On Target: Embedded Systems

Can Commercial Operating Systems Stay Relevant in Consumer Facing Devices?

While the recent smartphone struggles of Research In Motion and Microsoft have proven to be main points of mobile media fodder for 2011, the corresponding strengthening of the market positions of Apple and Android have further underscored the shift in mobile operating system business models.

Just a few years ago, the smartphone market was dominated by three main platforms: Symbian, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile. Then, in 2007, everything changed with the release of the first iPhone and the formation of the Open Handset Alliance.

Closed, OEM controlled platforms have always had a place in the mobile market as evidenced by Apple, Blackberry and even Palm once upon a time. The opportunity for commercial mobile application operating systems, however, seems to be dwindling. The acquisition and open sourcing (and ultimate demise) of Symbian left Microsoft as the sole major vendor servicing the domain that relies on a royalty-based business model. So, given this shift and the seemingly unstoppable momentum of the Apple and Android application development ecosystems, can a commercially licensed application OS ever again achieve significant share within the market

The evolving impact of commercially funded, non-commercial OSs

Already, we have seen a search engine company (Google) entrench itself within the mobile domain and subsequently gain traction in other embedded verticals. Amazon’s purported interest in acquiring RIM earlier this year brings this dynamic into even more of a spotlight. The company actually goes so far as to offer advertisement-subsidized versions of its Kindle e-readers, so it is within reason that they could extend this model to the smartphone space if they were to ever enter it. The allure and growth of mobile e-commerce is certainly large enough to attract and support this type of device subsidization, but what would the ultimate impact be on the broader embedded market?

We’ve been talking about the “iPhone effect” on embedded development for years as it pertains to the consumerization of other devices classes and the growing end user expectation for sophisticated touch interfaces. The growth and development of the Android ecosystem has likewise caused many OEMs to evaluate its suitability for a wide range of vertical markets. But could you ever expect end users to tolerate an advertisement pop up or logo on their industrial handheld terminal? Not likely.

Clearly, there are limits to the applicability and diffusion of these new OS platforms’ business models in a number of embedded industries. However, the mobile OS ecosystem has nevertheless been the main catalyst driving change in a number of embedded segments for years and - given the short shelf lives of and time to market windows for smartphones - will likely continue to drive the evolution of embedded technologies in the years to come. That said, considering the innate differences between the mobile phone space and other embedded verticals, can we still rightfully expect the blurring of the lines between these device classes’ OSs to continue or will we ultimately see their delineation once again become more concrete and a subsequent re-stratification of the supplier ecosystem?

Enea Relinquishes Consulting Business

What Happened?

Earlier today, Enea announced the divestment of its Swedish consulting companies to a subsidiary of Alten Group, a Paris-based global technical consulting company. As described in Enea’s press release by President and CEO Anders Lidbeck:

“The divestment is part of our strategy to focus on our global software business…by divesting this unit we are refining Enea’s business and get the opportunity to invest in areas such as Linux, real-time operating systems, hardware environments, and product related services. We want to become the world leader for operating systems to the wireless broadband industry.”

Alten Group’s acquisition of these companies, which also includes an agreement that Enea will purchase consulting services from Alten in 2012, is expected to close sometime in Q1.

VDC’s View

While in many ways 2011 has been a period of great transition for Enea – which earlier this year introduced a new Linux strategy as well as a new President and CEO – the company’s dedication to (and reliance on) customers in the telecom/datacom space has remained constant. This latest announcement did come as a bit of a surprise to VDC (Enea had just reinforced the importance of its consultancy organizations this past May) but we agree that the move presents significant benefits to the company’s software business.

Enea’s stated goal of achieving leadership in the wireless broadband industry is very much in line with the company’s traditional strengths and expertise. However, we believe that the benefits of a laser-focus on operating system technologies may extend even further. By placing a spotlight on these solutions, the company may also uncover strategies that will enable the diversification of software revenue streams that at this point are heavily reliant (greater than 50%, according to Enea’s 2010 Annual Report) on Ericsson and Nokia. This reliance, of course, is in direct contrast to the growth and success of other leading RTOS vendors, which have largely been enabled by investments in a wide range of embedded markets.

