Seen Around the Web

Here are some random yet relevant browsings online: Motley Fool likes Wind River; IBM Rational engineer to give Webinar on open source software; and software vendors to demo an integrated Linux mobile phone stack.

* Motley Fool writer Tom Taulli likes what he sees at DSO vendor Wind River. "With its strong technology, top customer base, and solid financials, Wind River is well-positioned to benefit from this market move," he writes in this recent article, Wind River's Climate Improving.

* Erich Gamma, IBM distinguished engineer at IBM Rational Software and a leader of the Eclipse project, will be giving a Webinar on open source software development on Thursday, Dec. 8, at 11 a.m. Pacific / 2 pm Eastern. Learn more and register here.

* Four software vendors will demonstrate an integrated Linux mobile phone stack in San Diego this week, reports LinuxDevices.com. The four are: MontaVista, Digital Airways, Sky MobileMedia, and startup Bluefin Mobile. The four will reportedly show their combined offering running on a Texas Instruments OMAP smartphone reference platform at Sky's "World Handset Forum" event. To learn more view the article.

Posted at 12:04 PM | Comments

The End of 'Embedded'?

Is the term "embedded system" obsolete? We here at DSO.com think so, and so, apparently, do the smart guys at Venture Development Corp. In VDC's November embedded systems bulletin, they argue -- convincingly, IMHO -- that "embedded" no longer gets to the essence of the market.

VDC isn't quite ready to stop using the term "embedded." But they argue that it's time, in the words of their November bulletin, to forget embedded: "The form factor of the device is not the key to whether or not the device is a good potential market...but rather what the device has to do in the real world. Look to performance requirements, not physical characteristics."

The old definition of "embedded" is meaningless today, VDC argues, given the variety of devices and the "sheer power" (their words) of the components used to build them.

These comments, by the way, are part of a longish look at Green Hills' strategy to reposition itself. You can get the report from VDC.

What do you think? Is "embedded" completely obsolete, merely on its way out, or still alive and well?

Posted at 01:55 PM | Comments

'Proprietary' No More?

What is a proprietary RTOS, anyway, and how does it differ from other forms of this beast?

This good question was recently brought to my attention by Jan Liband, director of marketing at ENCIRQ. Thanks, Jan.

And for the crime of tossing around the phrase "proprietary RTOS" as if I knew precisely what it meant, I must plead guilty. (See, for evidence, my recent blog, Proprietary RTOS, RIP? Not Yet.)

Truth is, in most of my discussions with software vendors and consultants, the term "proprietary" does not come up that often. And when it does, I am often less than 100 percent clear about what it means.

Thanks to Jan's prodding, it now seems to me that a much more useful distinction for an RTOS is commercial vs. in-house. For example, a quick look through my files turned up some recent Venture Development research that shows the DSO market comprising three main sectors: operating systems developed in-house, commercial Linux, and commercial RTOS. In other words, you have just three choices for a device OS:

• Your device can run on an OS your company developed in-house;
• Your device can run on a commercial RTOS your company bought from a software vendor (Wind River, Green Hills, Microsoft, etc.); or
• Your device can run on a commercial Linux distribution your company has licensed from an open-source vendor (Red Hat, Wind River, etc.).

Makes sense to me. So, is it time to chuck the term "proprietary" and stick instead with "commercial" or "in-house" when discussing RTOSes? My vote is a guilty yes.

Posted at 01:46 PM | Comments

BrightPoint's Dashboard; Linux for Phones; WinCE Wiki

Here are new items of DSO interest: BrightPoint Consulting is supplying Wind River with biz-intelligence dashboards...BusyWeek has a good story on Linux and phones...and Microsoft launched a wiki for Windows CE developers.

BrightPoint Consulting is providing DSO vendor Wind River with real-time interactive business intelligence dashboards for monitoring customer satisfaction levels worldwide. BrightPoint says Wind River is using the interactive data visualization dashboards to view real-time reports from customer service departments, monitor the status of service requests, and track the results of satisfaction surveys across key accounts and regions. (View the press release.)

BusinessWeek has a good story on Linux for the mobile phone market. The upshot: Linux on phones is real. Motorola, for example, has shipped 3 million Linux phones in Asia. And Nokia, which runs Symbian OS on its popular S60 smartphones, is looking at Linux and has already shipped some Linux-based product. (View the article, Linux Answers Phone Makers' Call.)

Microsoft has launced a wiki for Windows CE developers. Content includes a WinCE manifesto, introduction to WinCE development tools, and links to blogs, forums, and Webcasts. Being a wiki means visitors (like you) can leave comments, corrections, samples, and questions. (View the new WinCE wiki here.)

Remember, you can now post comments to my DSO.com blog (see below). What's on your mind?

Posted at 12:07 PM | Comments

My Fellow DSO Bloggers

Two members of the DSO community have recently launched blogs of their own. I urge you to check them out.

Dana Gardner, president and principal analyst at Interabor Solutions, and a frequent source for comments in DSO.com articles, has started a blog on Between the Lines. In his most recent entry, "Big Brother or Uncle Sam?" Dana discusses reports that U.S. government security agencies have secretly slipped subversive code into the base of the Linux kernel. Yow.

