The biggest and perhaps only change to be seen at Wind River, since its acquisition by Intel, is a closer focus on end-markets rather than technology platforms.
“Intel said it would be a hands-off strategy and that is what we have seen so far,” Jim Douglas, senior v-p for corporate marketing at Wind River told Electronics Weekly.
Douglas does expect closer links between Wind River’s software business and Intel’s hardware processor platforms.
“Those discussions are now taking place,” said Douglas. “I see Wind River shifting its focus to more of a vertical play.”
The model is that Wind River’s operating systems will be packaged with Intel hardware at processor and board level. “This is already happening, but it is only the tip of the iceberg,” said Douglas.
“Next phase will be to go up the stack and that means forming partnerships with other software vendors to provide full application solutions,” said Douglas.
Markets most likely to be addressed as part of this strategy include networking and military/aerospace.
The links between Wind River OS and software, and Intel’s processors is strongest in the networking market. “Already working with Intel on partitioning strategies for both software and hardware,” said Douglas.
However, military/aerospace is one of Wind River’s most important end markets.
“The military/aerospace market is very important for us,” said Douglas.
According to Douglas, the big change in this market is the connected battlefield.
“This means supporting web-enabled terminal and that means bringing Android to the mil/aerospace market,” said Douglas.
“This is a big opportunity for us,” said Douglas.
Linux is central to Wind River’s plans for the military/aerospace market and it expects a high security version of Linux to be certified in 2011.
Where devices need to be web-enable, Douglas sees the opportunity for Wind River’s commercial-grade Linux products and this will happen in industry markets such as medical and security systems along with military/aerospace.
Clearly, tuning the business to focus on end market products rather than core technologies such as operating systems and tools is a big change for Wind River.
“We are not an RTOS company, we are an embedded company,” said Douglas, a bit like reciting a mantra.
That is the biggest clue we get that under Intel’s ownership, the software company is changing its identity. A subtle change, but change all the same.