Not mentioned on this thread last week was Q's announcement of licensing Certicom's software. Certicom makes encryption modules used in Secure Socket Layer, (or SSL). Whenever you do a secure transaction on your PC, such as making a stock transaction, you are activating SSL.
The announcement in itself is not such a big deal, besides telling us that IP over CDMA is really arriving. What is important is its revealing of the new model in embedded design. No longer, one or two companies can get together and provide a total solution. Because of the complexity brought by the Internet, every design is forced to be pieced together, getting many technologies from many companies. What Q is doing in its handset business is true with every set-top box maker or every Internet appliance maker. They have to get pieces together. An RTOS is maybe the most important piece. Getting a well supported OS such as VxWork means the option of getting pre-integrated technologies from the many WIND partners. Also the rapid changing speed of the Internet is giving every system designer headaches. No one knows what's the must have browser technology to have in the next 6 months. This is making it more important to have specialized software partners supplying the pieces.
Fidler has been preaching this for a long time, and most of you already know this very well. I just want to point out that this is really happening at this moment. The new paradigm is here. There is no question of when or how. The only question is will the numbers start showing up in next quarter's statement or the quarter after.
Combining WRS with ISI, an undisputed leader is created. For those system designers who were question which OS to use, the decision has just gotten a lot easier. (I said that this merger didn't make sense a few weeks back, but I have little doubts now.) When Fidler said that WRS was going to be a billion dollar company in 4 years, he was not hyping.
Khan
P.S. for the information, Certicom is not listed in the WRS partner directory. For some reason, I do belive Certicom's crypto modules support VxWorks, but so does it support others such as QNX. So licensing software from Certicom doesn't give us any indiction on Q using VxWorks. |