John Bruggeman, chief marketing officer at DSO software vendor Wind River, is having a good time with his new blog, Being John Bruggeman. In his latest entries, John discusses the trouble with device software, tells what he heard at a recent Silly Valley party, and tells what ails the software industry. And he tops it all off with a cool, Spike Jonze-worthy graphic. A tough act to follow!

Posted at 11:50 AM | Comments

Proprietary RTOS, R.I.P.? Not Yet

I always love the story behind the story. DSO software vendor (and DSO.com sponsor) Wind River yesterday announced version 2.4 of its Workbench suite of open-source, Eclipse-based software-development tools, and version 6.2 of its VxWorks real-time operating system (RTOS). (For more details on the announcement, see our recent news story.)

Behind the announcement is continued strong demand for proprietary RTOSes like VxWorks. According to research from Venture Development Corp. that Wind River has been sharing with both market analysts and the press, exactly half of all DSO sales last year went to proprietary RTOSes and associated products, with the rest split between commercial Linux and in-house development. Linux's share is growing, of course, and in-house development is shrinking. But proprietary RTOSes are holding steady, growing at the same 16 percent to 20 percent a year as the rest of the DSO market, the numbers show. That means proprietary RTOSes will again account for 50 percent of the DSO market this year.

Why isn't Linux completely dominating the market? Several reasons. The military doesn't trust the open nature of Linux, so projects are hard to certify. Makers of high-security devices still don't trust Linux completely, either. And for projects where system availability and device-specific configurations are key, proprietary RTOSes still rule.

What do you think? Will Linux dominate the DSO market anytime soon? Use the comments field below to share your thoughts and opinions.

Posted at 01:14 PM | Comments

Enea Shows (Mostly) Good Financials; EclipseCon Names Speakers

Enea, a vendor of DSO software for the telecom, auto, and medtech sectors (and a sponsor of this site), reported mostly strong financials for the nine-month period Jan. 1 though Sept. 30. Operating profits for the period rose by eight percent, to 40 million Swedish Kroner (SEK), or roughly $4.9 million, on net sales that rose by 10 percent from the year-earlier period, to SEK 519 million (roughly $64 million). For the third quarter alone, operating profits rose by 60 percent from the year-earlier quarter, to SEK 16 million (about $1.97 million), on sales that rose by four percent, to SEK 164 million (or $20.2 million), marking the sixth consecutive quarter of sales growth.

Not all is rosy, however. I couldn't help but notice that operating margins for the company's Embedded Technology sector slipped significantly in the third quarter, to 11.1 percent, down from 20.2 percent in the year-earlier quarter. For the Jan.-Sept. period, Enea's Embedded Technology's margins fell, too, though less steeply, dropping to 9.6 percent from 10.5 percent a year earlier. This, in turn, hurt companywide operating margins for both the third quarter and the nine-month period. Ouch.

That said, CEO Johan Wall insists the Kista, Sweden-based company's transition to a global company is going "according to plan." Among other things, Enea has opened a sales office in Shanghai, he says.

More info: Enea interim financial report.

EclipseCon Speakers: Keynote speakers have been announced for Eclipse Foundation's annual conference, EclipseCon 2006, which will be held March 20-23 at the Santa Clara Convention Center:

• Brian "Boz" Elloy, senior VP of software products at Borland Software.
• Ward Cunningham, director of committee community development at Eclipse Foundation.
• Joel Spolsky, CEO of Fog Creek Software and author of the Joel On Software blog.
• Greg Stein, chairman of the Apache Foundation.
• John Wiegand and Erich Gamma, Project Management Committee (PMC) leaders of the Eclipse Platform project.

More info: EclipseCon official site.

Posted at 11:30 AM | Comments

Microsoft's Embedded Software Group Improves Financials

Microsoft recently announced its Q1:06 financials, which included a more than 50 percent revenue gain and a reduction of losses by its Mobile and Embedded Devices (MED) group. Microsoft attributed the strong sales gain to continued adoption of Windows Mobile software. Major product announcements from both Motorola and Palm highlighted the continued customer momentum of Windows Mobile 5.0, Microsoft says.

More specifically, for the three months ended September 30, 2005, MED had revenue of $74 million, compared with revenue of $49 million a year earlier. The group is still losing money, though less of it: MED's operating loss for Q1:06 came to $2 million, an improvement on the year-earlier quarterly loss of $29 million. (View the Microsoft announcement.)

Even better, this follows a 36 percent revenue improvement in the previous quarter, as we reported in this news analysis story. But revenue has dropped sharply from 2005's fourth quarter to the first of 2006. As we explained, however, at least some of the revenue falloff is attributable to Microsoft's decision to move MapPoint, a $100 million business, out of MED and into the MSN group.

Still, this is all very small change in Microsoft's pocket. MED's revenue represents less than 1 percent of the company's total revenue for the quarter, which exceeded $9.7 billion. And I suppose Microsoft can easily afford that $2 million loss: companywide, operating income for the first quarter came to more than $4 billion and its net, to more than $3.1 billion. Nice work if you can get it.

Posted at 10:21 AM | Comments