I'm just parachuting in here to make an observation or two and to ask a couple of questions and to spam -sort of. I figured threads about embedded computing would have some opinions - good or bad - on WinCE. Over the past couple of years I've been following a company as it tries to make inroads into the embedded computing market. The company is Intrinsyc Software Inc. (ICS-V) and it is fine-tuning Microsoft's Windows CE.
Embedded computing was pretty much a term that I wasn't aware of then - and I'm sure most people were like that. The embedded world was so specific that not many people outside the industry even knew it existed. But with the accelerated growth of processing power for fewer and fewer dollars, more players have moved into the arena with good stuff, thereby causing some fragmentation. That has to have some effect on the current business and future of players like WindRiver. The other thing with regards to industrial automation is that companies are trying to make everything in the factory talk to everything else. Here's a couple of articles:
Eyeing ERP: Microsoft and IBM roles in flux
As business gurus like to remind us, companies need to constantly keep an eye out for their next competitive opportunities or they will end up like horse-drawn carriage builders in the 1920s.
So these gurus probably think it odd that two of the largest companies in IT, Microsoft and IBM, have not yet established themselves in one of the largest, most lucrative fields: packaged enterprise applications. Microsoft and IBM do not appear among most lists of the top 10 or even the top 100 vendors of the software that does workaday -- but vital -- business tasks such as calculating a factory's optimum production, buying materials, cutting paychecks, and dispatching sales representatives.
But the market abhors a vacuum, and now both companies are starting to take roles -- albeit small and somewhat passive -- in business applications.
….."Quite bluntly, it's where the money is," said Steve Cole, a senior analyst at Forrester Research, in Cambridge, Mass. Although the market has cooled off in the past three quarters as prospective customers have become preoccupied with year-2000 fixes, most analysts expect demand to rebound after next January....
cnn.com
Momentum Builds for Windows CE in Manufacturing as Multiple Corporate Vendors Demonstrate End-to-End Process-Control System
Industry Leaders Endorse Microsoft's Efforts at Embedded Systems East Show
Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT - news) today demonstrated continued momentum for the Microsoft® Windows® CE operating system in process-control applications with a real-world demonstration of more than 10 commercial Windows CE-based control products, in conjunction with more than a dozen corporate associates, including The Boeing Company, General Motors Corp. and Philip Morris Companies Inc. This system, shown here at the Embedded Systems Conference, showcases the small footprint, connectivity and open platform features of Windows CE -- requirements for the next generation of embedded systems on the factory floor.
biz.yahoo.com
In addition to that, there are a couple more industry related articles you can link to here:
Merrill Lynch Article:
intrinsyc.com
Business Week Article:
businessweek.com
Having said all that, I'm just looking for some opinions with regard to the prospects for MSFT's WinCE vs Java and other O/S's. There's a lot of money at stake here in the embedded world as is noted in the foregoing articles. MSFT wants a piece of it so it's pushing its NT, CE and DNA and trying to make in-roads. Can they do it? Who knows? Once WinCE 3.0 comes out, it is expected to have genuine determinism. Will it? - damned if I know.
I'm curious whether a small company like INTRINSYC SOFTWARE INC. can leverage it's technologies with WinCE. If anyone has any thoughts, I'd be interested to hear them.
Intrinsyc Thread: exchange2000.com
Thanks for any feedback
Bill C.
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