[9fans] Just FYI ... - news from embedded front ....; OS for smart devices ; Free BSD UNIX and more

[9fans] Just FYI ... - news from embedded front ....; OS for smart devices ; Free BSD UNIX and more

[Alexander Povolotsky]

Software guru awaits smart devices
Company hopes to win wave of new customers

By Thom Calandra, FT MarketWatch.com
LONDON (FTMW) - Jerry Fiddler has stuck with his Wind River Systems for 19
years as the California company searched for its true calling.

Now, at the age of 49, the kid who wrote code in a Berkeley garage is on a
small acquisition spree. In the past 18 months, Fiddler, as chairman and
co-founder of Wind River (WIND: news, msgs, alerts) , has transformed his
software company into an open-source designer and developer of embedded
computers.

Fiddler's goal is to pave the way for the development of a deluge of smart
devices, contraptions like Internet-enabled ovens and video recorders that
can be programmed from long distances. The brains behind those devices are
called embedded systems, the backbone of Wind River's business.

"The overarching dynamic is that the center of the information universe is
moving off the desktop," Fiddler says in London, where he is meeting U.K.
and European employees this week. "Most of the computers we access will not
be computers; they will be in our cars and in our kitchens."

Wind River, a $2 billion Nasdaq company that went public in 1993, acquired a
digital-signal-processor operating system from Eonic Systems of Belgium so
that it could support the tiny circuits that are embedded into so-called
"smart" devices.

Fiddler's company also bought the assets of Berkeley Software Design, a
commercial supplier of the Internet operating system BSD UNIX. In buying the
neighboring company for an undisclosed sum, Wind River also promised to
support FreeBSD, a free, open-source development, like Linux.

Unlike Linux, FreeBSD has no licensing requirements that require developers
to make changes in the operating system available to one and all. Fiddler
sees BSD as an important system for the operation of embedded devices on
UNIX.

The race to build an operating system for the potentially thousands of
makers of smart devices is one that is taking hold at Microsoft (MSFT: news,
msgs, alerts) , Red Hat (RHAT: news, msgs, alerts) , IBM (IBM: news, msgs,
alerts) and others.

Microsoft hopes to dominate the market for operating systems that drive
Internet-linked, 32-bit devices.

Wind River's recent purchases will help the company reach some of the
225,000 developers of embedded devices or systems, says HR Hambrecht analyst
Prakesh Patel, who attended an embedded systems conference this month in San
Francisco. Patel sees Wind River generating $570 million of sales in the
current fiscal year, an annual increase of 30 percent. The analyst also
expects a $50 million profit for the year.

Fiddler, having handed day-to-day operations to CEO Tom St. Denis, expects
Wind River to benefit from a rush into embedded computing. The company hopes
to replace internal systems that companies such as Sony and Nortel once used
to develop their smart devices. Wind River also designs and manages devices
and their high-end systems, he says.

Fiddler, who developed embedded systems as a college student in the early
1970s, says the move to Internet-enabled devices is taking longer than he
anticipated.

"This industry can be static for a long time," he says. "Look at your basic
microprocessor; it hasn't changed for years. It's gotten faster and smaller,
but its structure is essentially the same at it was 20 years ago."

And then, there's that next generation

Fiddler sees potential sales at telecommunications companies that are
overhauling their hardware and software systems for the next-generation of
always-on Internet mobile phones.

"The hard work in 3G (third-generation phones) is not in the handset but in
the base station. Think of a Nortel or an Ericsson or even a Hewlett-Packard
that is building or helping to build base stations using DSP
microprocessors, routing equipment and so on. It's complex and requires a
common messaging layer among its systems," he says.

As for what embedded computing means for folks in their everyday lives,
Fiddler is agnostic.

"When the phonograph came out, (Thomas) Edison thought it would be for
communication."

 "When the phonograph came out, (Thomas) Edison thought it would be for
communication, and when the phone came out, (Alexander Graham) Bell thought
it would be for music. We are at the start of a tech revolution and no one
knows what it is going to look like," he says. "Our job is to enable it."

Wind River, for example, assisted in development of a Sony streaming video
device that allows users to walk around the house, holding a board that lets
them watch television. "I don't know if people will watch TV this way," says
Fiddler, a musician whose hobby is digital mixing, composing and recording.
"We as technologists are least qualified to answer the usage question. Now,
people who design kitchens will have some ideas worth listening to."

As for the technology tumble. Fiddler says he is willing to be patient. Wind
River has about $130 million of cash and 2,100 employees.

"Obviously this is a tough cycle for everyone," he says. "But we have
earnings and we have customers and we have kept clients' commitments. Our
customers are moving more to outsourcing, and that benefits us."





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