Wind River’s Linux transformation

Stephen Shankland over at CNET has good article/interview, this one on “Wind River’s Linux transformation”. He interviews the relatively new CEO of Wind River Ken Klein. Ken appears to be saying the right things to try to get his company back on track and there’s lots for the Windows Embedded team to learn from here as well.

While I disagree with some of Ken’s viewpoints and he sprinkles in a few incorrect statements about Microsoft and Windows Embedded, I do agree with some his comments wrt the embedded market as a whole. Like the shrinking “time to market” facing embedded manufacturers and his effort to differentiate “device software” from “embedded software”.

Forgive me if I sound like a marketing weenie here but these two issues “Time to Market” and “Device Software” are where Windows Embedded can provide a lot of value:
TTM: You get the Windows APIs that developers are familiar with and allow you to leverage off the shelf apps or drivers.
"Device Software" : Develop your custom apps on top of the .NET or Win32 APIs to distinguish yourself from your competitior or provide additional value in your device.

One interesting thing to note here is that with Wind River focusing more time and resources on Linux, VxWorks will become less of a priority to them. It'll be interesting to see if there's fallout with the customers or if WR can sustain its popularity.

- Andy Allred

Comments

• Anonymous
  April 07, 2005
  The Windows API is one of thousends of APIs. Why should they use an API that is not an official standard. Is not platformindependent and not full documented. No future.
• Anonymous
  June 17, 2009
  PingBack from http://patioumbrellasource.info/story.php?id=2839