relevance and value. The winning teams will receive total cash worth Bt100,000 as well as other prizes and the winner will stand a chance to compete in the regional challenge and win an additional prize bounty of US$3,000 in cash and attend Sun's worldwide developer conference - Sun Tech Days in 2009/2010.

"Educational institutes take center stage in developing and encouraging interest in the use of open source technologies. As the largest commercial contributor to open source, Sun is working closely with schools and nurturing even greater student engagement, participation and sharing on open source innovation. We are encouraging Thailand's potential developers to build next generation applications using freely available technologies to address opportunities they see in the world around," said Rampa.

Last year's competition was named Java Jive Regional Challenge and supported by Software Park Thailand and Thai Medical Informatics Association. The winning team was from Kasetsart University, who represented Thailand in the regional round and was the regional winning team beating its Singaporean and Malaysian competitors with the application called Calorie Assistants which was designed to combat global warming.

Students can register at http://th.sun.com/openjive by May 31, 2009. For more information and inquiries, contact 089 686 5070 or 089 491 5333.