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

To: Joe Smith who wrote (2968)	4/1/1998 9:23:00 PM
From: Allen Benn	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10309

>Alan you clearly missed this late breaking announcement!!! ; ) Either that or I couldn't interpret it. <g> It appears that VDC was talking about "Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and modeling, simulation and automatic code generation products". If so, then Tornado wasn't even considered. It also appears that everything else was written by INTS, to explain the VDC report. In particular, the last paragraph of the announcement was a goal statement for INTS, not something that is happening today. But one thing I did miss was INTS announcement of a working arrangement with Microsoft to couple pSOS and Windows CE in order to provide real-time features. (I'm told this set off a buzz at the ESC in Chicago that Microsoft was acquiring INTS-but not enough to move the stock.) Apparently David St Charles did have something specific in mind when he alluded to working with Microsoft, and for that I apologize. Meanwhile, Microsoft now declares Windows CE unacceptable for real-time applications, and promises to right the ship probably sometime after the end of the year. I guess this means the INTS/Microsoft partnership will live long enough to cause INTS to make a big investment, but not long enough to harvest any fruit for INTS from AutoPCs. Be careful partnering with Microsoft. What does this all mean? Probably that embedded systems is about to heat up. Consolidations, alliances and positioning are about to start in earnest. If you are a RTOS/tool vendor and you are not a major player by next year, then you won't survive as an Independent Software Developer to welcome the start of the new millenium. Watch closely the actions of Sun, IBM, HP, Intel, Motorola, Lucent, Nortel, Oracle/NCI and of course Microsoft to see who's anointed and who's passed over. My guess is that WIND will get sucked into numerous strategic deals as counterpoint to worries about a serious Microsoft push into embedded systems, escalating its business and importance in the industry. Assuming Microsoft makes a serious move sometime late next year (Microsoft always understates delivery time), then opposition forces will gather around WIND, yielding as little market share to Microsoft as possible. The alternative would be for a large but politically neutral member of the opposition force, acting as a white knight for the group, to acquire WIND in order to even the playing table. Oracle/NCI is the most suitable candidate to step up to the plate for the opposition team, using WIND for a bat. Remember, suitable candidates must be, like WIND, politically neutral. This means they can't have conflicts with hardware companies, and even their position in the software sector must minimize conflicts and encourage trust. Novell also would be suitable if it was healthier, but now it is not even a major player. Other left-field possibilities include enterprise/network management software companies like BMC. Remember that BMC's Pilot monitoring software knows I2O, so BMC is not that distant from the embedded systems space. The bottom line is that lots of exciting developments are going to unfold quickly in embedded systems. Because WIND is the established leader, the so-called Big Kahuna of embedded systems, the company will benefit from most of the developments, even ones that may appear at first glance to be negative. For example, the fact that Microsoft has announced its intention to get serious about real-time, negative on the surface, will quicken the pace of the opposition consolidating around the established leader, which is good for WIND. You can't be alive and not enjoy watching this emerging industry mature. Allen