| Wind River joins OSDL, mulls Carrier Grade Linux strategy |
Dec. 01, 2003
Embedded software giant Wind River announced today that it has joined the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) and will participate in the Lab's Carrier Grade Linux (CGL) Working Group. The announcement continues the company's recent about-face on Linux, an operating system it historically deprecated.
Wind River says the CGL specification has influenced many of its telecom equipment customers to migrate from "fragmented UNIX offerings" to Linux. Customers are increasingly using Linux to control and manage sophisticated telecom and networking systems that also use Wind River's VxWorks real-time operating system (RTOS) for data plane functions, the company says.
"Many of our network infrastructure customers use [VxWorks] along with Linux," notes Tony Tryba, vice president and general manager of market divisions for Wind River.
Is Wind River CGL in the works?
Will Wind River create and sell its own Carrier Grade Linux distribution, competing with established CG Linux providers like MontaVista, Red Hat, SuSE, and TimeSys?
"Telecom customers want Linux," answers Michel Genard, general manager of Wind River's Tools Division, "But I can't say today whether we will have a Carrier Grade Linux. We see an opportunity for Linux in certain markets -- a supplier, tools provider, services opportunity. The telecom market is still in an early stage of Linux, in terms of deployment. We want to bring our expertise."
"Right now, we are working to understand the business model," Genard adds. "We don't want to be a free foundation. We want to grow the company. Being part of OSDL will let us listen, be part of the working groups, begin to contribute."
In early October 2003, Wind River's Senior Vice President of Products, Dave Fraser, said that Wind River is exploring business opportunities related to Linux. Since that time the company's only visible Linux-related product has come from Genard's tools division, which added Linux support to Wind River's VisionProbe system bring-up tools. The company also announced in October that Icon Laboratories will support its Wind Manage SNMP, CLI, and Web device management software suite on Linux as well as Solaris and BSD UNIX.
Market pressures
Wind River is by far the world's largest embedded software company, and the company does about 30 percent of its business -- down from 50 percent, according to Genard -- in the telecom and networking markets. The company's sluggish performance, particularly in the communications market, is believed to have caused the ouster of CEO Tom St. Denis in July.
Wind River reported positive cash flow for its most recent reporting period, and recently appointed a new CEO. But the company has lost $579 million since January 2000, and has seen revenues decline from $438 million in fiscal 2001 to $249 million in its last full year ended in January, 2003, according to Associated Press.
Wind River hopes its considerable experience and resources will enable it to make meaningful contributions to CGL -- and find an effective CGL business model. "Wind River is committed to working with OSDL so that we can help influence the development of the Carrier Grade Linux specification and accelerate its adoption in the telecommunications industry," notes Tryba.
Whistling a different tune
Genard admits that Wind River misjudged Linux in the past: "We have been very aggressive in speaking out against Linux in the past -- in a mode of fighting Linux, saying Linux was bad," says Genard. "That was the wrong fight. We now realize that Linux has a lot of benefit, and has a lot of traction, and can benefit customers."
"This announcement is about our commitment in recognizing that Linux and VxWorks are both relevant [in the telecom and networking infrastructure markets]," he adds. "Linux is making headway, and we are committed to see how we will support Carrier Grade Linux customers."
"We recognize that people won't necessarily believe us -- it's a big change," says Genard.
Two OSes are better than one
"Linux is going to grow, and VxWorks is going to grow," Genard continues. "Some overlap will exist, and that's ok. We do not control Linux, but we can understand how to make it better. We do control VxWorks, and we can learn how to make VxWorks stronger, to be more relevant. One side alone [i.e. Linux or VxWorks] cannot do everything."
"Customers want to continue with VxWorks, but they also want to deploy Linux. Our mistake in the past was trying to convince customers that they should deploy VxWorks everywhere; but it was the wrong thing to do, trying to fit VxWorks where the technology was not necessarily appropriate. It is better to let go, and let customers deploy Linux where it is more appropriate. We want to help customers to be more efficient in deploying and debugging Linux," adds Genard.
Deja vu
It should be noted that this is not an entirely new approach for Wind River. Back in 2001, the company acquired BSDi with the intention that BSD UNIX would provide a solution to the "Linux problem" and round out the company's OS offerings.
"Wind River's strategy with BSD was to provide Linux-like OS -- an open source, UNIX API," notes Genard, who says the company felt that with BSD UNIX, they could "provide something close to Linux's attributes -- a good solution for the customers."
"We [subsequently] realized that our strategy around BSD was wrong, it wasn't sufficient, so we [eventually] dropped BSD," Genard says. "It wasn't clear what the market was looking for -- it [BSD] was too niched to be successful."
"We [then] realized we needed to endorse and embrace Linux, find a way to build a business that provides value and a revenue stream," he adds.
"The Wind River BSD product is now 'end-of-lifed' and we have disengaged from BSD completely," says Genard.
The purging of BSD from Wind River's product line was accomplished quietly, and without a formal announcement.
Market reaction
Analysts have suggested that Wind River's anti-Linux past could hurt its new Linux plans.
But for its part, the OSDL appears ready to forgive and forget. Stuart Cohen, CEO of OSDL, says. "We believe that Wind River's expertise and leadership in embedded systems can add significant value to our Carrier Grade Linux Working Group. As Linux becomes more widely deployed in the telecom market, Wind River's support and contributions will be important in accelerating customer adoption of CGL."
In a related announcement, Wind River has announced it will join the Eclipse consortium, a prominent open source project promoting a universal platform for cross-vendor tools integration.
-- by Henry Kingman, editor. Rick Lehrbaum, editor-in-chief, contributed to this report.
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