Enea Posts Q1 Financials

DSO vendor Enea posted its first-quarter financials today. There's good news, and not so good.

The good: Net sales rose by 7% to 187.3 million Swedish kroner (SEK), or approximately $29.9 million. Software sales rose by 12%, to SEK 64.5 million (about $10.3 million), while consulting and other revenue hit SEK 122.8 million (approximately $19.6 million), up from SEK 116.9 million (about $18.7 million) a year earlier. Notably, this is Enea's eight straight quarter of revenue growth.

The not-so-good: Profits didn't do much. Gross profits rose by only SEK 400,000, to SEK 81.9 million (about $13.1 million). After-tax profits fell to SEK 11.5 million ($1.8 million), down from SEK 16.8 million in the year-earlier quarter. Operating profits also fell, to SEK 16.1 million (nearly $2.6 million) this year from SEK 16.5 million a year earlier. Margins shrunk, as well, to 8.6%, down from 9.5% a year earlier.

Enea is still mainly a Nordic company specializing in telecom. Looked at geographically, 71% of first-quarter sales came from the Nordic region. By market area, 76% came from telecom. That said, North American sales are rising and now represent fully 23% of the company's first-quarter sales. The Swedish company's expansion plans seem to be gaining traction here in the U.S.

For more info, plus a link to a detailed PDF, see this Enea page.

Posted at 01:59 PM | Comments

Two or More Processors, Nearly Half the Time

Everyone "knows" that device-software projects have gotten more complex. Well, here's some hard evidence: Nearly half of all device projects use two or more processors, according to a survey conducted jointly by EE Times and Embedded Systems Design.

Other findings from the survey, which elicited more than 1,215 responses:

• In nearly 55% of all projects, the main processor is a 32-bit model. In 45% of instances, the processor's clock speed is less than 100 MHz.

• Software development tools are the No. 1 selection factor for processors, named by nearly 70% of respondents.

• When a processor is selected for multiple projects, the main reason is to maintain software compatibility; this reason was cited by 65% of respondents.

• When a different processor is chosen for a new project, the No. 1 reasons is the desire for new features. This reason was cited by half of respondents.

For more, including a series of bar charts illustrating the survey's main findings, see this news story, Nearly 45% of Projects Use Two or More Processors: Survey.

Posted at 01:20 PM | Comments

Other Sites Wake Up to DSO

For nearly a year, DSO.com has been a lonely voice in the wilderness when it comes to covering device software optimization. But we're happy to report that a few other sites have finally taken notice.

SD Times recently ran a story entitled "DSO: Valuable Strategy, or a New Label on an Old Package?" While writer Lisa Morgan doesn't answer the headline question, she does give a good overview of activity at Wind River, Enea, and Green Hills. You can read the full story here.

LinuxDevices.com have woken up to the DSO (good morning!), and this week posted an interesting guest column by Victor Yodaiken, CEO of FSMLabs, entitled "Software Reuse and DSO -- Breaking the Rules of Embedded Software Development." View that one here.

LinuxDevices also posted a DSO Timeline that would be complete if only it listed the May 2005 launch of DSO.com. (To be fair, we do get a brief mention, but merely as a site for vendor white papers. Um, no.) View the timeline here.

Hey, fellow editors, welcome aboard!

Posted at 04:44 PM | Comments

Download DSO World Presentations

If you missed DSO World, or if you attended but missed some of the sterling presentations, you're in luck. We're now offering 13 DSO World presentations for free download.

Among the PDF files available are "A 12-step program for device engineers," by Wind River CEO Ken Klein; "The DSO Revolution," by Enea CEO Johan Wall; and "Multicore for Embedded Systems," by Max Domeika of Intel.

See the complete list and download the DSO World presentations here. Or view the DSO World Presentation promo box on the upper right-hand corner of the DSO.com home page.

Posted at 12:15 PM | Comments

Wind River Offers MontaVista Trade-Ins

It's pretty quiet out there--what with everyone recuperating after EclipseCon, MultiCore, ESC, DSO World, and a few others I can't recall--so this is a good time to catch up on an April 5 announcement. That day Wind River announced a trade-in program for companies shipping devices that run MontaVista's Linux.

According to Wind River, the trade-in program offers a safe migration strategy for companies that commit to developing their next project on a Wind River device software platform. More details on this Wind River press release.