VDC believes that the aforementioned Linux strategy – which has enabled Enea to deliver an integrated solution that includes runtime software (RTOS, Linux, hypervisor, etc.), middleware, and software development tools – was perhaps the first step in a direction that will allow Enea to focus on a broader array of embedded markets. By relinquishing its consultancy organizations to concentrate solely on operating system technology and other embedded software solutions, Enea has taken another step. Assuming the company is willing and able to continue down this path, we expect significant growth opportunities for Enea and much stiffer competition for the likes of Wind River, Green Hills Software, QNX Software, and other leading RTOS suppliers.

 

Related posts:

• Enea Expands Multicore Strategy and Support for Linux 

Telehealth Initiatives Driving Software Stack Requirements in Medical Devices

Mobility has been among the key influencers within the medical device market in recent years, the phenomenon helping to promote the advent of teleheath-related solutions, which rely heavily on care provided away from formal healthcare facilities. The concept of telehealth – which can be broadly defined as the incorporation of telecommunications technologies within health-related services – is expected to become increasingly popular as a means through which to decentralize medical services. More and more, medical professionals in developed regions are relying on patients and other in-home care providers to administer a variety of relatively straightforward services in an effort to reduce the burden on the world’s hospitals. Many of these away-from-hospital services, such as ECG and other patient monitoring systems, utilize telehealth technologies to connect to hospital and doctor’s office networks to enable the transmission and sharing of vital patient records.

Accordingly, VDC has observed that engineers building medical devices have exhibited a greater need for software stack components that enable connectivity and data storage/transmission as compared to engineers developing embedded devices targeting other industries. The figure below displays the six software stack components (in addition to embedded/real-time operating systems) cited most frequently by survey respondents developing a medical device as a requirement for their current development project.

USB, TCP/IP, and other wired/wireless connectivity stacks are essential components that enable vital patient records to be shared with medical professionals in remote locations, while file systems and embedded databases allow for the collection and storage of such data. Considering the sensitive nature of the data collected and transmitted by these devices, the presence of security stacks among the top software requirements is also not a surprise. In fact, VDC expects security stacks to be an increasingly required component in a variety of embedded applications, as the embedded industry as a whole has begun to increase its focus on protecting sensitive data from malicious attacks and other outside threats.

Survey responses also revealed that only 19% of engineers developing a medical device used a commercially licensed operating system and nearly 40% used no formal operating system at all, as compared to 27% and 23%, respectively, when considering all survey respondents. While many less-sophisticated medical devices may never have the necessary power, connectivity, or performance requirements to justify the use of a formal, commercial operating system, VDC expects that the effect of the telehealth trend on additional software stack components required in medical devices will strengthen the demand for commercial OSs. Furthermore, OS vendors with extensive expertise and experience in this space – Green Hills Software, Mentor Graphics, Microsoft, QNX Software, and Wind River, to name a few – are well positioned to increase their revenue streams by leveraging that expertise to enable medical device manufacturers to more easily transition to commercial platforms.

VDC investigates this and other vertical market specific trends from across the embedded landscape in our upcoming report, Vertical Markets & Applications, from our 2011 Embedded Software & Tools Market Intelligence Service. This study will provide an analysis of individual vertical market standards, trends, current and emerging practices, and analysis of select applications within the following vertical markets:

• Automotive/rail/transportation
• Consumer electronics
• Industrial automation
• Medical devices
• Military/aerospace
• Mobile phones
• Office/business automation
• Retail automation
• Telecom/datacom

 

Please contact us for more information.

Will Quad-core Phones Give QNX another Shot at Saving RIM?

