VDC Research: Embedded Microprocessor, Board & Systems Market Blog

Alcatel Lucent and Radisys New Product Strategies to Drive Embedded Networking Shares

Yesterday’s  news of Alcatel-Lucent attempting to gain share of the lucrative Core Router market with the introduction of the 7950 routing system is making things interesting.  This new 7950 product line would be leveraging their market share in the edge routing market in order to compete with Cisco and Juniper for a share of the core market. The new 7950 system is claimed to have a 400 Gbps processor capable of handling 70,000 high definition video streams. While this capability is impressive it is also worth noting that it achieves this at a much lower rate of electrical power usage.

The question is whether this huge leap in capability and efficiency is enough to have the major telecoms consider a heterogeneous architecture with the new products coexisting with the incumbents or make the leap of faith to committing to the new Alcatel Lucent product line. No doubt Cisco and Juniper will have products in the pipeline as an answer but the timeline for these being released is uncertain.

One way that Cisco and Juniper can defend their shares is by developing the new products as backwards compatible with the installed base or, at a minimum to the system/backplane units being sold today. That is to say that the new blades/modules could be inserted in equipment/racks that their customers already own or are available today. Otherwise, a complete platform/architecture shift removes a barrier to entry for other companies like Alcate-Lucent. As an example,  we recently observed a new T-Series Radisys 40G ATCA platform introduction where they had employed a flexible compatibility strategy. From what I understood, their customers could introduce the new blades while not having to mothball the older ones until all the slots were filled.Until the new Radisys products shipped, their customers could continue to expand their systems without worry that they would be rapidly obsoleted.

As VDC begins its exciting new research project looking at the Rich Media & Big Data markets we expect that there will be many interesting findings and these recent and anticipated new product offerings certainly are evidence of that.

Extracting Elusive Value from the Embedded Cloud – A Consumer Perspective – Part 2

As we continue this blog series looking at the embedded cloud, I thought I would look at a few more typical household/consumer activities as a place where M2M could deliver value to many stakeholders. In this part 2 we look to food storage and preparation.

 

Food Storage: As food costs rise, there are many ways expenses can be cut with respect to food that is wasted due to spoilage after purchase. In many supermarkets, loyalty cards allow stores to track purchases in exchange for automatic discounts and other benefits. Some stores allow customers to use hand held scanners or even their own HMIs to scan items in the store. Items such as produce can be weighed and a bar-code label that represents the product is printed to be scanned.  If the store can track all this, there can be a system that would allow for this information to be used by the consumer too. In this way, methods could be developed where the consumer’s home inventory of products could be tracked. When an item is used, they would scan the empty container barcode with their HMI and it would be deducted from their inventory. This system could be further augmented if expiration dates were bar-coded. To initiate the integrated M2M inventory system, the consumer needs to go through their residence and scan the items they already own, enter the expiration dates, and purge the expired items as necessary. Appliances might eventually have M2M scanning and measurement features that make this process more automated and precise. 

Food Preparation/Cooking: This is where things come together literally and with respect to the M2M process. It could start where consumers scan all of the cookbooks they own. These would be augmented with the huge variety of recipes available on the web. Then, the process would look to the inventory of products in the home particularly emphasizing the ones that should be used sooner. How much time is available to cook and eat the meal? What is the capability of the person doing the cooking and the available appliances?  Are there dietary concerns? How many servings are needed and, perhaps most importantly, what do the people want to eat? Processing power from the Embedded Cloud could be leveraged to find an optimal set of menu options. Need to buy a few more things to complete the menu? A connected system could allow nearby suppliers to make offers – and even deliver them! Need instructions? Sponsored media sites could allow video/audio clips on the mobile device to provide the needed help. Perhaps the ideal recipe is in a cookbook you own; the system could tell you which book/page has the recipe it. This type of system would work well for a single meal planned on the spot but it could also be ideally suited for those that plan ahead. In this way, a weekly shopping list could be assembled.

A few last thoughts:

• Based on the cloud data, local restaurants can determine menus that might attract more customers.
• Automatically linking home food inventory through the cloud to store delivery services would be a logical next step.
• Booksellers can encourage more cookbook sales in competition with the recipes available for free on the web.