This could explain why one of DSO.com's regular contributors got such a chilly reception from MontaVista earlier this week. Our writer is working on a story about an important aspect of DSO adoption (watch for his story soon) and wanted to get someone from MV to go on the record. But a key MV marketing manager refused, saying his company would not be part of any effort that used the term DSO. DSO, the manager told our writer, is a mere marketing term and part of an attempt to "bamboozle" (his word) the industry. Gee, and to think we wanted to get their side of the story!

Posted at 04:10 PM | Comments

Eclipse DSDP Leader is Blogging

One huge benefit of attending shows like last week's DSO World and ESC is the chance to finally meet the many people one talks to on the phone and corresponds with via e-mail. One of the many great people I met last week was Doug Gaff, a Wind River manager and head of Eclipse Foundation's Device Software Development Platform (DSDP) project. This week I learned that Doug has a blog -- the only question is, why am I surprised?

In his most recent post, Doug provides a useful report for those (like me) who did not attend this year's EclipseCon: Final Thoughts on EclipseCon 2006.

Clearly, a blog to watch, and bookmark.

Posted at 01:07 PM | Comments

DSO World = Woodstock?

I just got back from the first-ever DSO World pavilion within ESC Silicon Valley, which was a huge success. DSO World featured three days of expert presentations; product demos from the likes of IBM, Wind River, and Encirq; and the best free espresso in San Jose. My favorite response came from Tom Hayes, VP of marketing at Enea: "This is the Woodstock of DSO. And just as it was with that event, 10 years from now, everybody will claim to have been here."

For the record, among those who definitely attended DSO World were the panelists for a session entitled "DSO in the real world." We had John Bruggeman, CMO of Wind River; Karl-Gustav Niska, VP of marketing at Enea; and Dave Kleidermacher, VP of engineering at Green Hills. Moderated by yours truly, this panel for the first time had a cross-industry discussion of DSO realities. The Woodstock equivalent would have to have been an imaginary jam session featuring Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana, and Jerry Garcia. Sparks flew, man!

Posted at 11:24 AM | Comments

More News from ESC/DSO World

Given all the excitement around launching DSO World yesterday, I managed to overlook an important announcement at Embedded Systems Conference Silicon Valley. Namely, a partnership and new product from software suppliers Enea and MontaVista.

The two companies are jointly offering what they call a Telecom-in-a-Box solution, a software platform for distributed telecom apps. Known formally as the Network Application Services Platform (NASP), the jointly produced product combines MontaVista's Linux products (either carrier grade or Pro edition) with Enea's Element middleware, Polyhedra fault-tolerant database, and Eclipse-based development tools. NASP is also available with Enea's OSE and OSEck real-time operating systems, and it uses Enea's new Linx open-source interprocess communications services, too. Shipments are set to start in June, with pricing at $25,000/seat.

Posted at 06:33 PM | Comments

Today's ESC Announcements

Greetings from ESC Silicon Valley and DSO World in San Jose, Calif. The show hasn't quite opened yet this morning, but I've learned that among the 300 companies exhibiting here over the next three days, Enea, Green Hills, Encirq, Express Logic, and Eclipse are making DSO-related announcements today.

Enea is annoucing a multi-OS platform for distributed networking equipment and devices. The new platform reportedly includes the OSE, OSEck, and Linux OSes, and it is designed for both high performance and scalability.

Green Hills Software is announcing u-velOSity, the newest addition to its Integrity OS family. The new product is designed for resource-constrained devices; its ROM footprint gets as small as 1600 bytes, RAM footprint down to 1000 bytes, and service call times as low as 30 cycles.

Encirq is announcing version 2.2 of its flagship product, Encirq Data Foundation Framework. Key enhancements aim to improve device-software performance while speeding time-to-market. Improvements to version 2.2 include user-extensible indexing, enhanced build modularity, and time performance enhancements.

Express Logic announced that its ThreadX RTOS now powers more than 300 million devices worldwide. Customers include HP, which uses ThreadX in its ink-jet and All-In-One printers; and Broadcom, which uses the RTOS in its wireless networking system-on-chips (SOCs).

Eclipse Foundation, eager to shed its status as the industry's best kept secret, will be showcasing its Device Software Development Platform (DSDP) and giving examples of how competing vendors are collaborating through Eclipse.

I'll post more on DSO-related announcements from ESC as it comes.

Posted at 01:13 PM | Comments