In a blog last week, we highlighted the lack of consumer electronic devices shipping today with multicore chipsets. Smartphones, on the other hand, have already begun to make that transition and the inclusion of these new processors has even emerged as a point of marketing for many OEMs.

To date, however, these mobile multicore devices have mostly used dual-core processors. As there are more and more announcements (and speculations) about the forthcoming inclusion of quad-core processors in mobile phones, we are left wondering how or if this change could impact the supplier landscape.

The multifaceted impact of multicore processors

Whereas some level of performance improvement can be achieved through just the implementation of a basic SMP (symmetric multiprocessing) OS and the facilitation of “application multitasking”, the ability of a single application to take advantage of the multiple cores is limited by the percentage of the application’s tasks and instruction sets that can be executed in parallel. In the near term, the performance difference noticeable to end users will likely be small due to SMP OSs’ ability to obfuscate the complexities of the multiple cores and provide applications with incremental speed improvements, but the discernible discrepancies will only become more evident as next generation phones adopt more advanced silicon.

The bigger question might be what happens beyond 4 cores, when SMP OSs begin to lose some of their efficacy and developers themselves are forced to learn how to developed multithreaded apps. Today, many mobile application developers can get away with rather rudimentary development tools. This just may not be good enough in the future and may drive more developers to look for premium solutions.

The potential impact on the mobile OS ecosystem

Whereas all phone and OS providers will need to reevaluate their platforms and developer enablement strategies in light of the long-term adoption of many-core processors, we expect that this shift may actually have the greatest impact on the Android ecosystem. To abstract the complexities of the underlying software stack and market the OS to a broader range of developers, the OHA designed Android to use a Java virtual machine over its core Linux kernel.

As a result – in order to achieve the application speed required to remain competitive – Android developers may be forced to learn the C programming language (a longtime embedded favorite) for low-level native development on future many-core devices. This added difficulty in development (or simply the relative reduction in existing application performance improvements) may lead more developers and end users to again evaluate new mobile platforms not named Android or iOS. This market pause might just provide QNX/RIM (or even Microsoft) an opportunity to regain widespread relevance.

Whereas QNX is a newcomer to the mobile landscape, it is a well established stalwart of the multicore solution market. Provided that RIM can get some phones to market in a timely matter, QNX’s proven multicore technology could actually provide them with an edge in performance and a chip in their favor in the eyes of end consumers. That said, the shift beyond 4 cores is likely still at least a year away, which is nearly an eternity in the mobile world – both in terms of time for other OSs to invest in multicore performance enhancements as well as time for RIM (and all other mobile OSs) to fall far enough behind in their ecosystem development that they would not be able to mount a realistic comeback. Regardless of the prospects of the individual mobile OS suppliers, the continued evolution of the processor landscape should certainly provide ample opportunity for platforms and application developers alike to recast their value propositions and differentiation.

Part II: Will Android Erode the Software Development Tool Market?

In case you missed it, click here Part I of our analysis.

Over recent years, the commercial software development tool market has faced a number of pressures, which – to one degree or another – have eroded the commercial market’s growth potential. Whether you look at the continued evolution of open source tools or just the growing tendency of both OS vendors and silicon suppliers to bundle (or even give away) toolkits with their flagship products, traditional standalone software development tool (SDT) vendors are facing a growing set of obstacles.

Given this already challenging set of circumstances, can the increasing use of an open source OS (Android) make things worse for commercial SDT vendors?

As we have discussed before, a number of OEMs are also beginning to experiment with Android outside of the mobile phone space. Although there are not yet widespread deployments of the Android OS in these other vertical markets, it has catalyzed the development of its own supporting commercial solution and service market – much of which is actually driven by the interest in its use on non-ARM architectures.

In parallel to this growing demand for Android in other embedded verticals, however, we have already seen ARM make real, tangible progress in expanding its footprint beyond the mobile phone sector. Driven by the desire to improve power performance, many of OEMs have begun to evaluate ARM-based architectures and, in many cases, are subsequently forced to consider changes to their software as well. Clearly, this growing use of ARM can help create additional opportunities for Android.