Intelligent Opportunities: Rich Media and Big Data Reshaping OEM Requirements and Business Models

The Internet of Things. Intelligent Systems. M2M. These terms are now commonly heard in the world of embedded computing. And one of the most important related trends, often erroneously associated exclusively with enterprise computing, is that of big data and rich media.  The explosion in the number of devices, the connectivity between them, and their ability to generate large and continuous data streams from sensors, cameras and a range of I/O devices will fundamentally reshape the world in which we live and the embedded computing industry.   

Gathering, securing, transmitting, processing, analyzing and storing this exploding torrent of information represents a huge challenge for existing infrastructure but a great opportunity for providers of network and cloud infrastructure technology such as Cisco, Huawei, Alcatel Lucent, and others. As the embedded market moves towards all-IP networks, these companies are well positioned to supply the necessary solutions to meet next-generation infrastructure requirements for both communications networking and M2M. For example, Huawei has developed a cloud strategy involving partnerships with companies that offer cloud services as a highly scalable platform for delivering and managing them. Based around embedded software, Cisco’s Video Analytics solution allows customers to classify recorded events and also count people and objects. This would allow an embedded customer to monitor its facilities more effectively and with less security personnel. These are just two examples of how embedded cloud services and video analytics are being enabled. However, this rich media and big data trend is not just limited to the networks.

The impact of this trend also extends into the end devices themselves. The embedded hardware being deployed for enabling rich media and big data spans the spectrum from embedded processors to integrated computing systems. For example, Intel has released its Xeon Processor E3-1200v2, which has the capability of encoding and decoding simultaneous video streams and can serve in a variety of vertical market segments including communications devices, gaming platforms, digital security surveillance applications and more.  At the embedded systems level, Radisys recently partnered with Arkadin to provide media servers for Arkadin’s Cloud Collaboration Platform, which delivers conferencing services through a global-IP network.

So the fundamental question for OEMs is not just how the demand for rich media/big data is influencing system requirements, but also how this new functionality and intelligence translates to new business opportunities/models. This question is at the heart of VDC Research Group’s upcoming market research series: Voice of the Customer: Rich Media and Big Data in Embedded Systems.

Now is the opportunity to become a Research Influencer and help guide this research program’s final direction. For more information, please contact us.

Extracting Elusive Value from the Embedded Cloud

In the past few months as work progressed on the VDC Embedded Cloud report, I posted a few blogs on classic examples of M2M connectivity and the values that can be obtained by many stakeholders. Even so, I believe many M2M cases do not fully extract all of the value that can be obtained by that connectivity and, in particular, the data that is collected, processed, and stored in the cloud. In this blog, I thought I would explore in more detail two examples of M2M connectivity to look for that elusive added value.

M2M Example 1: Semiconductor Tester - The latest versions of Advanced Mixed Signal/System on Chip testers have to perform faster than the chips they are testing and are likely using liquid cooling systems. The timing of the digital channels have to be perfect and, at the same time, precise analog sourcing and capture channels are needed for the many analog functions found on the system on chip devices they are testing. These testers are typically on isolated networks as device speeds, capabilities, and product yields are highly confidential particularly during product development. These testers are typically used 24 x 7 and downtime is particularly expensive.

If that semiconductor tester could be connected to the suppliers cloud service, significant value can be seen by all participants especially the owner. The cooling system would be a prime example. In many cases these are closed loop systems and a low level of flow or coolant and/or a high temperature reading can shut the system down automatically. If these sensors could be polled and the data stored and processed, the system owner or supplier could be alerted to possible problems before they cause a shutdown. Small coolant leaks could be detected and mitigated before they cause issues. If the data were made available to coolant suppliers, they could proactively deliver new stock on a just-in-time basis.

Semiconductor testers can generate a lot of data in the process of calibrating and testing themselves. If that self-test and/or calibration data were moved to the cloud it could provide more value by using processes that compare past results with current ones. Even tests that pass in both cases can be statistically evaluated to look for drifting toward limits. In this way, a digital or analog channel boards could be removed before they failed in the middle of a production run.

Now, we will take it up one more notch. If the self-test data from all of the tester supplier’s customers were aggregated in the cloud they could provide even more value particularly in cases where failures occur. By comparing the data from a current failure with those that happened in the past, it is likely that a root cause is already known and therefore can be quickly applied by the service personnel.

