On Target: Embedded Systems

VDC is Attending embedded world 2012!

2012-01-27T10:43:31-05:00

Contact us ASAP to schedule a meeting!

We will be making the trip across the Atlantic again this year to visit the largest embedded technology tradeshow of the year, embedded world in Nuremberg, Germany. Last year, the conference boasted over 19,000 visitors and over 800 exhibiting companies!

While we are at the conference, we welcome the opportunity to meet with attending vendors to learn more about their embedded solutions and any show-related (or other recent) announcements.

You can arrange a meeting time with VDC by doing one of the following:

For Software and Tools related meetings

Contact Jared Weiner, Analyst, Embedded Software & Tools Practice, VDC Research Group at: jweiner@vdcresearch.com or 508.653.9000 x143.

For Hardware related meetings

Contact Jonathan Hastings, Analyst, Embedded Hardware & Systems Practice, VDC Research Group at: jhastings@vdcresearch.com or 508.653.9000 x127.

Haven't decided if you're attending embedded world yet?

Please check out the embedded world website for more information on the conference program as well as information on all of the companies that will be exhibiting. You can also click here to register.

We look forward to seeing you at the show!

Is Android Coming to a Secure Device Near You?

2012-01-24T13:47:30-05:00

What Happened?

In case you missed it, the National Security Agency (NSA) announced last week the initial public release of a security-enhanced (SE) version of Android based on SE Linux. As stated by the NSA, the primary objective of SE Android is to “identify and address critical gaps in the security of Android.” The enhanced security features of SE Android are designed prevent malicious attacks by restricting the permissions of Android applications (superseding user-approved settings) while also isolating individual apps from each other.

VDC’s View

The openness of Android has been widely regarded as both a blessing and a curse during the platform’s first few years of relevance in the mobile device market, leading to seemingly equal parts innovation and fragmentation. With regard to apps, this openness allows independent developers (and hackers) to create apps that have access to a variety of internal device features, such as Bluetooth, network communication, personal information, storage, system tools, and more. While this has certainly been beneficial toward the creation and expansion of the vast Android Market, the security implications have in many cases prevented Android devices from being utilized in various government and enterprise environments. Of course, security concerns have also played a role in what to this point has been a relatively low rate of adoption of Android beyond the mobile and consumer electronics industries.

VDC continues to believe that Android will eventually become widely deployed in automotive infotainment applications, medical devices, military communication equipment, and other applications that place a premium on connectivity requirements, sophisticated user interaction, and application availability. SE Android, which is still in its early stages, may represent the first step toward building an implementation of Android that would be suitable for embedded devices with security requirements above and beyond those of typical smartphones, tablets, and other consumer electronics products.

However, while the strict access control policies of SE Android are likely to be attractive to OEMs, a significant level of compiling and other custom installation processes would still be required to deploy the platform – a process further complicated by customization requirements inherent in Android-based vertical market-specific devices. Herein lay the opportunities for embedded software vendors to capitalize on the momentum behind Android and perhaps finally help bring the platform to a much broader range of embedded device classes. By leveraging their domain expertise – both in the development of vertical market-specific applications and in embedded device security – vendors such as Green Hills Software, Mentor Graphics, MontaVista Software, SYSGO, Wind River, and others are expected to play a vital role in enabling OEMs to exploit the benefits of Android while also maintaining a secure operating environment. VDC also believes that it will be critical for these organizations to also evangelize the capabilities of Android as they pertain to security-enabled devices, as the community as a whole may not be inclined to completely accept the notion of deploying Android in environments where security is paramount.

VDC will investigate this trend among others in our upcoming report, Android in the Embedded Systems Market, from our research service Strategic Insights 2012: Embedded Software & Tools Market. Please contact us for more information.

Ditch the Dictionary, “Spell Check” Your Way Through Source Code Analysis

2012-01-24T09:51:43-05:00

Anyone still keep a dictionary and thesaurus next to your writing station?

If you’re like me, the computer is where you write and automated spell checking in email and word processing programs have long since relegated these once essential writing tools to dust collecting duty on a bookshelf.

Klocwork, a leading supplier of embedded automated test & verification tools, is bringing the spell checker usability model to source code analysis (SCA). The company’s newest release of their main product, Klocwork Insight 9.5, provides C/C++ developers with “On-the-fly” analysis. By underlining security and critical defects in code as it is written, the tool helps users move away from the inefficient batch processing model of code analysis and further towards the ideal of SCA completed by developers in their regular work flow rather than by dedicated testing groups.

