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Technology Stocks : Wind River going up, up, up!

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To: the hube who wrote (8215)	8/16/2000 2:32:37 PM
From: Bob Huff	Read Replies (1) of 10309

I attended the Network Processor Conference last week. There were about 500 in attendance. Wind River gave a short presentation which stressed the importance of not ignoring the sw side when selecting a network processor. One of their slides had several hundred protocols listed on it with an image of a man shrugging as if he didn't know what to do. The point was pretty clear - if you want to achieve TTM don't write the protocol stacks yourself, find a sw vendor that can deliver you the building blocks. VxWorks was the defacto standard for NPU vendors. Many of the presentations given during the conference talked about their sw environment and VxWorks was the only RTOS ever mentioned. Presenters were asked to keep their presentations product independent. Wind River complied with this - about 80% of the presenters did not, so most of the presentations ended up being marketing pitches. Microware Systems (they have an RTOS called OS-9) was one of those who did not - they gave a presentation detailing their support for the IXP1200 and said "Come to our booth afterwards and we'll show the Intel IXP1200 eval system running OS-9." Wind River had no demos - rather a tiny booth with two small racks of brochures (one for vxWorks and one for TMS). I wouldn't describe all of their reps as being the sharpest tools in the shed. I had to basically tell one guy that his RTOS shipped with the eval systems for the IXP1200 and Basis' DSL network processor. The Microware solution wasn't complete - they had OS-9 running on the StrongArm core but had no libraries to talk with the microengines so it was essentially useless. Microengine support is scheduled for later in the year. A couple closing thoughts. I didn't go to this conference to focus on Wind River so others may have left with a different impression. I only spent about 10 minutes talking with WRS reps. Others have expressed concern about the lack of communication with the analyst community. Well it seemed like a similar story at the conference. Being the leader in this space, I would have expected demos showing how VxWorks is being utilized in this area. People delivering products in this industry understand the value add of utilizing Wind River to achieve TTM. They are basically a one stop shop. That's why I own the stock. But to be one upped by a minute vendor like Microware really casts a black eye on the company for those new to this area. A co-worker of mine who just joined our group (new to networking, new to RTOS etc) had this to say about WRS "Wow, they didn't know anything" and was asking me about what Microware was doing instead. My point here is while Wind River's product suite is unparalled, a newbie leaving the conference could have left with a different impression. Finally, one emerging area that looks like a good opportunity for Wind River is the residential gateway. Basis Communications uses vxWorks in their product line. Bob

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