« January 2010 | Main | March 2010 »
Embedded world 2010 is just around the corner. VDC will be attending the exhibition and conference on March 2 and 3. We are currently scheduling meetings with companies at the conference.
Interested in meeting with VDC? Please get in touch with Steve Balacco to schedule a day and time at sbalacco@vdcresearch.com / 508.653.9000 x124.
What Happened?
Yesterday, Synopsys announced they were acquiring CoWare, the third acquisition within the Virtual System Prototyping/Simulation (VSPS) market in the last week (Intel/Wind River is acquiring Virtutech and Synopsys acquired VaST). Similarly to the other acquisitions, the terms of the deal, which is expected to close in the second quarter, were not disclosed.
VDC’s View
Although the VSPS market (a niche segment within the Electronic System Level (ESL) tool market) is small, it is has certainly generated a barrage of recent activity recently.
As discussed within our post on Friday, VSPS tools have been gaining adoption within the embedded market as engineering organizations continue to look for new ways to speed software development and accelerate time-to-market.
So with the majority of VSPS market revenue now in the hands of two players, Intel/Wind River and Synopsys, what’s next for this market that had previously been a bastion of growth for an otherwise stagnating ESL and, more broadly, EDA market?
What drove Synopsys to acquire CoWare, an ESL tools vendor that VDC estimates to be four times the size of VaST? Could it also be their virtual platform offering, which by VDC estimates accounted for less than 25% of its revenue but was a strong driver of its overall growth?
Will the other two major players within the ESL/EDA market, Cadence and Mentor Graphics, now make a push into VSPS segment and/or reemphasize the broader ESL value proposition, looking to capitalize on the recent stream of media attention and the potential influx of uncertainty into VSPS tool customers?
After ARM’s divestment from ESL and the refocusing of its remaining System Generator/Fast Models tool, will another semiconductor or semiconductor IP vendor look toward this technology segment tool as a means to enable their customers’ success and/or as a direct contributor to a future P&L?
Also, given the addition of Simics to
This most recent acquisition certainly may raise more questions than it answers and it will take some time before the ultimate consequences of the past week’s activity unfolds.
In the mean time, we would be interested in hearing your opinion on the recent market news so please submit your comments.
Related Posts:
Green Hills Software Announces End of Embedded Industry Recession
Wind River Extends Virtualization Support with New Release of Wind River Hypervisor
Synopsys Acquires VaST Systems Technology Corporation
Green Hills Software Supports Freescale P2020 Multicore Processor
Wind River Delivers Suite of Multi-architecture Embedded Software Development Tools
Dell Announces Alliance with INTEGRITY Global Security
Synopsys to Acquire CoWare, Inc.
Enea signs partner agreement with Freescale
LDRA and Visure Partner to Offer Embedded Application Lifecycle Management Solution
Symbian Completes Biggest Open Source Migration Project Ever
Wind River to Add Virtutech Simics Products to Comprehensive Embedded Software Portfolio
Mentor Graphics Catapult C Adds SystemC Synthesis and Expands Full-Chip Capabilities
Nuance Voice Control for Automotive Powers Speech for Leading QNX Car Application Platform
Macraigor Systems Extends On-Chip Debug Support to Intel’s Atom Processor
Lauterbach, Discretix Announce Alliance to Provide Secure Chip Debug Capability
Wind River Updates VxWorks DO-178B Platform for Aerospace and Defense Systems
GrammaTech Achieves Record Growth in 2009
OpenTV and Coverity Announce Software Integrity Collaboration
Atego launches as the foundation for an integrated tool chain strategy
GNAT Pro support for PikeOS – New Safety-Critical RTOS Platform for GNAT Pro High-Integrity Edition
VDC Research looks forward to companies contacting us for a briefing on new announcements around products, new partnerships and alliances, or other changes within your organizations. At a minimum please make sure that we are included in your press/analyst relations distribution list for new announcements as they become public.
Telephone: 508.653.9000.