So will the expansion of Android into new device classes and ARM’s recent toolkit strategy cannibalize some of the commercial market tools market? Perhaps. But in the broader embedded market? Not likely.
It is important to remember that most embedded industries are not subject to the whims and velocity of change of consumer markets and – believe it or not – have other device requirements (such as latency, support, footprint, etc.) that can trump OS-brand buzz. Even as many OEMs outside of the mobile phone sector experiment with Android, this is not necessarily to the exclusion of other OSs. Most OEMs simply do not have the luxury to place all of their eggs in one OS basket.

Additionally, the engineering rigor and incumbent development tools established within many of OEMs has created a somewhat inelastic demand – and available budget – for premium solutions. With application software an increasingly important point for differentiation across all embedded devices, this will likely not be too quick to change. If nothing else, ARM may have just taken one more step toward strengthening its value proposition within some of the non-mobile device classes that it covets – for both its commercial tools as well as its processor IP.

Click here Part I of our analysis.

Will Android Erode the Software Development Tool Market? - Part I

ARM recently announced a free toolkit (ARM Development Studio 5 Community Edition) for the Android application developer community. At a high level, you might be thinking, “so what, aren’t there already a number of free Android app tool kits available?” And, to a certain extent, you wouldn’t be wrong…until you start to consider the “so what” part.

For one, make no mistake about it – This is not your run-of-the-mill open source toolkit; ARM is in the business of delivering premium tools. In fact, they have an entire division with P&L responsibilities focused on it. This new toolkit supposedly can improve application performance up to 40% as compared to Android applications written solely in Java.

So then why on earth would a premium tool vendor release a high end tool for free?

First off, consider how the evolution of mobile phone space has impacted the demographics of the software development community. Application creation is no longer limited to engineers. Instead, we have seen a widening range of application functionality and sophistication translate to commercial viability, thus opening the doors to a broader set of developers (professionals, students, and hobbyists) with varying skill sets. Obviously, this demographic pool is somewhat at odds with the makeup of ARM’s traditional tool client base (engineers at OEMs).

Secondly, over the last decade,ARM has become synonymous with mobile and has monopolized the domain’s processor market. While it doesn’t look like their share is in jeopardy in the near term, competitors are proving relentless in their pursuit of the high volume market. Whereas their tool business might generate a sizable amount of revenue for ARM, we also all need to keep in mind that it is only a small portion of ARM's overall business. The real value of their tools has always come through the enablement of the success of their licensees’ clients – which, in turn, can lead to higher IP royalties as well as the perpetuation of their overall ecosystem’s strength.

In order to ensure this dynamic continues, ARM is making its best effort to entrench itself within the fast growing third-party software development organization demographic. Whereas the markets for third party mobile applications may have originally been populated with content created by the aforementioned hobbyists, these apps now represent huge revenue opportunities and formalized business entities are now forming to capitalize on them. Since ARM’s “free” toolkit is actually only free when your organization has fewer than 10 engineers and/or less than $100,000 in revenue, the company has the opportunity to gain mindshare and establish itself within potentially fast-growing development organizations that could one day even convert to commercial sale opportunities.

But given that ARM has a slightly different motivation than most tool vendors (they want to maximize processor design wins and unit shipments), what impact will ARM’s approach to the Android developer market play on the long term prospects of a commercial software development tool market?

Check back tomorrow for Part II of our analysis.

Can the Use of Multicore Processors Really Double in Two Years?

Or will the same old challenges continue to impede the adoption of this technology?

In recent years, as embedded systems – and the software within them – have become increasingly complex, the emergence and adoption of multicore processors in the embedded space has been a trend closely followed by industry participants. Thus far the transition to multicore has been a slow one, with only 16% of engineers responding to VDC’s 2011 Embedded Engineering Survey indicating they were currently working on a project that incorporated a multicore processor. Looking forward two years, however, engineers expect that ratio to more than double.

