Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) is acquiring embedded software developer Wind River (NASDAQ: WIND) for $884 million. Wind River is a company I’ve been tracking for years as a key player in the embedded software operating system space, first with its proprietary VxWorks OS and since 2004 with Linux.
Wind River is also doing reasonably well in the current economy. For fiscal 2009, which ended on January 31, Wind River reported $359.8 million in revenue, a 9 percent year-over-year increase.
Intel and Wind River are hardly strangers. Wind River has been working closely with Intel for years, on both Moblin (Mobile Linux) as well in the in-car infotainment area.
What is particularly interesting, though, is the fact that in the embedded space, Wind River is not an Intel-only embedded vendor. In fact, VxWorks works on a wide number of embedded processors, as does its flavor of Linux.