Steve Balacco, Director, sbalacco@vdcresearch.com, x124
Chris Rommel, Analyst, crommel@vdcresearch.com, x123
Jared Weiner, Analyst, jweiner@vdcresearch.com, x143
Wind River to add Simics Virtual System Prototyping/Simulation Solution to Portfolio
What Happened?
Wind River, a wholly owned subsidiary of Intel Corporation (NASDQ: INTC), today announced it will add the Virtutech product line to its embedded software product portfolio after the completion of Intel Corporation’s acquisition of Virtutech which is expected to close later this quarter.
VDC’s View
This announcement marks the 2nd major acquisition in the VSPS market this week. On Wednesday Synopsys announced that it had acquired VaST Systems Technology Corp. As we stated previously – Synopsys’ acquisition of VaST gave the combined entity the top spot for the VSPS market revenue share.
What we did not specifically spell out is who a combined Synopsys/VaST would be leapfrogging…You guessed it – Virtutech.
Why all the fuss about a relatively small market segment?
It is no secret that the level of functionality required and expected within mobile and embedded devices has skyrocketed in recent years. Meanwhile, development timelines and time-to-market requirements certainly haven’t eased off. In fact, many engineering teams are being asked to meet or exceed previous time tables with fewer resources.
Not surprisingly, engineering organizations continue to look for ways to speed software development, sometimes through the use of new types of tools and/or methodologies. Virtual System Prototyping/Simulation (VSPS) solutions, such as those from Virtutech, Synopsys, and CoWare, offer a way for development teams to potentially shorten the entire development process by accelerating the software development tasks to earlier in the overall project’s workflow.
So is this the cure-all for embedded software development woes?
In short – No. First off all, as with any new technology, you cannot expect overnight transformation of entrenched development processes.
However, our 2009 Embedded Engineering Survey showed a significant increase in the use of VSPS tools over 2008 results (14.1% vs. 8.5% of respondents). This increase should be viewed in a broader context confirming that engineering teams are adopting new tools (VSPS among others) in greater frequencies as part of comprehensive strategies aimed to revamp embedded system engineering processes in order to adequately and efficiently address the next generation of system requirements and challenges.
But is this a fit for Intel/WR and what should we expect going forward?
Beyond just the long-standing partnership between Wind River and Virtutech, our research shows that the companies’ business should, from a revenue perspective, map well together with telecommunications and military/aerospace traditionally generating the majority of both companies’ revenue.
Need we forget that
We fully expect that
The greatest factor left undecided at this point, however, might be whether or not all of Virtutech’s partners continue to play (as) nice with a WR/Intel-owned Virtutech over the long term (even if all of their external messaging suggests that).
Whereas on Wednesday we suggested that Synopsys’ acquisition of VaST may create some opportunities for Virtutech and CoWare to capitalize on uncertainty in the market, today’s news potentially reverses the pendulum of market sentiment with perhaps an even greater magnitude.
With the potential acquisition targets quickly disappearing, can we expect any new entrants to the VSPS market from other EDA or ESW companies?
Related Posts:
~
Bringing secure solutions to the desktop –
What Happened?
Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) announced an alliance with INTEGRITY Global Security to be the exclusive provider of the INTEGRITY separation kernel for general-purpose secure computing to government agencies.
VDC’s View
In November 2008 Green Hills Software announced that it had formed INTEGRITY Global Security, LLC (IGS) as a wholly owned subsidiary of Green Hills Software, Inc. The timing of this announcement coincided with another company announcement of having received certification of its INTEGRITY-178B separation kernel to the Common Criteria EAL 6 + / High Robustness. This certification was conducted by the National Information Assurance Partnership (NIAP), a joint government initiative governed by the National Security Agency (NSA).
From our perspective the IGS spin-off from Green Hills Software represented a first-mover advantage in defining the market opportunity. So to speak - a sole source opportunity – to capitalize on their NIAP certification in defining the market in advance of other market players such as
The spin-off represented a chance for the company to formally expand beyond its traditional “embedded roots” into critical infrastructure systems and the much larger enterpri$e/de$ktop environments. However, this scenario created challenges for Green Hills Software with respect to their traditional partnerships and alliances around semiconductor, software, CPU boards, hardware debug, and a host of others – all focused on the embedded market.