Clearly, semiconductor vendors have collectively made multicore processors more widely available, technologically capable, and affordable today than they were several years ago. Similarly, operating system suppliers such as Enea, Green Hills Software, LynuxWorks, QNX Software Systems, and Wind River have continually introduced innovative multicore functionality to their OS solutions and development tools, in an effort to bridge the gap between the potential of multicore chips and the functionality of multicore-aware software platforms.

What remains unclear is whether or not these developers have access to – or fully understand the capabilities of – the tools necessary to enable a transition from a single core, serial processing environment to one in which multiple threads are executing simultaneously on multiple cores. This, of course, has been the key question surrounding multicore for at least two years. VDC believes that the complications associated with parallel programming (particularly with regard to transitioning legacy serial code to a multicore system) remain among the primary challenges silicon vendors and software suppliers must address before the adoption of multicore can reach its tipping point in embedded.

Must leading software development tools vendors such as Lauterbach and ARM continue to make significant improvements to the functionality of their tools for multicore development, or are greater efforts around engineer training and education more important at this point in time? How important are the roles of tools for software modeling, dynamic system design, and test automation with regard to addressing engineers’ concerns with parallel programming? Has anything really changed with regard to the factors affecting the adoption of multicore in the last couple of years?

VDC investigates this and other trends in our upcoming report, Multicore Components & Tools, from our 2011 Embedded Software & Tools Market Intelligence Service. Please contact us for more information.

 

Setting Some Real Limits Around Real-Time

What Happened?

Last week at the ARM TechCon conference, Microsoft announced that the next version of Windows Embedded Compact, expected to be released in June of 2012, will be updated with improved real-time performance and a smaller footprint.

VDC’s View

In the recent past, we have often discussed how the increasing amount of system resources available within many embedded systems has facilitated the adoption of larger footprint operating systems in many application classes once served by traditional real-time OSs. The significant presence of Windows “Enterprise” SKUs (restricted licenses of Microsoft’s desktop or server OSs) in the embedded market has typified this trend.

Windows 8’s planned support for the ARM architecture should only strengthen the relevance of these desktop SKUs to many engineering teams given ARM’s broader and faster-growing use within the embedded market as compared to x86. So if Microsoft’s Enterprise SKUs do suddenly gain wider utility, can we expect Microsoft to maintain as diverse and stratified of a portfolio of embedded OSs as they have now?

The answer in the long term is most likely no, so perhaps the greater question is how many and what SKUs remain? Will there be a need for multiple componentized versions? Will Handheld (formerly Windows Mobile 6.x) be rolled back into its parent Embedded Compact (CE)?

If nothing else, Microsoft’s announcement of its plans for Windows Embedded Compact reinforces their intentions to at least maintain two threads of offerings for ARM-based designs in the near term. But what are the implications of Compact's enhanced "real-time" support?

Microsoft has always pitted the CE family as supporting real-time requirements. Traditionally, however, there has always been a substantial stratification of the RTOS space based on the varying "hardness" of real-time requirements for different application classes. As you can see from the chart below, the presence of real-time requirements is far from a binary dynamic and, as a result, the decision to use one OS over another is not always clear cut.

 

So one lingering question remains: Does this announcement mean Microsoft is squaring up to compete more directly with the likes of Wind River and Green Hills Software who have traditionally focused on the "hard" real-time application classes  - or is the announcement simply intended to differentiate Compact from other Microsoft offerings as their evolution dissolves some of the traditional boundaries that catalyzed CE's original creation and niche?

Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) – Boston 2011

VDC attended the 2011 Embedded Systems Conference in Boston on September 27 and 28 and held face-to-face meetings at the conference with over 20 exhibitors. This year’s ESC included greater than 100 exhibitors and was part of what UBM Electronics called Design Days Boston. Design Days Boston featured four events including ESC as part of one show including DesignMED North America, DesignCon East, and designing with LEDs. These four programs span a wide range of technologies and interests and were supported by numerous technical sessions.

