Wind River is taking its technology to the sky, literally, thanks to a
pair of deals announced today in the aerospace and defense sectors. The
announcements come one day after the company acquired
the ScopeTools Business Unit from its partner Real-Time Innovations (RTI).
Galileo Avionica developed a new helicopter map generation and control
system using Wind Rivers’ General Purpose Platform. According to Wind River,
a prototype of the new system was developed and delivered in three months.
Northrop Grumman is going to be using Wind River’s Platform for Safety
Critical as part of the defense contractors’ efforts in the Joint Unmanned
Combat Air Systems (J-UCAS) program. The X-47B portion of J-UCAS will have
a Wind River device software foundation for its embedded vehicle
management and mission computers. J-UCAS is a joint U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy and
DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) program. The first test flights
are scheduled for 2007.
According to John Fanelli, vice president of product planning and
Management at Wind River, aerospace and defense is a core focus for Wind
River and historically, was one of the earliest markets in which Wind
River did business.
“Currently, A&D is Wind River’s second largest business unit and is
growing. It now represents 25 percent of Wind River’s revenue,” Fanelli
told internetnews.com.
“Contractors in the A&D industry are faced
with Department of Defense [DoD] budget cuts and mandates for open
architectures that enable interoperability, thereby reducing maintenance
and support costs. Wind River’s open standards-based development and
run-time products meet the ongoing needs of A&D customers.”
Fanelli said that Wind River’s Platform for Safety Critical
is currently used by a number of global contractors. Some of the projects
that are using the platform include the 7E7 Common Boeing C-130 AMP,
EADS/CASA refueling boom and EADS/Eurocopter flight navigation system.
Wind River yesterday announced the acquisition of the ScopeTools suite from its partner
RTI. ScopeTools, which includes StethoScope,
TraceScope, ProfileScope, MemScope and CoverageScope, already provides code
coverage, system visualization and dynamic debugging capabilities for the
Wind River Workbench product line.
“What this affords us is the future and the ability to develop this
product and drive it forward in a way that benefits developers in the
device software space,” John Bruggeman, chief marketing officer for Wind River, told internetnews.com.
“We’ve worked with RTI for a really long time we have joint customer
experience the products are well integrated they work together,”
Bruggeman said. “These deals make a lot of sense to us, rather than these
grand announcements that make a lot of noise in the market and then the benefit never really
happens.”
Bruggeman said the value of the deal was $10 million in cash and stock and closes immediately.
A study late last
year reported that Microsoft was the leader in the embedded space, a
result which Wind River disputes. According to research firm Venture
Development Corporation (VDC), Microsoft was the leading vendor of
embedded operating systems for 2003. VDC placed Microsoft ahead of Wind River, Palm and
Symbian.
“It really depends on how you look at the embedded market and how you
define it in order to determine who really has market share leadership,”
Bruggeman said. “The key place that Microsoft has leadership is in the
handheld space, and we don’t really play in that space. So if you’re
counting up units, far and away handhelds will make the difference.
“If you count revenue and dollar spend we’re vastly ahead in that
direction,” he continued. “We continue to extend our leadership where people are spending their
dollars.”
