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Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: JAVA) is stepping up its rebranding mission as the Java company, throwing off its workstation cloak in exchange for an identity as the vendor of powerful systems and tools for developers.
Sun on Monday announced the immediate availability of its GlassFish V2 application server, an open source version of Java System Application Server 9.1.
The new version has enterprise features that include clustering and advanced administration.
What Developers Need
Sun touts GlassFish's features as being suited for what developers need for scalable and mission-critical deployments.
So why pay for the commercial counterpart?
"The difference is when you move from development to production," Ken Drachnik, Sun open source community marketing 
manager, told LinuxInsider.
"When large companies move from development to production environments, they want indemnification and support features that are available through subscriptions," he said.
Price Cuts
Sun also announced a reduced price for that support. Sun has lowered license and support costs of the Sun Java System Application Server to US$4,500. The old price was about "50 percent to 75 percent more," Drachnik said.
Further wooing developers, Sun announced the beta of NetBeans 6.0 IDE, which stands for Integrated Development Environment.
NetBeans is designed to enable developers to get the tools they need out of the box, to create cross-platform Java desktop, enterprise and Web applications
Trouble is, you had to download components separately with 5.5, Kuldip Oberoi, Sun's product line manager for developer tools and emerging Internet technologies, told LinuxInsider. No longer -- with 6.0, he said, "you can be up and running and productive right away."
NetBeans and Ruby
NetBeans 6.0 has also added new features to its Editor and enhanced support for the dynamic language, Ruby.
The production release is to be offered under both the Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL) and GNU General Public License version 2 (GPLv2).
"There's still some language in version 3 that needs to be cleared up," Drachnik said.
NetBeans is generally regarded as a sign of Sun's overall strategy to solidify recognition as a market leader in technologies for system developers.
Developer Collateral
"It's an important piece of Sun's developer-facing collateral," Burton Group analyst Joe Niski told LinuxInsider.
"You can download NetBeans from the same web page that you download the JDK (Java Development Kit) from. It's key to having a complete solution set for developers," he said.
"It's likely that NetBeans will always be the first IDE to support the latest Java language and JDK features," Niski added.
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