Yesterday night’s so-called “Partner VIP event” gave us a preview as to what Sun will be emphasising at JavaOne this year. Receiving as much fanfare as ever before: JavaFX, version 1.2 of which is being officially released today (June 2nd) – for Desktop as well as for mobile. 

Secondly, the Java Store and Java Warehouse story was briefly revealed, with more details expected at tomorrow’s opening Keynote. Sun is not proposing to host an app store itself, but to provide the infrastructure to whoever wants to. The Java Warehouse is supposed to act as a central repository for apps, which Java Store hosters can tap into, whilst retaining their own front-end and billing schemes. 

Almost as noticeable as the above was the lack of any mentioning what-so-ever of technologies such as Android, Groovy/Grails. Is it forbidden for Sun employees present anything on these (for many) tactically highly important technologies?

Finally, Canoo’s fame really does appear to be growing. Not only we we appear in the official presentations (see pic) but it’s really impressive how many folks are coming up to us and saying how they’ve heard about this Swiss company.

David Douglas, Senior VIP Cloud Computing and Developer platforms, kicked off CommunityOne with healthy enthusiasm this morning. The central message is that communities are absolutely necessary for future development – and not just software but humanity as a whole. Very profound!

Lew Tucker then joined Douglas on the stage to talk about Cloud Computing. Pay as you go is the idea… and presumably how Sun hopes to turn its financial fortunes around. He notes that cloud computing is more likely to succeed when budgets for proprietary data centres are being slashed.

Douglas (left) and Tucker (right) then talked about Sun’s Open Cloud Platform. Early access for this platform is expected in Summer 09. The goal: Make it possible for any developer to have his or her own virtual data centre in the cloud. Data centre of course provides complete monitoring and control. Sun Cloud also provides load testing, as well a choice of app servers e.g. Tomcat, Glassfish. More info at www.sun.com/cloud and at the “cloud zone” at Java One.