On Target: Embedded Systems

VDC Research is Attending IBM Innovate2014 in Orlando

VDC Research will be attending Innovate2014, IBM’s Technical Summit in Orlando, June 1-3, 2014. IBM has planned an exciting agenda for the conference highlighting continuous engineering, DevOps, and Innovation. We are also pleased to announce Chris Rommel, Executive Vice President of M2M Embedded Technology is a speaker for an important panel discussion, “Best Practices for Agile Product Development”, to be held Monday, June 2. We encourage you to attend. Best Practices for Agile Product Development discussion overview: Agile methods are popular and effective in software development for complex products. But, the application of agile principles to the broader product development... Read more →

Agile2013: VDC Research is heading to Nashville - Music City!

The M2M Embedded Software team is excited to be heading to Nashville to attend Agile2013 (#agile2013). The growing adoption of Agile methodologies is one of the most important developments in the software lifecycle management solution market since VDC started covering it in 2000. Despite origins in the enterprise/IT software development world, iterative software development methods have also taken hold in the embedded market. In fact, nearly 50% of embedded engineers we surveyed in 2012 used Agile and Iterative methods. As embedded systems continue to evolve, organizations still relying on traditional development methodologies are struggling to keep pace with their software... Read more →

It’s Electric…Boogie Woogie Woogie!

As the world’s energy reserves continue to wane, there is an ongoing shift towards the use of renewable energy sources. Concurrently, developments in advanced electric power systems (EPS), more commonly known as smart grids, are catching the eye of utility and power companies worldwide. Using two-way digital communication technology, smart grids can generate and distribute sustainable, economic and secure energy supplies. In response to advances in EPSs, an increasing number of renewable energy-based resource installations are taking place. As these installations occur, it is critical to ensure that these systems are properly engineered in accordance with relevant performance standards such... Read more →

ALM Connect Executive Day and EclipseCon, March 2013

ALM CONNECT EXECUTIVE DAY VDC was excited to attend the ALM Connect Executive Day, which was run in parallel to EclipseCon 2013 in Boston this week. The objective of the executive day, to provide a platform for software delivery executives to discuss modern ALM practices in the context of business problems, is tightly aligned to our Software & System Lifecycle Management Tools research. The day brought together leaders from ALM suppliers, ISVs and consulting firms to discuss how ALM is evolving in response to the changing software delivery environment. The M2M Embedded Software team investigates many of the same questions... Read more →

Expect Quick Response to MISRA C: 2012

Introducing MISRA C: 2012 Yesterday, the Motor Industry Software Reliability Association (MISRA) announced the availability of MISRA C: 2012, an important update to the software development standard for the C programming language. Beyond providing support for the C99 version of C, the improvements also aim to reduce the cost and complexity required to achieve compliance. VDC’s View MISRA adoption has spread far and wide since being introduced in the 1990s to provide guidelines for the development of embedded software in the European automotive industry. Since that time, the value proposition of a standard set of quality assurance coding rules has... Read more →

It Gets Better

The same end-of-one-year reflection that inspired our embedded software Top 12 of 2012 (part 1 and part 2), encouraged us to take a look back at a metric we continue to track: schedule performance. In VDC’s 2012 developers survey, 35.3% of the respondents said their current project was behind schedule. Just last year over 40% reported schedule slippage. So perhaps 35% is an improvement; but it’s hardly a statistic worth boasting. With an average of twenty five embedded engineers per project, any delay can be detrimental to development budgets, not to mention the reputational damage. Despite an understanding that adherence... Read more →

Software Development Tools Market Update

Competitive Market Dynamics at Work Recently published research by VDC Research Group continues to indicate the market for commercial standalone software development tools remains under pressure and challenged as a result of competitive market dynamics. The embedded market has evolved since the early nineties when market players were compartmented and offered RTOSs or software development tools. Over time, players converged at the center, either through acquisitions and mergers, internal development or some combination of both, in offering a software solution that spans operating systems and tool chains. Regardless of the direction of convergence, the focus was on providing an integrated... Read more →

State of the Market: Android in Embedded

Together with Apple’s iOS, Android has helped to redefine expectations with regard to user interaction and functionality in the smartphone space. The widespread success of Android and iOS are among the major factors contributing to changes in OS strategy on the part of traditional market leaders Nokia (a shift from Symbian to Windows Phone) and Research In Motion (acquisition of QNX Software Systems and shift to a QNX-based platform). Furthermore, the ubiquity of smartphones has begun to impact UI expectations in other devices classes, with interest in utilizing Android to serve these requirements continually mounting. But while interest in Android... Read more →

New VDC Research Program Will Provide Valuable Insights into Security and M2M / The Internet of Things

We wanted to let you know about an important new annual research program we are launching called The Voice of the Customer Series: Security & The Internet of Things. The series, which is based on extensive primary research of engineering organizations, solution vendors, and enterprise/IT and consumer behavior, will provide you with the information you need to formulate and implement a best-in-class security strategy. We’ve designed this program to help senior OEM engineering managers responsible for product development and deployments and IT managers coordinating M2M and enterprise-to-device connectivity. This service will help them understand how organizations are approaching the big... Read more →

Embedded/Real-time Operating System Market - Uneven Growth in 2011 – Slower Growth Expected Over the Forecast Period

In 2011, growth in the market was uneven and the rate of growth below what VDC had forecasted from last year. Suppliers in the market expressed mixed views on the state of the market in 2011 and the challenges they faced during the course of the year. VDC estimates that the market for embedded/real-time operating systems was greater than $1 billion in 2011, an increase of slightly more that 5% from a revised 2010 estimate. Over the forecast period we expect this market segment to grow at a combined annual rate of less than 6% per year through 2014. OEMs... Read more →