If you think that this is all the value that can be extracted from this case of M2M, you would be mistaken. If the semiconductor tester could sense that another machine in the test cell was down, it could run its own self-test programs to take advantage of the lull in the action. If a time based calibration was needed in the near future, it could pull that in as well. In the failure cases noted above, the cloud based data could be used in a Failure Reporting and Corrective Actions System (FRACAS) which might identify problems with a particular component or batch of components. This type of data could be filtered and shared and the benefits would be seen by multiple OEMs as well as component suppliers.

M2M Example 2: Wind Turbine - In some cases, wind turbines are individual units and, in other cases, they are part of a large array of units. This can represent a very fragmented deployment as large arrays are likely in remote areas and single units are very spread out in more populated areas. This makes the service model a lot more complicated both in regards to equipment and personnel. From a personnel perspective, you need expertise in electrical, mechanical, and aeronautical systems. The fact that they are so large and high also requires crane and rigging and heavy construction expertise as well.  If the array is located offshore, that is another area of expertise that might be needed. From what I know, wind turbines don’t fail that often but, when they do, the convergence of material and expertise needed to fix them can be costly with respect to downtime and expenses.

M2M connectivity could benefit wind turbine installations by providing them with advance knowledge of wind gusts and anomalies for which they could adjust in advance. There are lots of sources for this kind of data from satellites, radar, and sensors located in many places. Aggregated and processed in the cloud, they could provide actionable intelligence for a turbine operator. On a similar note, this type of aggregated data is of high value to grid operators as they need to level out the supply of wind-generated electricity with the demand of the customers.

As in the semiconductor tester, I believe there are several ways the service model I discussed could be made less expensive. A wind turbine is likely chock full of sensors that detect motion, position, and most importantly strain on components. The rotating blades are very heavy but need to be balanced and oriented precisely. If the data from the turbines are moved to the cloud, degradation of components could be detected before outright failure.

Now, we look to a higher derivative value of the aggregated wind turbine data. If a wind turbine blade begins to have a problem and the sensors detect it, the owner has a tough choice to make because of the logistics and expenses that could be involved in the repair process. If the owner, crane company, and/or repair crew, knew there were other wind turbines in that area that also had problems, costs could be shared. 

In the final embedded cloud M2M value derivative, the supplier of the wind turbine blades could use the aggregated data from all of the deployed turbines to learn more about strains and product failures to improve designs and production processes. If needed, they could begin to produce a replacement part on proactive just-in-time basis rather than having to maintain a significant inventory.

Summary: In both the tester and turbine cases we see where the primary stakeholders such as the equipment owner and the supplier that made it have tangible benefits from the M2M cloud connectivity. The interesting but sometimes less obvious benefits come from other data sources and where the equipment data can be used to provide benefits to other stakeholders. In each market, these secondary and somewhat elusive opportunities are there for the taking but only to those who look for them.

Four Big Takeaways from the Design West / ESC Show

In this last ESC show related blog, I will summarize several of the discoveries and themes we saw for embedded hardware products. We had lots of great conversations and observed many product demonstrations and presentations. These four takeaways were some of the most interesting.

Disposable Products: Embedded device manufacturers are looking to provide units that minimize power use when operating and virtually eliminate any use when idle. What is driving this is the idea of products like smoke and/or CO detectors lasting for 10 years or more and then being disposable. This allows the units to use different power sources while eliminating battery clips, and simplifying enclosure designs.  If you take it a next step, you could see that some municipalities could ensure that every residence and business would have smoke/CO detector units installed and operational. This would save lives and money.

Microcontrollers (MCU) and Digital Signal Processors (DSP): Embedded computing has gotten a lot more complicated and one place that is representative of this trend is automotive airbag systems. In prior generation designs it was relatively simple in that a MEMs device or some type of impact sensor was connected to an MCU that would in turn trigger the airbag if a well defined set of go/no-go conditions were met. There were several problems that now make this architecture less feasible. Airbags are expensive to replace and, in some cases present dangers of their own. Therefore, you want to be a little more selective about when you want to deploy them. Cars now have multiple airbags and you only want to deploy some of them depending on conditions that might not be a simple MCU driven process. In summary, the airbag trigger process involves more sensors to detect passenger configurations and weights as well as impact sites, directions, magnitudes and whether the vehicle is rolling over. This is why VDC believes that the demand for DSPs in the automotive vertical market will be growing significantly.