Conference organizers reported at the show that registration was up 10-15% year over year. During the course of the show VDC observed that floor traffic and booth attendance at exhibitors conducting training sessions in mini-classroom settings seemed to draw and hold the attention of attendees in greater numbers.  

Companies need to make sure that they are realizing a positive return for their investments in these types of conferences. In many cases this translates to metrics such as show attendance, floor traffic, and quality of leads from attendees. Expanding ESC to a Design Days format that includes multiple unique design conferences in one is an approach that is sure to attract new exhibitors, engineers, and new energy. 

THE “EMBEDDIES” GO TO:

Best of Show

 

VDC awarded our software “Embeddy” for best of show live on the conference floor to aicas for their JamaicaCAR application management system (AMS), which offers a secure framework for running Java apps that enable car owners to update their automotive infotainment system as new functionality becomes available. Designed with safety and security in mind, the JamaicaCAR AMS minimizes driver distraction and ensures that only properly vetted applications can access critical resources.

This new framework for automotive connected applications jointly developed with Harman International addresses many challenges faced by embedded software developers today.  The system has been designed-in with stringent safety and security requirements and the resulting model supports access control and privilege management. Automotive OEMS will be able to integrate applications from suppliers while maintaining the same look and minimizing the need for customization. The new system will be offered on select trim levels in the 2012 Toyota Prius v, Prius Liftback, Prius Plug-in and the new Toyota Camry.

Honerable Mention

VDC awards an honorable mention to Green Hills Software for their announcement of MULTI Version 6 and Green Hills compiler 2012.  These new releases offer improved optimization of code size and performance. In addition, the Green Hills Compiler version 2012 is now available as a standalone product that offers engineering organizations the flexibility to independently upgrade just the compiler when support for new CPUs is required.

Walking the Floor

AdaCore, a leading supplier of Ada language tools and support services, announced the upcoming release of GNAT Programming Studio (GPS) 5.1 that is expected to be available in October 2011. The new release will feature extended support for C and C++, enhanced source editing and GUI features, and supported on most development platforms for both native and embedded software development.

Arium reviewed their recent announcement (mid-September) from the Intel Developer Forum for the support for the Intel Boot Loader Development Kit (BLDK). Arium’s SourcePoint debugger includes features that allow developers to debug source code used in BLDK development.

ARM conducted live demonstrations on their new DS-5 Linux Application Development System that includes DSTREAM debug and trace unit. In addition the company had demonstrations on their Microcontroller Development environment, MDK-ARM and their new ULINKpro debug and trace unit.

RTOS and tools supplier Enea demonstrated in their booth their Enea OSE RTOS highlighting multicore support, LINX IPC software, and Optima Eclipsed-based IDE that includes system debug and profiling tools.

Express Logic announced its NetX Duo TCP/IP IPv4/IPv6 dual stack has been extended to include support for the IPsec protocol.  A protocol suite for securing network communications, IPsec encrypts and authenticates each packet of a communication session and NetX Duo with IPsec support creates a virtual channel between two networks where packets are encrypted for security and signed for authenticity.

Static analysis tool vendor GrammaTech announced the next version of CodeSonar which incorporates new program analysis algorithms to identify data race conditions and other types of critical concurrency defects. In addition the new version includes a code-level metrics feature that will allow project managers the ability to track various types of metrics and set thresholds for automatically generated warnings when metrics are outside an expected range.  

IAR announced enhanced support in the company’s IAR Embedded Workbench tool suite for STMicroelectronics recently launched STM32 F4 family of ARM Cortex-M4 based microcontrollers. In addition the company announced that their IAR Workbench IDE for ARM C/C++ was selected by HOLT Integrated Circuits as Holt’s development environment for ARM Cortex-M3 microcontroller development for their MIL-STD-1553 application development kit.

