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

To: J. Kerner who wrote (2979)	4/2/1998 10:11:00 AM
From: w2j2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10309

Scott McNealy refers to Windows as a "hairball"....Windows CE is a slimmed down version of the "hairball"....So Microsoft adds some real time operating functions...Is it not still a "hairball"? wj

To: J. Kerner who wrote (2979)	4/2/1998 11:50:00 AM
From: Ronald Paul	Respond to of 10309

Hi Jason, Thanks for your perspective. Concerning your question, You wrote.... One more question: Can you really switch RTOS companies as easily as you mention? I thought the more entrenched Wind River is in a company such as HP, the more expensive it would be for the customer to switch to another company due to training engineers,new tools, etc. This is actually true to a large extent. The price of switching does go up. However, like many software vendors, HP embedded firmware has to be leveragable or reusable accross platforms and OS's all the time. HP printers sport different OS's ranging from home-grown to WIND to INTS. Cross-compiling is at the center of developing an embedded system and highlights a basic difference between developing apps running native and developing for a target system with its own RTOS. WIND knows its at the top of the heap right now and deserves many kudos for getting to where they have gotten. WIND has also been quite aggressive. The 1st tier customer are sophisticated engineers. A business unit within HP would understand the costs associated with staying with WIND and pulling the plug because it is concievable that HP is needing to improve margins on commodity-level devices or has more asia exposure than WIND does. WIND has been known to up the ante based on industry insider info. WIND just has to be careful not to overstep and tilt the customer toward a competitor. Especially a key customer like HP. Allen Benn is right about how wagons will start circling around 2 camps. I read on some post about why MSFT wouldn't have chosen WIND to partner with. Well, who better to go to but INTS at this point who would be a lot more receptive to partnering in light of their recognition of WIND's leadership position. MSFT undoubtably scrutinized INTS capabilities and costs associated with partnering with INTS and what the partnership would buy for MSFT. I really believe that WIND needs HP support to compete tet-a-tet MSFT. I frankly don't know how this will all unfold. Allen is also right when he makes the point about how interesting these events are in the high-tech world today. I feel like Im at a fireworks display... Lew Platt, Jerry Fiddler, INTS CEO (St.Clair?) and Billy-boy will be putting on a good show. Hang on to your seat belts, Ronald