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Technology Stocks : Wind River going up, up, up! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: David Evans who wrote (8627)	10/10/2000 3:11:00 PM
From: James Connolly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10309

EETimes version of the WIND/Rapid Logic story. I think the last paragraph sums up the RL acquisition very well. Wind River acquires Rapid Logic eet.com PARK RIDGE, Ill. — Moving to establish a dominant position in the embedded market, Wind River Systems Inc. announced Monday (Oct. 9) that it will acquire Rapid Logic Inc., a maker of network management software for connected devices. Wind River (Alameda, Calif.), which markets embedded real-time operating systems and development tools, plans to roll Rapid Logic's software into its existing product line. "This allows Wind River to bring management capabilities to every product we create," said David Fraser, vice president and general manager of Wind River's business units. Wind River acquired Rapid Logic for 1.43 million shares of common stock, worth about $58.3 million. The embedded software giant was one of the original investors in Rapid Logic, which was founded in 1996. Industry analysts said the move provides another large piece of the embedded puzzle for Wind River. "It sounds as if Winds River is trying very hard to build up the middleware components of its solution stacks," said Daya Nadamuni, senior analyst for Dataquest Inc. (San Jose, Calif.). Wind River already dominates much of the embedded operating systems market. A recent survey done for EE Times revealed that engineers are more aware of the Wind River name than of any other real-time operating system (RTOS) vendor, with 54 percent of respondents recognizing Wind River, compared to 4 percent for the next closest competitor. Wind River currently markets the top two commercial RTOSes, VxWorks and pSOSystem, according to the survey. The acquisition of Rapid Logic (Alameda, Calif.), however, could give Wind River an even stronger position in the embedded market. Rapid Logic makes network management software for smart connected devices, such as switches, routers, DSL modems, cable modems, servers, and Internet appliances such as set-top boxes and smart phones. In most such devices, management code accounts for about 50 percent of the system's overall code. Rapid Logic's products provide an off-the-shelf solution for remote management of those connected devices, thus shaving as much as a year off the development time needed to create embedded devices. Prior to the acquisition, Wind River offered Rapid Logic products as an option within its own product line. The key difference after the acquisition is that Wind River will offer Rapid Logic software as part of its own integrated develop environment (IDE) products, which include Tornado for Managed Switches, Tornado for Internet Appliances, Tornado for Integrated I/O, and Tornado for Home Gateways, among others. Rapid Logic's products include RapidControl for Applets, RapidControl for Web, RapidControl for CLI, MIBway for RapidControl, and RapidControl Backplane. By integrating those products into its own, Wind River said it will reduce the integration work of engineers and speed time-to-market. "This gives them a shrink-wrapped remote management solution and takes a big chunk out of their development cycle," Fraser said. Wind River executives said they hope the acquisition will give the company a leg up in the application of its RTOSes and IDEs in trillions of smart connected devices around the world. "There's a universe of smart devices out there," Fraser said. "And they all have one thing in common: the need to be managed."