Enter Dell – a well known and respected worldwide provider to business, education and government environments for enterprise and desktop solutions. With the emphasis on commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS), this announcement represents an integrated solution with Dell’s OptiPlex desktop PC’s and IGS’s INTEGRITY separation kernel - the Dell | INTEGRITY Secure Consolidated Client Solution.
While the solution is based on the INTEGRITY-178B Separation Kernel that was certified by NIAP to EAL 6+ and High Robustness, the validation and certification was based on a Target of Evaluation (TOE) that included PowerPC architectures. This Dell/IGS solution will include the x86 architecture so we expect that at some point Green Hills Software/INTEGRITY Global Security would submit a package to NIAP under assurance maintenance for evaluation on this architecture (TOE).
Military organizations are expected to be first adopters, however, this solution could span to support critical infrastructure systems and networks in areas such as power, energy, communications, transportation, financial services, and ultimately within commercial enterprises – all domains that can be leveraged by Dell with this integrated solution.
Both parties bring their strengths to the alliance – commodity product integration, end-to-end solutions, service, support, market reach, and of course an integrated secure separation kernel. The big leap will be whether private enterprises will agree that this is a solution to meet their needs and that the timing is right.
Related Articles:
What Happened?
In case you missed it, LDRA announced yesterday that it has partnered with Visure Solutions to create an ALM solution specifically targeted at safety-critical embedded applications.
VDC’s View
The heterogeneity of embedded projects had previously insulated, or at least dampered, some of the pressures facing tool companies competing in the embedded world as compared to those in the enterprise/IT market.
The complex and unique development requirements typical in the embedded market fostered a commercial tool market in which best-of-breed or point solutions could still garner the lion’s share of market revenue. However, times are changing.
It is clear that embedded market participants are feeling the pressure to expand their products suites and service offerings in order to meet the demands of engineering teams who are under pressure to do more – in less time, with less help, and with tighter budgets. Meanwhile, we have seen one of the stalwarts of the enterprise/IT space (and previously embedded), IBM Rational, refocus on embedded with the acquisition of Telelogic (/I-Logix) – further expanding its already broad set of tools.
The recent acquisitions undertaken by Artisan Software (Atego) and yesterday by Synopsys further underscore this self-reinforcing trend as companies look to augment their value proposition and improve the abilities to address the needs of customers in new segments.
Related Posts:
~
VDC is currently in the process of planning an expansion of our research covering the Lifecyle Management market. We welcome your input and suggestions to help us refine the scope of this research program. If you have a few minutes, please click here to provide us with your feed back.
What Happened?
Synopsys(NASDAQ: SNPS) announced that it acquired VaST Systems Technology Corporation. The terms of the acquisition, which closed February 1st, were not disclosed.
VDC’s View
A report that we coincidentally released this morning, Virtual System Prototyping/Simulation Tools for Software Development & Verification – A Market Update, shows that a combined Synopsys-VaST would garner the leading share of revenue in the virtual platform market.
Our research also appears to confirm Sysnopsys’ claim that the acquisition of VaST provides them with access to industries, namely automotive, where there was little overlap with the existing revenue streams of Synopsys’ Innovator product line. Much of this difference had been driven by the functionality of the two companies’ solutions - Synopsys’ Innovater which provides faster simulation, better suited for the mobile market; and Vast’s METeor/CoMET which provides more cycle accurate simulation, which is more attractive to safety-critical markets such as automotive.
The factor that holds the most potential in affecting the future of the VSPS market is whether Synopsys can maintain and/or expand the customer accounts and relationships that they are inheriting from VaST. In the mean time, we are sure that Virtutech and especially CoWare are looking to capitalize on any uncertainty in the market.
VDC intends to comment further on this acquisition, so stay tuned…
Related Articles:
