Comparing Modeling Design Outcomes with Comparable non-modeling Design Outcomes

 

 

 

 

In a soon to be published EMF white paper, cadres of comparable design outcomes were developed between developers that used MBD tools and those that didn’t. Cadres were established worldwide, for North America, for Asia, and for Europe.

 

In addition, specific analyses were conducted for MBD and non-MBD cadres for Telecom/Datacom, Medical, Automotive Transportation and Industrial Automation application markets.

 

 

 

Total Cost of Development calculations were conducted using:

• Number of software and hardware engineers per project
• Time from design start to product shipment
• Percent of designs cancelled and the number of months elapsed before cancellation
• Percent of designs completed behind schedule and number of months behind

 

The following table summarizes EMF’s findings. For comparison, the cost per developer man month was chosen to be $10,000. Clearly, this dollar value is high for Asian developers. However this value was chosen for internal geographic analysis only – to establish whether MBD provided an advantage or not. These values are not to be used to compare, for example,  Asian costs with European costs.

 

				MBD
		Non-MBD Cost	MBD Cost	Advantage
	North America	$3,921,519	$3,153,452	24.4%
	Europe	$3,744,894	$2,722,134	37.6%
	Asia	$10,189,266	$3,374,067	202.0%

 

Looking at worldwide developments (that is interrogating the entire database irrespective of geographic considerations), the following table summarizes the EMF findings.

 

	World	World Industry
	Industry MBD	Not MBD
Devel time Months	13.4	13.1
% behind schedule	44.3%	49.9%
Months behind	3.7	3.7
Ave Delay Months	1.63	1.83
% cancelled	10.1%	12.1%
Months lost to cancellation	4.2	4.7
SW Developers/proj	11.0	16.3
HW Developers/proj	8.9	10.9
Total project developers	19.9	27.2
Average Developer months/project	266.2	358.1
Developer months lost to schedule	32.4	49.8
Developer months lost to cancellation	8.5	15.5
Total developer months/ project	307.1	423.4
At $10,000/developer month
Average developer cost/project	$2,662,098	$3,580,843
Average cost to delay	$323,977	$497,835
Total developer cost/project	$2,986,075	$4,078,677
	MBD Adv	36.6%

 

It is interesting to note that in every analysis, regardless of the cadres used (i.e., each vertical or geographic comparative breakout), MBD projects used fewer developers. When analyzing cost overruns (i.e., the number of developer months lost to cancellation or late completion) to total project developer months, the percent of cost overruns to total project developer months was less for MBD in every analysis.

 

EMF suggests that this data shows that the advantages in using simulation-modeling as a design methodology are real and that these practices will be adopted for reasons not only related to design outcomes, but for financial ROI reasons as well.

Insights from the 2010 EMF Survey of Embedded Developers

  

Each year EMF conducts a thorough and detailed survey of embedded developers. Using the EMF Dashboard – a web based tool that permits vendors and developers to correlate information between any responses to any question, EMF presents selected insights from its analysis of the 2010 data. The Dashboard enables vendors to look at the responses of their customers (and potential customers) as well as to their competitor’s customers. This provides invaluable insights for strategic and sales planning. Developers can see what their fellow developers are considering in their selection criteria

 

Product opportunity windows are fleeting and time-to-market issues dominate design considerations. The two factors that invariably make the difference between success and failure are first, the knowledge that comes with an accurate insight into the internal and external forces which drive product markets and second, an insight into the concerns, desires and thought processes of those customers who make the decision to purchase a particular product or deal with a particular vendor.

 

The following data, taken from the 2010 EMF Embedded Developer Survey, addresses many issues of which embedded vendors and developers should be aware. The data presented here represents embedded industry averages across many application verticals, many vendors, many OSes, etc. Subscribers to the 2010 EMF Market Intelligence Program have access to their custom Executive Dashboard with which they can create unlimited cross tabs to further examine the data presented here.

 

 Criteria Most and Least Important to Developers in Selecting an OS

 

Developers were asked to indicate which criteria were most important to their decision in selecting an OS. The top (most important) responses and the bottom (least important) responses are presented in the following tables.

 

There was an interesting reordering of priorities in 2010 with cost remaining the principal factor. Realtime performance fell (no surprise here) and safety certifiable and virtualization remained as a small part of the collective consciousness of embedded developers.

 

 

Criteria most important for selecting an OS:         Top 8 Responses	2010	2009
Acquisition cost	44.6%	36.7%
Availability of source code	33.1%	26.4%
Microprocessor support	30.4%	22.9%
Real time performance	29.8%	34.8%
Compatibility with our development tools	27.6%	29.0%
Includes good development tools	26.6%	24.5%
Reliability	25.2%	31.1%
Compatible with Linux	24.1%	17.8%

 

 

Criteria Least important for selecting an OS	2010	2009
Supports virtualization	4.9%	5.1%
Preferred vendor or on company approved list	4.3%	9.1%
POSIX or SCA compliant	4.3%	4.9%
Provides memory protection	3.9%	4.0%
Security certification (such as Common Criteria or NSA)	2.6%	4.2%
Must not be based on GPL	2.6%	2.1%
ARINC 653 compliant	1.6%	0.7%
Subscription licensing available (annual or fixed term)	1.4%	0.9%
Response to RFP	1.4%	2.8%

You Better Design Right, You Better Not Fail, if You Don’t Follow These Guidelines Your CEO’s going to Jail; The FDA/CDRH is Watching You Now

(Sung to Santa Claus is coming to town)

 

Yes indeed – and it’s about time.

The FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) reported that in 2006, 21% of all medical device recalls were for software defects – it is also estimated that one-in-three software-based products is recalled. They haven’t updated this data since, but one can assume that it might have gotten worse.

Medical device developers and company CEOs should be aware that this is an unacceptable situation and that it is going to rapidly change. Those that don’t get it straight won’t be around when the dust settles.

Is there enough aspirin to relieve the headaches that our government is giving medical device manufacturers? Moreover, is it deserved? The answer – depending on the specific question – is yes and no.

The Obama administration under pressure from Congress has combined the medical device industry with the drug industry as one, and has proposed taxing both industries to pay for universal health insurance (Obama Care). Hopefully thoughtful senators and representatives will see that these taxes will be passed down to patients and other users and will also impact the elderly who most require such devices and can ill afford them – then again it is more realistic to depend on the Easter bunny. But logic is no relief for the headache – particularly when it comes to Washington politicians. It’s no fun being a medical device executive today.

On July 31, 2008 a Senate Bill cosponsored by Senators Edward Kennedy (D – MA) and Chuck Grassley (R– IA) was filed that  would require senior officers or directors of drug and medical device companies to certify under penalty of perjury that all information submitted for a product’s approval is accurate and in compliance with federal regulations.

The Drug and Medical Device Accountability Act Bill expired at the end of the two year Senate session on December 31, 2008, but was refiled in the Senate (2009) with the hope of amending the current legislation by the end of October 2009. This is an important piece of legislation, and medical device executives should get their house in order to accommodate the provisions.

The Bill provided that product applications later found to have contained false or misleading information would be subject to stiff fines (up to $5,000,000), assessed both to companies and their senior officers, who, in addition, could face jail sentences of up to 20 years. These are serious issues. Currently the CDRH has a forensic group that looks at device software only after a device has been recalled.

This is a bad time, and a very costly time (regardless of the Act) for a medical device manufacturer – particularly if software development hadn’t been given the detailed oversight of using best practices. The new Obama tax on medical devices – used to pay for Obama Care – is allready a blow to the industry and to smaller medical device manufacturers.

The “Drug and Medical Device Accountability Act” will change the medical devices industry similarly to how the Sarbanes-Oxley bill impacted corporate accountability. Laws being what they are, we should expect overkill from its enactment. This is why medical device company’s senior management should take time to rethink their strategic approach to the delivery of their products.

EMF has available a report presenting alternative paths for developers to produce quality software for medical devices, minimize product recalls, and affordably provide comprehensive audit trails for CDRH inspectors (Critical Issues Confronting Medical Device Manufacturers). Keeping the company alive and your CEO out of jail are bonuses.

Fearless and no longer loathing in San Jose (with apologies to the late Hunter Thompson)

 

 

Dolores and I made our annual trip to the Left Coast to attend the annual Embedded Systems Conference last week. It was the best ESC West in many years – more booths; larger booths; good floor traffic; interesting announcements and new to embedded players.

 

I’m not sure how Rich Nass does it – but the keynote speaker was again excellent. This time Michio Kaku, the co-founder of string theory and TV science presenter was the speaker and was charming, funny (but Seinfeld can breathe easy), informative and delightful. We joined the mass exodus to avoid the obligatory hour dedicated for the Microsoft Embedded Group (aka MS Purgatory – otherwise known as We B Arrogant). Granted that Microsoft contributes a lot of $$ to these very important events – for which I am grateful – but give me a friggin break MS, Windows 7 is not the promised land for the embedded world.

 

This was the year that the chip companies made confessions of love to many OS companies. Freescale made announcements with such stalwarts as Green Hills, while Intel teamed with LynuxWorks for an ill chosen medical product. ARM was very impressive as was Microchip, while Xilinx ran away with the FPGA application announcements. Xilinx for the 7^th consecutive year (by EMF survey data) was the most used FPGA in the embedded space (and had the best ROI).

 

Green Hills also made a networking arrangement with Cavium (who recently acquired MontaVista and MV Linux) which caused us to ask if Dan O’Dowd (who has publicly claimed that anyone who used Linux was brain dead – or worse) had to be drugged or restrained to cut a deal with a Linux company. We checked the stock market for Prozac manufacturers to see if consumption was up in Santa Barbara. All chuckles aside – it was an excellent deal for Green Hills.

 

It surprised and impressed us that Green Hills made behind the scenes moves that portend for significant growth and positioning against Wind River by hiring two individuals that bring another dimension to the competitive marketplace that will be to their advantage. Although I’m not obliged to keep such under wraps, I do respect the Green Hills folks and will keep these details to ourselves – other than to mention that they are the first of the usual suspects to clearly see the light.

  Read the rest of this entry »

Failure is an Option – what Joe Biden should have said instead of dropping the F-Bomb

A few months back I gleefully reported what the voters of Massachusetts did for the medical device industry by electing Scott Brown as our new Senator. The US Senate had cobbled together a poor Health Care Bill in order to send it onto the House of Representatives assured that the Republicans would not win Kennedy’s seat and gain the blocking vote. It was, by admission of many Democratic Senators, a terrible bill – but that it would be cleaned up in a House-Senate conference. 

With Senator Brown finally seated it seemed to be a no-brainer that the Health Care Bill would have to be dropped or reconfigured as it would not stand a filibuster challenge.

I was one of those relieved given my concern for my beloved medical device industry which was going to be the scapegoat of the current administration and be severely taxed for no other reason than its name sounded a lot like the pharmaceutical industry. I felt that we had ducked a massive bullet.

The gross distortions in favor of forcing through the bill under Reconciliation were mind-numbing. How the public could be convinced that spending more than a trillion dollars would result in a “massive middle class tax reduction” and how could taking $500 billion out of Medicare “strengthen” it?

Here’s what has happened and what we might expect – how much more damage can Congress inflict before the November elections?

Read the rest of this entry »

 

 

 FIPS 140 (acronym for “Federal Information Processing Standard number 140”) is a US government standard, established by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which specifies a series of requirements that must be met by an encryption module before it can be used in a Federal government system.  These requirements cover a range of subjects, from proper key management, to secure generation of random numbers, and from which encryption algorithms may be used, to module self-tests and error detection.