This release also provides “On-the-fly” reporting tools. Using simple drag and drop pivot chart capabilities, developer teams can rapidly create reports to meet their organization’s needs.

“On-the-fly” impact analysis is the third improvement Klocwork promotes with the Insight 9.5 launch. Their release announcement indicates it “offers cross-project impact analysis and reporting which immediately indicates whether a reported issue exists in other code bases, branches or builds. With this smart matching technology, development teams that re-use code across multiple systems won't waste time finding and fixing the same issues over-and-over.”

The benefits promised by shifting source code analysis into a developer’s workflow are clear. Earlier discovery of coding issues such as security defects, memory leaks and bug can lower overall development costs and reduce lost time spent writing flawed code. We could see customization of this type of instant notification functionality gaining even further value going forward as more organizations adopt or establish their coding standards. The ability to prioritize issues based on severity and prevalence across multiple code streams and avoid redundancy by implementing a resolution en masse is a compelling value proposition.

For more insight into these tools, including automated testing & verification tools such as those offered by Klocwork, please see VDC Research’s upcoming analysis of the Software & Systems Lifecycle Management Tool markets.

Social Media IPO Market May Be Softening, But Impact Undeniable

2011-12-31T23:57:09-05:00

If it wasn’t already, 2011 proved to be the year in which social media firmly entrenched itself within our culture. From LinkedIn to Twitter to Facebook, these platforms went from growth engines and sources hype to ubiquitous – nearly pedestrian – components of our everyday lives. In fact, a number of the social media/technology companies went public in 2011 (LinkedIn, Zynga, and Groupon, among others), although none of their offerings ultimately lived up to their financial expectations.

We have already seen how these technologies can transcend consumer/corporate boundaries and have proven themselves to be valuable parts of marketing and sales strategies, but we also expect that they will also have an increasing impact on the ways in which embedded engineers work together.

To some degree, we have all been reconditioned to expect ubiquitous connectivity and real-time communication/information, as can be supported through the aforementioned platforms. The potential utility of this type and cadence of information delivery can also be extended to the development world.

Historically, much of the embedded software/system development cycle was conducted in a somewhat linear fashion and included the assignment of very specific engineering tasks to different engineers, who then often conducted their work in virtual “silos” – isolated from the other work being conducted by their team members. However, the growing interest in and use of more iterative and cyclical development methodologies such as Agile within the embedded market is subsequently forcing many engineering organizations to reevaluate their incumbent processes and tools. These newer methodologies often put a greater emphasis on team communication and collaboration in order to quickly develop and implement changes to software that can be dictated by a continually broadening set of organizational and client stakeholders.

In order to facilitate this higher level of collaboration, we expect that engineering organizations will increasingly be driven to evaluate tools that can both support tighter integration and interchange between design phases as well as enable the rapid communication and feedback cycles that iterative development methodologies often require. As such, we expect that this growing need – combined with the preconditioning of the general adult population to use social media – will drive more engineering organizations (and the tool vendors supporting them) to implement real-time communication platforms frameworks as a key component of their institutionalized development process.

Can Commercial Operating Systems Stay Relevant in Consumer Facing Devices?

2011-12-31T20:53:52-05:00

While the recent smartphone struggles of Research In Motion and Microsoft have proven to be main points of mobile media fodder for 2011, the corresponding strengthening of the market positions of Apple and Android have further underscored the shift in mobile operating system business models.

Just a few years ago, the smartphone market was dominated by three main platforms: Symbian, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile. Then, in 2007, everything changed with the release of the first iPhone and the formation of the Open Handset Alliance.

Closed, OEM controlled platforms have always had a place in the mobile market as evidenced by Apple, Blackberry and even Palm once upon a time. The opportunity for commercial mobile application operating systems, however, seems to be dwindling. The acquisition and open sourcing (and ultimate demise) of Symbian left Microsoft as the sole major vendor servicing the domain that relies on a royalty-based business model. So, given this shift and the seemingly unstoppable momentum of the Apple and Android application development ecosystems, can a commercially licensed application OS ever again achieve significant share within the market

The evolving impact of commercially funded, non-commercial OSs

Already, we have seen a search engine company (Google) entrench itself within the mobile domain and subsequently gain traction in other embedded verticals. Amazon’s purported interest in acquiring RIM earlier this year brings this dynamic into even more of a spotlight. The company actually goes so far as to offer advertisement-subsidized versions of its Kindle e-readers, so it is within reason that they could extend this model to the smartphone space if they were to ever enter it. The allure and growth of mobile e-commerce is certainly large enough to attract and support this type of device subsidization, but what would the ultimate impact be on the broader embedded market?

We’ve been talking about the “iPhone effect” on embedded development for years as it pertains to the consumerization of other devices classes and the growing end user expectation for sophisticated touch interfaces. The growth and development of the Android ecosystem has likewise caused many OEMs to evaluate its suitability for a wide range of vertical markets. But could you ever expect end users to tolerate an advertisement pop up or logo on their industrial handheld terminal? Not likely.

Clearly, there are limits to the applicability and diffusion of these new OS platforms’ business models in a number of embedded industries. However, the mobile OS ecosystem has nevertheless been the main catalyst driving change in a number of embedded segments for years and - given the short shelf lives of and time to market windows for smartphones - will likely continue to drive the evolution of embedded technologies in the years to come. That said, considering the innate differences between the mobile phone space and other embedded verticals, can we still rightfully expect the blurring of the lines between these device classes’ OSs to continue or will we ultimately see their delineation once again become more concrete and a subsequent re-stratification of the supplier ecosystem?

Enea Relinquishes Consulting Business

2011-12-30T11:49:27-05:00

What Happened?

Earlier today, Enea announced the divestment of its Swedish consulting companies to a subsidiary of Alten Group, a Paris-based global technical consulting company. As described in Enea’s press release by President and CEO Anders Lidbeck:

“The divestment is part of our strategy to focus on our global software business…by divesting this unit we are refining Enea’s business and get the opportunity to invest in areas such as Linux, real-time operating systems, hardware environments, and product related services. We want to become the world leader for operating systems to the wireless broadband industry.”

Alten Group’s acquisition of these companies, which also includes an agreement that Enea will purchase consulting services from Alten in 2012, is expected to close sometime in Q1.

VDC’s View

While in many ways 2011 has been a period of great transition for Enea – which earlier this year introduced a new Linux strategy as well as a new President and CEO – the company’s dedication to (and reliance on) customers in the telecom/datacom space has remained constant. This latest announcement did come as a bit of a surprise to VDC (Enea had just reinforced the importance of its consultancy organizations this past May) but we agree that the move presents significant benefits to the company’s software business.

Enea’s stated goal of achieving leadership in the wireless broadband industry is very much in line with the company’s traditional strengths and expertise. However, we believe that the benefits of a laser-focus on operating system technologies may extend even further. By placing a spotlight on these solutions, the company may also uncover strategies that will enable the diversification of software revenue streams that at this point are heavily reliant (greater than 50%, according to Enea’s 2010 Annual Report) on Ericsson and Nokia. This reliance, of course, is in direct contrast to the growth and success of other leading RTOS vendors, which have largely been enabled by investments in a wide range of embedded markets.

VDC believes that the aforementioned Linux strategy – which has enabled Enea to deliver an integrated solution that includes runtime software (RTOS, Linux, hypervisor, etc.), middleware, and software development tools – was perhaps the first step in a direction that will allow Enea to focus on a broader array of embedded markets. By relinquishing its consultancy organizations to concentrate solely on operating system technology and other embedded software solutions, Enea has taken another step. Assuming the company is willing and able to continue down this path, we expect significant growth opportunities for Enea and much stiffer competition for the likes of Wind River, Green Hills Software, QNX Software, and other leading RTOS suppliers.

Related posts:

Enea Expands Multicore Strategy and Support for Linux

Telehealth Initiatives Driving Software Stack Requirements in Medical Devices

2011-12-29T08:36:02-05:00

Mobility has been among the key influencers within the medical device market in recent years, the phenomenon helping to promote the advent of teleheath-related solutions, which rely heavily on care provided away from formal healthcare facilities. The concept of telehealth – which can be broadly defined as the incorporation of telecommunications technologies within health-related services – is expected to become increasingly popular as a means through which to decentralize medical services. More and more, medical professionals in developed regions are relying on patients and other in-home care providers to administer a variety of relatively straightforward services in an effort to reduce the burden on the world’s hospitals. Many of these away-from-hospital services, such as ECG and other patient monitoring systems, utilize telehealth technologies to connect to hospital and doctor’s office networks to enable the transmission and sharing of vital patient records.

Accordingly, VDC has observed that engineers building medical devices have exhibited a greater need for software stack components that enable connectivity and data storage/transmission as compared to engineers developing embedded devices targeting other industries. The figure below displays the six software stack components (in addition to embedded/real-time operating systems) cited most frequently by survey respondents developing a medical device as a requirement for their current development project.

USB, TCP/IP, and other wired/wireless connectivity stacks are essential components that enable vital patient records to be shared with medical professionals in remote locations, while file systems and embedded databases allow for the collection and storage of such data. Considering the sensitive nature of the data collected and transmitted by these devices, the presence of security stacks among the top software requirements is also not a surprise. In fact, VDC expects security stacks to be an increasingly required component in a variety of embedded applications, as the embedded industry as a whole has begun to increase its focus on protecting sensitive data from malicious attacks and other outside threats.

Survey responses also revealed that only 19% of engineers developing a medical device used a commercially licensed operating system and nearly 40% used no formal operating system at all, as compared to 27% and 23%, respectively, when considering all survey respondents. While many less-sophisticated medical devices may never have the necessary power, connectivity, or performance requirements to justify the use of a formal, commercial operating system, VDC expects that the effect of the telehealth trend on additional software stack components required in medical devices will strengthen the demand for commercial OSs. Furthermore, OS vendors with extensive expertise and experience in this space – Green Hills Software, Mentor Graphics, Microsoft, QNX Software, and Wind River, to name a few – are well positioned to increase their revenue streams by leveraging that expertise to enable medical device manufacturers to more easily transition to commercial platforms.

VDC investigates this and other vertical market specific trends from across the embedded landscape in our upcoming report, Vertical Markets & Applications, from our 2011 Embedded Software & Tools Market Intelligence Service. This study will provide an analysis of individual vertical market standards, trends, current and emerging practices, and analysis of select applications within the following vertical markets:

Automotive/rail/transportation
Consumer electronics
Industrial automation
Medical devices
Military/aerospace
Mobile phones
Office/business automation
Retail automation
Telecom/datacom

Please contact us for more information.

Just Remember: If You Cut Off Your Finger, Tell Your Wife the Firmware Did It.

2011-12-28T19:46:41-05:00

Earlier this week in Jack Ganssle’s regular Break Points column on embedded.com, Jack highlighted the story of a careless table saw operator, who parlayed his ignorance into a big payday at the cost of the saw manufacturer, and its relevance to a proposed software liability law. In the end, the OEM was found liable for the operator’s injuries because, even though he was disregarding the specified operating procedures and safety protocols, the OEM did not include an emergency flesh-sensing shutdown feature that a competitor had included within a different product. In effect (and I admit I say this with a hint of sensationalism), the OEM was penalized for their competitor’s innovation.

(By the way, if any of you saw the recent remake of the movie Arthur, you no doubt have additional appreciation of the potential applications of table saw emergency shutdown technology)

The article makes the case that the potential liability arising from embedded software functioning incorrectly – or even functioning correctly under an unforeseen set of circumstances – should compel OEMs across the embedded industry to pay more attention to the quality of the software code. So basically the increasing amount of device sophistication and functionality driven by software also simultaneously ups the industry’s standard/minimum duty of care.

Clearly, OEMs can implement some best practices to help improve their code quality such as the use of standardized development processes, coding standards, and automated test tools. However, given that an increasing amount of embedded software content is being created by third parties (commercial IP, open source components, ODM/tier 2 OEM subsystems, etc), OEMs will need to go to even greater lengths going forward to audit and ensure the functionality of the software from its entire supply chain. Ultimately, in this increasingly litigious environment, any liability posed on the OEM community will also likely be passed downstream – at least in part – to their supply chain partners in a series of finger pointing, scapegoating, and countersuits.

So what else can/should OEMs (or other software stack contributors) do to at least limit their exposure to risk?

For one, IP management tools such as those from Black Duck or Palamida can help establish software component lineage, but can stop short of providing the documentations of asset functionality – especially as it pertains to their functionality when integrated with in-house IP. Additionally, this trend likely puts even greater pressure/importance on software testing – as well as specifically the test scripting/design process for dynamic testing. If all else fails (or perhaps as a parallel contingency plan), OEMs can always fall back on the old strategy of beefing up their in-house legal staff and conspiring with competitors to lobby Washington for protective legislation…

Will Quad-core Phones Give QNX another Shot at Saving RIM?

2011-12-28T10:48:09-05:00

In a blog last week, we highlighted the lack of consumer electronic devices shipping today with multicore chipsets. Smartphones, on the other hand, have already begun to make that transition and the inclusion of these new processors has even emerged as a point of marketing for many OEMs.

To date, however, these mobile multicore devices have mostly used dual-core processors. As there are more and more announcements (and speculations) about the forthcoming inclusion of quad-core processors in mobile phones, we are left wondering how or if this change could impact the supplier landscape.

