>>The flip side to the FAS argument that WIND is too free with their option grants, may be that that is what is necessary to be the cutting edge, industry leader that WIND is.<<
Carolyn, I agree, but it's a delicate balancing act. Shareholders may need to temper their expectations as management attempts to reconcile the desire for investment gains with the need to attract and retain talent in the face of competition. Here some news on that competition...
Microsoft girds Windows CE for embedded battle
EE Times, July 14, 1998
eet.com
This excerpt mentions Microsoft's partnering relationship with the vendors of VRTX and pSOS, and their targeting of VxWorks and QNX...
While hewing firmly to a planning release of CE 3.0 next year, Microsoft won't provide specifics as to how the effort is progressing. A number of embedded-industry experts believe Microsoft will have its work cut out for it, because adding hard real-time support into an existing software infrastructure is considered challenging. However, Microsoft said it is confident 3.0 will meet its design objectives.
Interestingly, rather than running from its desktop heritage, Microsoft is making use of the fact that CE was originally developed outside of the traditional real-time operating system market.
In practical terms, this is playing out in an unusual series of marketing arrangements in the RTOS arena. On the one hand, Windows CE is competing with many of the traditional RTOSes. At the same time, however, Microsoft is building cooperative arrangements with some of those same RTOS vendors. For example, Microtec Research, which sells the VRTX RTOS, is providing a debugger for CE. Integrated Systems Inc., which makes the pSOS RTOS, is selling support services for CE.
"From our standpoint, we felt that partnering with the likes of ISI and Microtec Research was going to accelerate the adoption of Windows CE, where it was a fit," Microsoft's Barbagallo explained.
Of this double-edged relationship with the RTOS community, Barbagallo said, "That's a great point, which has not been covered well. VRTX and pSOS, as operating systems go, are quite similar. They were built from the ground up as real-time executives and then they added to that capabilities like file systems and networking. But their ultimate core is a real-time executive, so they're well capable of being used to control anti-lock braking systems and control systems."
In contrast, Barbagallo sees CE as an ideal fit in "areas where you need a display, where your memory is not overly constrained. Then there's this gray area in the middle where VRTX and pSOS have moved up the chain with, for example, networking features. Quite honestly, even though we've partnered with those companies we'll compete for that business."
However, Microsoft appears intent on targeting CE directly against two other RTOS competitors: QNX from QNX Software Systems Ltd. and VxWorks from Wind River Systems Inc.
"Those operating systems were built according to much higher level OS principles, above the kernel," claimed Barbagallo. "So there is much, much more overlap between QNX and VxWorks and Windows CE, than there is between pSOS and VRTX and Windows CE."
Barbagallo said that "by definition" Microsoft will be competing much more aggressively against those two RTOSes. "Not because we've got a sales force directed against them or anything," he explained. "I'm talking sheer technical. Just by the technical virtue of the capabilities of the operating systems; they're much closer in scope than Windows CE is compared against VRTX and pSOS."
In the real world, this strategy means that Microsoft appears intent on going after some of the embedded applications that have traditionally belonged to the likes of VxWorks and QNX in areas such as test and instrumentation, printers and networking.
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