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

To: MONACO who wrote (2576)	12/23/1997 11:34:00 AM
From: Allen Benn	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10309

>why the difficulty getting royalties from the auto sector? See Michael Greene's AEA Conference report. Automobile companies have 3- to 5-year new car design cycles which seem like a snail's pace to embedded systems companies used to dealing with vendors in electronics industries such as network equipment or office automation companies. They resist outsourcing Intellectual Property, which is embodied in royalty payments. Lopez, who screwed up when he left GM ungraciously, was a major force for changing the way the automobile industry viewed outsourcing, and was probably a factor in why WIND got a contract to build a special version of VxWorks for GM that runs on the Siemens 16 bit processor family. My statement simply reflects my belief that automobile companies, like networking and telephony equipment companies, like office automation companies, like even the US military, must inevitably bend to the advantages of outsourcing RTOS' for the numerous microprocessors per car needed by the turn of the century. When this happens, WIND will get more than its share, and the rewards will be great, probably greater than I2O. By the way, if you think price will be a significant factor in these negotiations, you are wrong. >what do you mean by the military giving I2O a run for the royalty?? A year and a half ago I predicted that military business would be very big for WIND. I reasoned that the military budget squeeze following the end of the cold war, would force the military to stop their pretentious need to specify everything that purchased to the nth degree - call MilSpecs. MilSpecs not only led to $750 hammers, but very expensive electronic hardware and software which, because of its esoteric nature, was not so obviously expensive to observers. Just like NASA and the Pathfinder, the military indeed has been modernizing its procurement practices, and is now starting to get more for less. Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) software and hardware is revolutionizing military procurement, and WIND is getting more than its share of military RTOS business. Meanwhile, based on the impressive performance of electronics during Desert Storm, and the availability of inexpensive CTOS microprocessors and software, the military is having a heyday revamping all existing electronics and planning and developing ubiquitous computing and communications for the battle field of the future. The amount of business for WIND helping make all their plans reality is absolutely mind-boggling. Already WIND has benefited from some major acquisitions. As I recall during the last conference call, the military sector was mentioned as continuing to be strong, as one of the major areas of WIND's business. Allen