The multifaceted impact of multicore processors

Whereas some level of performance improvement can be achieved through just the implementation of a basic SMP (symmetric multiprocessing) OS and the facilitation of “application multitasking”, the ability of a single application to take advantage of the multiple cores is limited by the percentage of the application’s tasks and instruction sets that can be executed in parallel. In the near term, the performance difference noticeable to end users will likely be small due to SMP OSs’ ability to obfuscate the complexities of the multiple cores and provide applications with incremental speed improvements, but the discernible discrepancies will only become more evident as next generation phones adopt more advanced silicon.

The bigger question might be what happens beyond 4 cores, when SMP OSs begin to lose some of their efficacy and developers themselves are forced to learn how to developed multithreaded apps. Today, many mobile application developers can get away with rather rudimentary development tools. This just may not be good enough in the future and may drive more developers to look for premium solutions.

The potential impact on the mobile OS ecosystem

Whereas all phone and OS providers will need to reevaluate their platforms and developer enablement strategies in light of the long-term adoption of many-core processors, we expect that this shift may actually have the greatest impact on the Android ecosystem. To abstract the complexities of the underlying software stack and market the OS to a broader range of developers, the OHA designed Android to use a Java virtual machine over its core Linux kernel.

As a result – in order to achieve the application speed required to remain competitive – Android developers may be forced to learn the C programming language (a longtime embedded favorite) for low-level native development on future many-core devices. This added difficulty in development (or simply the relative reduction in existing application performance improvements) may lead more developers and end users to again evaluate new mobile platforms not named Android or iOS. This market pause might just provide QNX/RIM (or even Microsoft) an opportunity to regain widespread relevance.

Whereas QNX is a newcomer to the mobile landscape, it is a well established stalwart of the multicore solution market. Provided that RIM can get some phones to market in a timely matter, QNX’s proven multicore technology could actually provide them with an edge in performance and a chip in their favor in the eyes of end consumers. That said, the shift beyond 4 cores is likely still at least a year away, which is nearly an eternity in the mobile world – both in terms of time for other OSs to invest in multicore performance enhancements as well as time for RIM (and all other mobile OSs) to fall far enough behind in their ecosystem development that they would not be able to mount a realistic comeback. Regardless of the prospects of the individual mobile OS suppliers, the continued evolution of the processor landscape should certainly provide ample opportunity for platforms and application developers alike to recast their value propositions and differentiation.

Part II: Will Android Erode the Software Development Tool Market?

2011-12-24T23:52:00-05:00

In case you missed it, click here Part I of our analysis.

Over recent years, the commercial software development tool market has faced a number of pressures, which – to one degree or another – have eroded the commercial market’s growth potential. Whether you look at the continued evolution of open source tools or just the growing tendency of both OS vendors and silicon suppliers to bundle (or even give away) toolkits with their flagship products, traditional standalone software development tool (SDT) vendors are facing a growing set of obstacles.

Given this already challenging set of circumstances, can the increasing use of an open source OS (Android) make things worse for commercial SDT vendors?

As we have discussed before, a number of OEMs are also beginning to experiment with Android outside of the mobile phone space. Although there are not yet widespread deployments of the Android OS in these other vertical markets, it has catalyzed the development of its own supporting commercial solution and service market – much of which is actually driven by the interest in its use on non-ARM architectures.

In parallel to this growing demand for Android in other embedded verticals, however, we have already seen ARM make real, tangible progress in expanding its footprint beyond the mobile phone sector. Driven by the desire to improve power performance, many of OEMs have begun to evaluate ARM-based architectures and, in many cases, are subsequently forced to consider changes to their software as well. Clearly, this growing use of ARM can help create additional opportunities for Android.

So will the expansion of Android into new device classes and ARM’s recent toolkit strategy cannibalize some of the commercial market tools market? Perhaps. But in the broader embedded market? Not likely.
It is important to remember that most embedded industries are not subject to the whims and velocity of change of consumer markets and – believe it or not – have other device requirements (such as latency, support, footprint, etc.) that can trump OS-brand buzz. Even as many OEMs outside of the mobile phone sector experiment with Android, this is not necessarily to the exclusion of other OSs. Most OEMs simply do not have the luxury to place all of their eggs in one OS basket.

Additionally, the engineering rigor and incumbent development tools established within many of OEMs has created a somewhat inelastic demand – and available budget – for premium solutions. With application software an increasingly important point for differentiation across all embedded devices, this will likely not be too quick to change. If nothing else, ARM may have just taken one more step toward strengthening its value proposition within some of the non-mobile device classes that it covets – for both its commercial tools as well as its processor IP.

Click here Part I of our analysis.