LDRA Software Technology announced version 9 of the LDRA tool suite which unifies its tools with a common user interface, central repositories and performance optimizations for lifecycle traceability.  In addition the company announced product integration with MathWorks Simulink modeling tools and their LDRA tool suite.

Micrium reviewed their recent announcement whereby Micrium products, kernels and complete RTOS solutions will be offered through Avnet Electronics Marketing.  

Newark/element14 a distributor and community for design engineers conducted demonstrations of its online search and knowledge tool, the element14 knode.

Objective Interface Systems, a supplier of high-performance communications middleware solutions, reviewed their recent announcement that their ORBexpress product now supports Wind River’s VxWorks 6.9 real-time OS with Symmetric Multiprocessing on multicore platforms. 

Parasoft announced a new release of their integrated Parasoft C/C++test development environment. New product highlights include support for an extended range of development environments, traceability reporting, complete system metrics calculation, and static analysis for 2011 CWE/SANS.

Reactive Systems, a software testing and validation company conducted demonstrations of their Reactis product line which includes Reactis for Simulink and Reactis for C.

Other leading embedded systems vendors in attendance at ESC/Boston included AMD, Altium, Avnet, Coverity, Digia-QT Commercial, eCosCentric, IBM, Intel, JTAG Technologies, KW-Software, Lauterbach, Logic PD, MathWorks, Perforce Software, SEGGER Microcontroller, Siemens PLM Software, SmartBear Software and others.

TRADEMARK ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Many names of companies, associations, technologies, products, and product types, etc. mentioned in this bulletin comprise Trademarks, registered or non-registered, owned by various entities. These are too numerous to mention individually. VDC acknowledges that ownership of these Trademarks exists and requests that readers acknowledge this as well.

ABOUT VDC

This Embedded Systems Industry Bulletin is published as part of VDC’s Embedded Software Market Intelligence Service. VDC has been providing embedded systems market intelligence for over 20 years.

Published by VDC Research Group, Copyright 2011, all rights reserved.

 

Embedded Project Starts Expected to Increase Year-Over-Year

Every year VDC conducts an extensive worldwide survey of embedded engineers and their development projects to better understand engineering requirements, preferences, and trends. This information is available from VDC in unique cross tabbed reports to offer readers a detailed, in-depth, view of engineers in the development project trenches.

Quite frequently we receive requests from suppliers of the embedded community for statistics around company project starts as this metric is often seen as an important indicator of health and growth for the embedded industry. Based on VDC’s 2011 survey embedded engineers expect about a 15% increase in the aggregate in the number of project starts from 2010 to 2011. Certainly good news for embedded solution providers – both software and hardware.

However, while aggregate survey statistics are metrics of importance to many in the community, segmentation of data creates an additional lens on the information from which to analyze and develop product and marketing strategies. The following data is based on VDC’s 2011 embedded engineer survey and included in our Track 2 Volume 1: Operating Systems report which segments respondent data by the use different types of operating systems in their development projects.  The good news for suppliers is that all communities expect the number of project starts to increase year-over-year, however, engineers working at companies using no formal operating systems in there development project cite a much smaller percentage of increase.

 
Embedded engineering organizations continue to place value on development projects that do not require a formal operating system primarily around the requirements and functionality of the device/system under development. However, to a lesser extent commercial licensing costs, retraining, and protection of investment in legacy code can also be considerations for continued use of no formal OS in their development projects. The demand for new functionality, connectivity, and other capabilities is creating greater sophistication of devices and systems being developed and to be developed in the future. As such VDC continues to observe a migration of development projects to the use of formal operating systems creating increased opportunity for embedded software suppliers to offer their solutions.

How does your development project stack up? Let us know through your feedback.

Our recently published report, Operating Systems, from Track 2 of VDC's 2011 Embedded Software Market Intelligence Service provides additional statistical insight and analysis around this and other trends affecting embedded system development.  Click here for additional information and access to a free executive brief highlighting other key findings from our research.