Embedded Device Pin counts and Features: During the ESC show we spoke with many embedded controller and processor suppliers and were impressed with the amount of features and capabilities that are increasingly being integrated into these products. By doing so, in many cases it reduces the need for pins that would be needed to connect the device to other devices in a customer’s product. To the embedded device manufacturer this has many possible benefits as it frees up the pins for other functions or eliminates them completely.  Another tangible benefit would be reduced cost of test as the reduced pin count might enable more parallel testing. The design engineers at the customer have to be delighted as they have fewer worries about integrating peripherals and supporting devices and now, less demand for space inside the products they are designing. This is truly a win-win proposition.

Embedded Cloud / Microstrain: In their booth, the CEO Steve Arms was demonstrating their Sensor Cloud service. The demonstration was showing real time and archived data collected wirelessly from an array of sensors at a Vermont winery. This is a classic embedded cloud business model of a company setting up cloud services for customers. Agriculture is always a complicated business and the introduction of this type of service should help lower costs to farmers. Now, imagine a second derivative of the cloud data being aggregated and sold to the financial industry to support decisions about crop futures.

In a blog later this week, I will give some thoughts on the embedded cloud business model and the layers of value that can be extracted.

Design West / ESC Show Highlights - Part 2

In this blog I will continue to explore some of the VDC Embedded Hardware team experience at the Design West ESC show. We saw a lot of great product demonstrations along with some excellent detailed briefings and meetings so it’s difficult to boil it all down to a reasonable size blog but here we go:

AMD: We saw a number of embedded computer products from multiple manufactures that featured AMD processors. Many of these would be great for scalable edge node applications. Heard a bit more about the latest Opteron 3200 series of processors which will likely find many cloud based applications. While at AMD we visited partner Xi3 they have some really nifty looking cube type computers that can be deployed in array like structures. The concept they were showing was a datacenter on wheels.

Atmel: Was showing some new products that seemed really great for embedded M2M type connectivity but, according to the press material I received, the details are embargoed for another week or two.

Digi-International: Digi was a company we covered in the Migrating to the Embedded Cloud report that published this week so we really wanted to stop by and see if there was anything new going on.  What we saw didn’t disappoint as there was a lot of evidence about the partnerships we talk about in the report. Digi and Wind River were announcing a collaboration to deliver M2M wireless connectivity solutions using Intel processors. This is on the heels of a similar partnership that Digi has with Freescale. We saw that Digi was using another company’s embedded computer hardware products as part of the cloud connectivity demonstration but, as that partnership is not announced; I can’t write more about that now.

Integrated Device Technology (IDT): In this booth there was a very impressive demonstration of  serial RapidIO technology being deployed in a number of different companies’ products. This is very important in cellular 3G and 4G deployments. Despite being handled by different protocols, hardware and connection methods the data travelled end-to-end efficiently and, most importantly without being corrupted.

Imagination Technologies:  We saw some really great examples of their IP used in mobile devices and applications. As people become more ingrained with mobile devices, high resolution videos, and larger screen sizes, it takes some pretty complex systems on chip to make it work. The difficult thing is getting the needed performance while not sucking the mobile equipments battery dry.

Inside Secure: As the market for M2M is growing there needs to be ways to ensure of the identity of the machines and people being connected. Inside Secure gave us a briefing on several of their security technologies that can be embedded into products to address these issues.

Lantronix: As an OEM is making design decisions on new products or looking to update older ones adding wired and/or wireless connectivity can be a problem. Lantronix briefed us on several of their products where the connective capability can be added to new designs or even old ones on an as needed basis. Almost as a proof of concept, Lantronix produced xPrintServer using technology they usually sell to OEMs to allow Apple devices to directly connect to existing legacy printers using a downloadable app.

Microchip: The VDC Embedded SW and HW teams had several meetings with Microchip and we were particularly happy to have an opportunity for a great discussion their President and CEO Steve Sanghi. As this blog looks to be running a little long, I will give the special focus to topics we covered with Mr. Sanghi in a blog next week. The hardware team learned a lot about some of the new Microchip MCUs that are adding analog circuitry such as ADCs, DACs, Op-Amps, and Comparators.  This puts more functionality into a single package while, at the same time often reduces device pin count.

Micron: I saw a detailed briefing on the latest about the Micron memory cube product. The through hole vias on the semiconductor dies that make this design possible are interesting in themselves.

National Instruments: This was another company that is covered in the Embedded Cloud report and, we saw that the Compact Rio product has some new, even more compact, product lines extensions. In the booth there was also a mock-up of a Siemens smart grid transmission line breaker module. The N/I Compact Rio was part of the design in that it could capture and transmit events that happened on the transmission lines. One of the neat things is Siemens/NI project is that the breaker can be reset remotely.