 

Put more simply, if a product performs encryption, the portion of that product which actually implements the encryption is the focus of FIPS 140. FIPS 140 is of interest to the embedded systems industry for several reasons:

 

First, under Section 5-131 of the Information Technology Reform Act of 1996 (Public Law 104-106), and the Computer Security Act of 1987 (Public Law 100-235), FIPS from NIST may be approved by the Secretary of Commerce and made binding to all Federal agencies.  FIPS 140 has been granted such approval, and therefore all Federal agencies are required to use FIPS 140-certified encryption to protect all sensitive information processed by all data processing systems, from embedded systems to mainframes.

 

This means that vendors cannot sell systems which use encryption to any Federal agency unless that system incorporates FIPS 140-certified encryption.

  Read the rest of this entry »

 

Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim – George Santiago

 

 

Tough economic times create strange bedfellows. Does one need to purchase a technology, with its attendant costs and complications, when a lease or partner relationship would suffice? Do complimentary technologies and markets provide a return greater than the sum of the parts – or is the result characterized as “subtraction by addition?”

 

 EMF believes that embedded consolidation through acquisition will be the norm over the next few years as roll backs in DoD discretionary funding impact the larger purchasers.

 

 Let’s look to four recent acquisitions with an eye on compatibility, growth potential and whether there is a measurable outcome. Is this a trend, a lifeline or a passing strategic initiative – you decide.

 

 These include:

 

• IBM Rational buys Telelogic
• Intel buys Wind River Systems
• Cavium acquires MontaVista
• Artisan acquires Aonix

 

  Read the rest of this entry »

 

The State of Massachusetts had a special election to fill the seat held by the late Senator Ted Kennedy. Perhaps you heard of it.

Be warned – this is my first (and probably last) political blog. But I wanted to share with you what was the amazing response of our citizens – it wasn’t an election. It was a happening.

The Democratic primary was won in a landslide by Martha Coakley our Attorney General who promised, among other matters, to tax the medical devices industry (she didn’t say why – and didn’t think it was necessary to do so). In Massachusetts, Democratic registration is triple that of Republicans and our senators and representatives have all been Democrats for decades.

 

Notwithstanding my concern for my beloved medical device industry, it was going to be the scapegoat of the current administration and be severely taxed for no other reason than its name sounded a lot like the pharmaceutical industry. I was used to accepting the inevitable.

 

Confession is good for the soul – so let me share my long hidden shame. I have lived in Massachusetts 44 years. I came to work at MIT and attend medical school at Boston University. During that time I remained a fiscal conservative and registered Republican (who once had a Nixon sticker on my car) living in what we fondly call the People’s Republic of Massachusetts.

 

Moreover, I built 4 medical device companies (helping take two public) while living in Massachusetts rather than moving to tax-free New Hampshire and paid the confiscatory taxes. Somehow, for a guy with 5 college degrees, I just didn’t get it.

 

My experience in politics was minimal. I once (as a university professor) ran for the local school committee (as a Republican) and lost to a soda jerk (Democrat) working at a local luncheonette who admitted to being virtually illiterate. I lost by only 2000 votes (unfortunately out of 4000 cast). I voted in national elections only for the fact that I wanted to see my neighbors at the local high school.

 

There didn’t seem to be a reason to go out in the cold to vote against the political machine for a state senator who was one of only a few Republican members of the Massachusetts legislature.

 

But then I noticed that the polls that once gave Coakley a 31% lead showed that Brown had drawn within 2 percentage points – and an amazing thing happened. People everywhere were cautiously asking “what do you think of Scott Brown?” When I answered that we were going to vote for him, we experienced an unusual outpouring – like a confessional (being Jewish – but having a Catholic wife – I can only assume that it’s this way). Registered Democrats and Independents were confessing that they saw a way out of this mess. Some were engineers, others teachers, others just working folks but they each understood that we can’t tax innovation and small businesses out of existence. And they were encouraged to participate and help get out the vote (Brown won by 5 percentage points).

