Interview with Fiddler and St. Dennis in the San Jose Mercury News. Very upbeat!
9/20/99 - Alameda, Calif.-Based Firm's Operating System Has the Right Connections
Sep. 20 (San Jose Mercury News/KRTBN)--For 28 years, Wind River Systems has been
quietly thriving in its own little niche of the high-tech industry: providing an operating system for
such semiconductor-based products as catalytic converters and braking systems in cars, test
and measurement devices, printers, photocopiers and even the Mars Pathfinder probe.
Wind River's primary product has been a real-time OS -- small, customized to do a limited
number of tasks extremely efficiently and capable of responding almost immediately to specific
input. In short, Wind River provides the operating system for the multitude of electronic devices
that were not full-fledged computers.
That market has enabled Wind River to build up a substantial business, with sales of $129
million for fiscal 1999. But now the Alameda-based company is on the verge of explosive
growth, as the popularity of the Internet is fueling interest in connecting an ever-increasing array
of electronic devices -- cameras, televisions, cable boxes, even microwave ovens -- all of which
will require some kind of small, powerful OS capable of doing a handful of tasks efficiently.
High-profile deals with Intel Corp., IBM and America Online Inc., either directly or through
partnerships with other companies, have put Wind River's OS into such hot products as Intel's
network processor and AOL's set-top cable box.
Those deals could transform the company from a tortoise to a hare. The company expects
sales to grow 10-fold over the next few years to more than $1 billion.
To manage that growth, and the wide-ranging partnerships that are fueling it, Tom St. Dennis --
former group vice president at semiconductor equipment supplier Applied Materials Inc. -- will
take over as Wind River's chief executive today.
Recently, St. Dennis and company founder Jerry Fiddler talked with Mercury News reporter
Tom Quinlan about the company's past and future.
QUESTION: Why did you leave Applied Materials to join Wind River?
ANSWER: ST. DENNIS -- Wind's a company that in some ways has a similar profile to Applied
Materials eight or nine years ago: strong core technical capability in a market that I think is
very well positioned for substantial growth. To have an opportunity to play a role as CEO in that
was a unique career opportunity.
Q: Why did you feel the need to go outside the company and get a new CEO at this time?
A: FIDDLER -- We simply didn't have the right individual who was ready inside. The company's
been going through a real transition. Like many, we're driven by the Internet, we're driven by
what's happening in computing in general. We're definitely moving beyond just being a supplier
to being much more of a strategic partner for our customers.
The one that's been most interesting lately, where we work with Intel to provide the operating
system for a major push (into Internet-based communications), it's a very different kind of
relationship. That's something that Tom is really going to help us with. He's got the ability and
the experience at doing that for a company that's really ready to move from the $100-plus
million (sales) we are now to being a much bigger, much more important company.
Q: You've both made reference to the opportunities that Wind River has in front of it. Could you
be a little more specific as to what those opportunities are?
A: FIDDLER -- Well, they're everywhere. Microprocessors are all around us. The world is
becoming embedded. They're hidden in the walls and they're in the cars. The microprocessors
aren't just in computers; they're controlling our infrastructure, they control our transportation,
our communications, our energy systems, our medical systems.
Q: You're part of Intel's Internet exchange architecture, and this is a pretty significant ...
A: FIDDLER -- I think Intel sees a world where these kinds of chips affect the Internet as much
as microprocessors did computing. And they're not the only ones who see that, and as of now,
we're the operating system that can do that. There's nobody else who's anywhere close to us.
Q: You mentioned how the nature of these markets is changing. How does Wind River have to
change its product, its infrastructure, to take advantage of those new markets?
A: ST. DENNIS -- The market impact on Wind River has been to align the company in a
business-unit focus. There's a new business unit called Wind River Networks that's going to go
off and pursue some of these developing opportunities in the networking communication area.
There's a new business unit around professional services where Wind River is playing a bigger
role in developing solutions for customers based on the portfolio of products that Wind River
has, and that's an evolution and a change from where Wind River was even six months ago.
A: FIDDLER -- We're moving to a world where the Internet doesn't just connect computers; it
connects things, it connects people. And that really looks much more like the embedded
systems world than the desktop computer world. So technologically, it's a world we're very
familiar with. We know how to make these systems reliable. We've put our software on Mars, in
the Mars Pathfinder. I think the difference now is just that there's more of it, so when you start
building an Internet appliance, you suddenly need new audio standards and new video
standards and those things. But for us, those are really sort of the icing on the cake; the cake
is already in place.
Q: The competition seems to be growing even faster than the marketplace -- Microsoft has
Windows CE, there's the BeOS. Is that going to be a significant new challenge for Wind River?
A: FIDDLER -- I think it's a world that definitely requires a different business model and a
different way of thinking. And I think we're ready to do that. We lead this market, not by a little
but by a lot. We're way out ahead of everybody, not only in market share but in technology. We
know how to build these things; we've been doing it for a number of years. So when we talk
about being able to make a digital camera work, a (network) router work or a printer work, we've
been doing that. We're already in the Internet with customers like Cisco and Newbridge and
Nortel and many others. Now, as to whether (the competition) will be Microsoft or somebody
else, I don't know. So far, they've had no success.
A: ST. DENNIS -- It was something that I wanted to take a careful look at, in terms of making a
career choice, and I think all the indicators are very positive for Wind River to be a credible
competitor and even a preferred alternative to Microsoft, for a variety of reasons. One, the
company was built around embedded systems. The core capabilities of the company are really
deep-rooted in the engineering methods and the marketing approach. Wind River embraced
Java early on and has made it a core part of the strategy. I don't think that's something that
Microsoft would own up to, per se. All that said, Microsoft's a very formidable company and a
major player in this whole space.
Q: You have this opportunity, but at the same time, you are an older, established company.
And you're competing for the same engineering talent that Internet start-ups are. How do you
do that in today's environment?
A: FIDDLER -- What we offer people here is the ability to change the world. We let them write
software that's going to go to Mars and was in the satellite that crashed on the moon a couple
of weeks ago -- intentionally! It's in the spacecraft that's flying through the tail of a comet
collecting dust and bringing it back. It's absolutely pervasive, and people who make software
here can see it operating in tens and hundreds and millions of sockets world-wide. There is
something we can offer that start-ups can't, and that's the ability to turn out real quality work
that's going to go in a lot of places that's really going to affect a lot of lives. There's plenty of
engineers who really want to see that happen. |