Netronome: If you ever want to see a place where powerful embedded processors are used in large quantities in high volume applications, a network flow processor is a good place to look. These impressive units we saw inspect packets and move internet traffic at extremely high rates.

Power.org: An interesting talk with one of the Directors at the IBM booth to learn more about this organization that unifies standards among its members around the Power Architecture technology with a goal of making sure that processors and communications products work efficiently as the scale of connectivity grow ever increasingly higher.

Silex: We saw some product briefings on their connectivity modules. With respect to M2M connectivity this is pretty interesting if for example you are a product designer supporting a legacy product that you want to add M2M services to or, in other cases, you are worried that a particular standard fall out of favor, and you want the product you are designing to be future proof.

SuperMicro: They have a very large line of products and the MicroCloud product was particularly interesting to us because of the embedded cloud report where we had profiled SuperMicro.  The MicroCloud product impressed us with its ability to scale up as a cloud service and/or the amount of machines being supported in an edge node application grows.

Texas Instruments: TI had a lot to show us with all types of embedded hardware products adding GPS and motion sensing as well as Wi-Fi and other connectivity. Anyone that has taken a portable device with GPS applications into a building, large city, or tunnel will realize that these types of products have a waiting market.  We also got briefings on some new process intensive DSP products that are becoming increasingly important to many markets. This is one of the topics I will expand on in the next installment of this blog series.

Next week, I’ll give a few last high level takeaways about things we saw and discussed at the show.

Design West / ESC Show 2012 Highlights - Part 1 The Embeddy

VDC attended the 2012 DESIGN West/Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose from March 27^th through March 30^th and met with more than 30 companies to discuss product announcements and a variety of industry trends impacting the embedded hardware market today.

I wanted to take a few minutes to thank the many outstanding people at the show that provided briefings to the VDC Embedded Hardware team. With our Migrating to the Embedded Cloud report in production, key trend elements we were especially attentive to included M2M connectivity of embedded computing products with cloud based services and infrastructure.

As the first part of this blog, I thought I would give some detail on the Embeddy winner. Then, in a follow up blog that will post next week I will highlight many other companies we met with and some of the new products and trends we heard about.

And now, without further ado, the winner of the VDC Hardware Embeddy award for the 2012 Design West / ESC show was Freescale for their Vybrid family of embedded controller solutions.

There were several things that impressed me about the Vybrid line. First of all there are several different combinations of features and performance that can be selected. This should make them very flexible and cost effective.

The second thing I noted was the heterogeneous architecture for the dual processors inside the device. One processor core was more powerful for the functions that needed it and the other processor core was more economical for less demanding functions. I would think that would make it an good fit in a world that is now demanding more embedded processing power while, at the same time looking for power economy as well.

Freescale looks to be providing product samples later this year and indicates that they will be ramping up production of them in 2013. It will be interesting to see how the market responds.

Perpetual & Pervasive Consumer Engagement Platforms Shaping Semi Market

From TVs, twitter, and mobile phones, the amount of electronic information with which we are presented on a daily basis has exploded and we have become increasingly conditioned to want this information on a at our fingertips real-time basis. We have almost gotten to the point now, however, that we – as a society – have developed a Device Attention Hyperactivity Disorder. So within the retail automation, at the same time that we want a more immersive consumer experience, it is becoming both more difficult and important to capture customer attention and loyalty.

Now enters the role of tomorrow’s digital signage. What were once nothing more than transaction facilitators or static standalone advertisement platforms have become a rapidly evolving medium for consumer engagement and market intelligence. The digital signage platforms of tomorrow combine artificial intelligence and real-time analytics in order to enable the more dynamic and tailored experience retailers want.

Imagine a world where you are in a mall and walk into a store and a digital signage kiosk can sense your preferences and suggest products to you as soon as you arrive in the store. Then you are presented with a range of potential product options that you can scroll through. Meanwhile, the digital sign pings the stores servers, an associate is paged, alerted to your presence, and given a heads up as to what of the products you are browsing through in stock.

As some of you all know, this type of M2M interaction is already starting to happen in some retail settings. So what does this mean to the embedded supplier community?

