Wind River tilts tools toward Eclipse

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Dec. 01, 2003

Embedded software giant Wind River has signaled it may move away from its proprietary "Tornado" development tools platform, favoring Eclipse, an open technology platform for cross-vendor tools integration popular among embedded Linux developers, as the basis of its future tools products.

Eclipse based tools on the way?

The company has declined to be specific about future Eclipse-related products, nor an end to Tornado support, but says it is committed to the Eclipse platform "to enable global enterprises to standardize embedded development on a single, open standards-based integrated development environment (IDE)."

"Yes, we are working on tools that will support Eclipse," says Michel Genard, product manager of Wind River's Hardware Assisted and Standalone Tools Division, "But I can't say what."

According to Genard, Wind River intends to develop and supply Eclipse-related tools. Genard says Wind River has watched Eclipse since the project was founded in November of 2001, and has already been quietly working with the Eclipse Consortium since early this year.

"We have been watching the progress of Eclipse, and have had a lot of internal meetings about it," notes Genard. "We wanted to see if it was something which Wind River could benefit from, and could contribute to. We decided a year ago to join Eclipse, and actually joined in late Q1 of this year. All the members have seen that we were involved, participating in working groups, present at Eclipse meetings for a few quarters. We felt we weren't in a position to make an announcement until now."

Prior to its recent Linux-related announcements, Wind River deprecated Linux and open source, the probable cause of the company's reticence about its involvement with Eclipse. However, Wind River came away from its study of Eclipse impressed.

"It has been very well done," says Genard, "Very open from a design perspective. It can be expanded, enhanced, you can do a lot with it. We believe Eclipse will benefit Wind River, and that Wind River's customers and partners will benefit from Eclipse."

Eclipse to eclipse Tornado?

According to Genard, the company began downplaying Tornado in its marketing efforts as early as "last year, when we started to roll out the new Wind River 'platform' strategy." A quick visit to Wind River's website, confirms the reduced prominence of "Tornado," which was formerly a cornerstone of the company's branding.

Wind River works with customers in five vertical markets -- aerospace and defense, automotive, digital consumer, industrial and network infrastructure -- and the company says it will work with the Eclipse Consortium to ensure that best in class development technology is made available to developers in each of those markets.

Eclipse's star rising

Wind River is the largest embedded software company to join the Eclipse Consortium, which includes tech industry leaders like IBM, and HP, and embedded companies MontaVista, TimeSys, QNX, and others. Wind River also will help sponsor the inaugural Eclipse.con conference, set for Feb. 2-5, 2004, in Anaheim, Calif.

"Wind River will bring more than 20 years of experience and valuable depth of knowledge and expertise to the Eclipse Consortium," comments Skip McGaughey, chairperson of the Eclipse Board of Stewards. "Wind River will be a key contributor toward achieving the adoption of open, best in class development technologies in all computing environments."

"By using and contributing to proven Eclipse technologies, Wind River can apply more of our development resources to value-add for our customers, rather than building technology infrastructures," said Tomas Evensen, Senior Director Core OS and Tools, and Eclipse Steward, for Wind River. "Eclipse's open technology also provides end users with added interoperability, making it possible for them to combine various tools from different vendors."

Embedded development tool vendors already shipping Eclipse-based frameworks and plug-ins include Etnus, MontaVista, TimeSys, and QNX.

The Eclipse Consortium recently celebrated its second anniversary -- don't miss our Special Report.

Stepping toward Linux

Wind River's other recent announcements related to embedded Linux include Linux support for its VisionProbe bring up tool, and its decision (also announced today) to join the OSDL and contribute to the OSDL's Carrier Grade Linux working group.

-- by Henry Kingman, editor. Rick Lehrbaum, editor-in-chief, contributed to this report.

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