Google, IBM, Sun cite developer outreach

"At Sun, we have the 'Engineers Gone Wild' notion," where engineers are enthusiastic, but there are laws governing who owns what IP and what can be done with it, she said. Opening up should be done gradually to build trust. Sun, for example, took its time in open-sourcing Java amid ongoing pressures to open the platform, she added.

Other recommendations include nurturing the creative processes and managing ecosystem expectations around actions. Companies also should prepare for culture change and manage corporate and community elements of brand. Once open, companies should embrace openness and educate people about business climate, she said.

Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz blogs, which is helpful in that the CEO can explain what is going on, said Elliott. Afterward, Elliott said she did not think blogs needed to be pre-approved by corporate public relations staffs, but that a company needs to be run really well and that internal strategic consistency is ensured.

In related news, IBM is offering a mashup portfolio involving IBM Lotus Mashups, for nontechnical users to build mashups; InfoSphere MashupHub, featuring a Web 2.0 environment; and WebSphere sMash, which is an agile development environment, Mandelstein said in an e-mail after her presentation.

"Combined, these three products enable everyone from the non-technical business user to the IT manager to develop dynamic applications to satisfy an immediate need," Mandelstein said. IBM is leveraging the three technologies in its IBM Mashup Center platform announced this week.

Also at the Evans conference, Pieter Humphrey, senior product marketing manager at BEA Systems, said the company in a week would be launching a Facebook application called Dev2Dev Book. The application allows persons with similar interests in BEA products to find each other, he said.

On Tuesday afternoon at the event, a Microsoft official used the term "NextWeb" to describe a group of Web development technologies that includes some Microsoft software and some from other sources.

"NextWeb is really compelling user experiences on the Web," said Microsoft's Jas Sandhu, evangelist for developer and platform evangelism at Microsoft.

Featured as part of the NextWeb concept are Microsoft technologies including Silverlight, which is Microsoft's new multimedia browser plug-in platform, ASP.Net 2.0, and AJAX, as well as non-Microsoft technologies such as Adobe's Flex and Flash.