 

Americans are resourceful and the emergence of and growth in medical, computer and embedded businesses are what gave us the greatest standard of living the world has ever seen. Small businesses contribute 80% of job growth. We have been tracking local and out of state technology (and energy) companies to get the pulse of future employment. I have spoken with engineers that are getting a lot of interviews (for when the crunch comes) but no offers. I’m told that companies are waiting to understand the financial risks they will have for funding employee health care under the proposed Senate and House bills. Also there is a fear as to which markets will be arbitrarily taxed (currently banks and healthcare – but potentially telecom) that need to be resolved before small and medium sized businesses will increase hiring.

 

So, for my friends, colleagues and neighbors this was not merely an election – this was a happening! I have received emails from colleagues around the USA expressing their joy and relief.

 

Even though the Senate will only have 41 Republican members, what happened January 19, 2010 in Massachusetts (known as the Scott heard around the world) may well be the dynamite that opens up the logjam that will help embedded vendors and developers get the loans and financing that they need to support growth.

 

Dolores, a lifelong Democrat who is equally frustrated about state politics, is now changing her registration to Independent. It’s hard to break an addiction.

 

Post Script: The Power of a Single potential vote

 Today, one day after the Massachusetts election, President Obama requested that his healthcare legislation be significantly scaled back to a less comprehensive but more affordable bill. This will reduce the need to tax the medical devices industry to pay for the larger proposed program.

Thanks Scott

 

The market, like the Lord, helps those that help themselves. But unlike the Lord, the market does not forgive those who know not what they do – Warren Buffett

 

The embedded marketplace is facing a financial tsunami that will have severe consequences for the largest consumers of embedded technology – the Tier 1 contractors. This in turn will significantly impact the lower tiers and cause a major upheaval for Tier 3 vendors – the embedded suppliers.

Steve Roemerman, CEO of Lone Star Aerospace a highly respected technology consultant to military and government agencies has written “The Aerospace and Defense Industries of the United States are poised to undergo one of the most significant changes since the end of the Cold War, perhaps the most significant since World War II. We believe observers who expect small changes are mistaken, fostering a false and dangerous sense of security across much of the industry and government”. 

 

This forecast and view is also strongly held by Ken Krieg, former deputy undersecretary for defense acquisition, and in publications from Booze Allen.

 

So you might be asking “Why haven’t we heard of this, Jerry and why are other analysts forecasting a very good year for 2010?” Being long in the tooth and having been here before when CompactPCI was being touted as the VME slayer and industry hopefuls along with participating analysts were forecasting a $2 billion merchant computer board marketplace (which EMF called a $zero billion market). Why were we correct and others in error? Because markets behave in predictable manners – even when disruptive technologies disturb the playing field. 96% of CompactPCI offerings were controlled by 3 companies – this represented a classic commodity market and there was little room for growth. It took 24 VME vendors to account for 75% of the VME market, by comparison – which made it a dynamic and growing market. VME is still around and holding market share. CompactPCI is now a custom product (not a COTS product) and is being abandoned by PICMG for PCIExpress.

The outcome was predictable. Today the Board marketplace is dominated by Kontron, GE, Curtis Wright and RadiSys. Gone are Motorola Computer Group, Force Computers and a litany of others.

The embedded world is characterized by a growing and vital marketplace that is forcing certain segments into commoditization while creating huge opportunities for those that take the time and invest the effort into understanding their market dynamics.

I love the following story – because for me it holds more than a kernel of truth.
 

Its late fall and the Indians on a remote reservation in South Dakota asked their new chief if the coming winter was going to be cold or mild. Since he was a chief in a modern society, he had never been taught the old secrets. When he looked at the sky, he couldn’t tell what the winter was going to be like. Nevertheless, to be on the safe side, he told his tribe that the winter was indeed going to be cold and that the members of the village should collect firewood to be prepared.