For one, there are new revenue opportunities presented through the enablement of this rich, connected consumer experience, but there is also an opportunity for embedded solution suppliers and their clients to access additional marketing revenue paid by clients hoping to have their specific brand promoted first within the digital signs.

Whereas these new functionality requirements can certainly help embedded solution vendors diversify their portfolio of products and services, the evolution of the semiconductor requirements for these systems is also helping to drive change in this market. Not only do these systems have higher performance media and graphics processing requirements, but the semiconductor technology needed to support them is becoming available at increasingly competitive price points that are reinforcing market opportunity growth.

Enabling M2M Applications to Cloud Services Using Scalable Edge Nodes - Part 1

During the ongoing VDC report on the embedded cloud I have been hearing about many different interesting Machine to Machine (M2M) applications including several that distinctly feature products that we consider as Scalable Edge Nodes (SEN). During the next few weeks, I thought I would touch on a few of these interesting application cases and what the scalable edge node brings to the table.

First of all, in this initial posting, I thought I would speak to what a scalable edge node is. To start, lets work with what it is not. There are many network appliances such as routers, switches, firewalls, and web servers as well as storage devices. These are not scalable edge nodes but, a scalable edge node might have some of these functions incorporated inside them.

The next question to address is why are these SEN products needed? SEN products are often needed to support M2M applications particularly with respect to cloud services. This is not to say that machines are not already connected. They are connected but these connections are very isolated industrial networks that are optimized for productivity and safety. Any connectivity beyond the industrial automation and/or process control network can be problematic. The Stuxnet case underscores the exact nature of the problems.
This is one area where a SEN can enable the benefits of cloud connectivity and services while mitigating many of the risks. Lets take a look at this week's real world SEN example to underscore this benefit:

This week's M2M embedded cloud SEN enabled application is Tomra's Tomra-Trac product. Tomra is a manufacturer of Reverse Vending Machines (RVM). These are the machines you find at stores in places where bottle/can deposits are taken at the point of sale. The consumers return the empty cans and bottles in order to get the deposit back. These machines automate the process and shred/crush the returned units to minimize the storage space needed. For minimal security, these RVMs need to be connected to the store's network to allow the issuing, validation, and cancellation of the refund receipt's barcodes. As these RVM machines often sit in peripheral locations without a lot of oversight, there are some security risks to these connections to the store's network that can be mitigated by the use of SEN type products like Tomra-Trac.

The Tomra-Trac product helps solve this security problem and, at the same time, adds cloud based services. If a beverage manufacturer comes up with a new product, the RVMs can be securely updated frequently to recognize the new product's bar-code. In RVMs that sense product profiles in order to detect counterfeits, these parameters can be updated if manufacturers change their can/bottle sizes and/or shapes. The Tomra-Trac allows the store management to remotely track the status of the machines which can save them money by only assigning personnel to RVM tasks when needed.

Tomra can also provide better, more cost effective service by polling the RVMs for potential problems and minimize downtime by proactive or prompt reactive service. So there you have it, a SEN allowing safer/secure M2M connectivity and providing benefits to the store as well as Tomra.

Connect with VDC Research Group at the Design West/Embedded Systems Conference 2012!

VDC Research Group will be joining the Design West/Embedded Systems Conference 2012 exhibition and conference.  During the conference, we will be presenting the coveted VDC Embeddy awards to a deserving product in each of the 2 software and hardware categories. To make sure your product is considered, please make sure that:

• The product is formally announced at the show or, has been announced as of January, 2012
• That the VDC Research team will be briefed on the details of the product by your show staff.

VDC’s Embedded Hardware Team will be arriving March 27th and will be at the conference through March 29th.  During that time, we welcome the opportunity to connect with attending vendors.  We look forward to explaining VDC’s research methodology, learning about your latest product releases, and discussing your market research and strategic needs.

If you would like to learn more about the show, please click here.

If you would like to schedule a meeting around Embedded Hardware, please contact:

David Laing, Senior Analyst, Embedded Hardware & Systems Practice, VDC Research Group at: dlaing@vdcresearch.com or 508.653.9000 x146.

Or

Chris Rommel, Vice President, Embedded Hardware & Systems Practice, VDC Research Group at: crommel@vdcresearch.com  or 508.653.9000 x123.

If you would like to schedule a meeting around Embedded Software, please contact:

Jared Weiner, Analyst, Embedded Software & Tools Practice, VDC Research Group at: jweiner@vdcresearch.com  or 508.653.9000 x143.