But, being a practical leader, after several days, he got an idea. He went to the phone booth, called the National Weather Service and asked,’ Is the coming winter going to be cold?’ ‘It looks like this winter is going to be quite cold,’ the meteorologist at the weather service responded. So the chief went back to his people and told them to collect even more firewood in order to be prepared.

A week later, he called the National Weather Service again. ‘Does it still look like it is going to be a very cold winter?’ When told it would be severe he sent his people to pick even more firewood.

Two weeks later, the chief called the National Weather Service again. ‘Are you absolutely sure that the winter is going to be very cold?’ ‘Absolutely, ‘ the man replied. ‘It’s looking more and more like it is going to be one of the coldest winters we’ve ever seen..’ ‘How can you be so sure?’ the chief asked.

The weatherman replied…

 ‘The Indians are collecting firewood like crazy’ 

So how much does our industry influence itself? Is the embedded industry too small to understand its dependencies?

Continued in Part II

 

 

 

 

 

Forecasting involves two distinct activities;

 

 

 

 

• Measuring the pulse of embedded developers to understand what they are doing, what success they are having, what are their deepest concerns and how do the use of different technologies (e.g., comparative RTOSes, development tools, communication middleware, testing processes, etc.) affect design outcomes (ROI, time to market, percent of designs completed ahead or behind schedule – or cancelled). Also it is helpful to compare final design outcomes to pre-design expectations.
• Following purchasing trends, funding sources and levels, and whether purchasers are bringing developments and tools in-house or by purchasing.

It is important for embedded vendors to use available data and information and to be able to cross-correlate findings to search out relationships that help define market directions as well as to provide sales support materials to better pursue qualified leads.

EMF published research has used developer-based user surveys and collaborative industry/government based usage and funding insights to forecast market segments that are growing and those that are contracting (at least in the short term). Given these insights there are steps that vendors can take to minimize risk while maintaining a positive positioning.

These include:

• A serious analysis of your competitive position is essential to not only getting qualified leads but also to having a competitive sales support program with which to follow up these leads. Customers are buying your competitor’s products. Do you know why? Do you know how best and affordably to find this information (talking to a few customers won’t get you there)? Can you prove that your products help your customers get to market faster?

• You really need to know what your customers really need – how do you find out? In our surveys we discover what issues are most troubling to them and what would motivate them to move towards you (or away from you).

• If your products and those of your competitors exceed the needs of current and prospective customers (notwithstanding how truly cool your products may be) mitigating factors will affect their purchasing decision – even if your product isn’t as cool as those of your competitors.

• Be able to demonstrate your value (they won’t do it for you). Be able to provide factual information – ROI if you can.

• Promote yourself. Is your marketing targeting the right customers and do they have compelling information to state your case? Be proactive – your competitors might have access to information that makes their case – and you wouldn’t know about it.

Be exceedingly careful as you look to expand your marketplace – either offensively or defensively. Vendors realizing the impending shortfall in mil/aero are looking to alternative markets without understanding the dynamics and true needs of those markets. Medical, for example, has been targeted by some of the larger mil/aero vendors stressing their DO 178-B and Common Criteria certifications. For the most part this is laughable given that the highest frequency response for monitoring a non-attended patient is 100 HZ.

We are seeing companies that have been successful in EDA (e.g., Synopsys) and IT communication systems (e.g., IBM) bringing their proven technologies to enhance systems development and deployment – which in turn change development paradigms by offering OEMs and systems integrators better long term solutions.

Smaller vendors need to be able to show their value and the ability to integrate their solutions with these more advanced solutions. IBM Rational’s Rhapsody is an example of a very powerful model driven development (MDD) tool that allows for competitor’s requirements management, RTOS, static and dynamic analysis technologies to be comfortably integrated.

Be careful where you get your information – and before you pay for it make sure you understand where it came from and how it was obtained.

Warren Buffett offers the following timely advice: “For some reason people take their cues from price action rather than from values. Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.”