Author Archive

Experience is not what happens to you; it is what you do with what happens to you – Aldous Huxley

This paper is intended to create a guideline to enhancing your sales and marketing capabilities. You can follow as many of the suggestions as you wish – I wanted to provoke your thinking.

EMF recognizes that businesses today are confronted by unparalleled rates of change that create tremendous challenges. Companies need to differentiate products, react to on-going market shifts, efficiently streamline support of deployed products and exploit globalization. The stories we present are true, the guidelines are proven and the theme is to stimulate you to rethink your strategy in a rapidly changing marketplace.

Since I was a young man I have always had the entrepreneurial desire. Setting out without a guide can be a tortuous experience. It’s bad enough knowing what you don’t know. In my case it was worse – I didn’t know what I didn’t know. Through trial and error I built five companies (4 medical, 1 computer). The first were near or actual disasters – but through good fortune I found several mentors who taught me the fundaments of customer-based selling and market driven strategies. My success included taking two companies public – I wouldn’t have reached that goal if I not for the good graces of my mentors.

I sold out the last of my businesses in the late 80’s, took a detour in academics and returned to the embedded playing field as an industry analyst in the mid 90’s. Although markets have changed over the past 20 years since I was on the product selling side of the industry, I believe that the strategies that were passed on to me have merit in today’s highly competitive and rapidly changing embedded marketplace.

My transformation as a tekkie to a businessman didn’t come from seminars and course work – it came from my guides posing significant questions to me that forced me to rethink my markets, products and corporate values. I’d like to share them with you. I took to these questions not unlike a Zen beginner confronting his koans. The answers to these questions took a lot of reflection on my part, and a rethinking of how business is done and might be done better. Looking back – it’s laughable that I had the temerity to advertise that our products outperformed those of Hewlett Packard (medical). They did but who was going to believe it? HP did me a favor by taking on our product line and selling it with theirs.

Let’s begin with what I feel was the most important thought and the questions that ensued:

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Taking a “dog’s-eye” view of what we might expect in 2010

 The year 2010 is just around the corner, and we are doing what we do best — forecasting. After all it’s our name. But we aren’t just guessing — we base our forecasts on historical facts and data. For the past 12 years, we have been tracking what developers are doing, what tools, OSes and processes they are utilizing and what their design experiences have been. We also report on what issues trouble them the most.

Now we are preparing our 2010 detailed and comprehensive EMF Executive Survey of Embedded Developers and Managers. We will be inviting you to take the survey to see how you our “loyal readers” compare with the larger statistically based responses (please contact us at surveys@embeddedforecast.com if you are willing to participate). Respondents who take the survey will receive a complimentary copy of our survey overview (a $399 value).

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On November 10, 2009, Cavium, a publicly traded provider of highly integrated semiconductor processors that enable intelligent networking, communications, storage and security applications, signed a definitive agreement to acquire MontaVista. Cavium stated that MontaVista would continue to operate separately and their customers would not be restricted to using only Cavium processors.

Immediately, questions arose: 

• Who is Cavium and why did they make this acquisition?
• Was Jim Ready clipping Burger King Coupons?
• Was MontaVista motivated by Intel’s acquisition of Wind River?
• Does this mean that commercial Linux is facing financial do-do?
• What is really going on behind the scenes and is this a good or poor marriage? 

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“You never know who’s been swimming naked until the tide goes out”  -  Warren Buffet
 

IBM gets it! Why don’t others? With $22 billion in annual software sales they certainly qualify as the 2000 pound gorilla – but they don’t act that way. They didn’t get to that level by being arrogant (like another large gorilla?) – quite to the contrary.

• They strongly support the analyst community
• They have no secrets – they show us their roadmap, tell us what they have in the works, confess their concerns, listen and encourage other views
• Unlike some embedded vendors, they see analysts/editors as a respected strength to their business
• They subscribe to the best market intelligence and they study it and use it

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Co-authored by: Dolores Krasner, VP Market Intelligence, EMF

Remember the old song “Signs”? The lyrics went “signs, signs, everywhere signs, messing up the scenery blowing my mind - don’t do this do that, can’t you read the signs”?

With all of the FUD, claims and counterclaims of misrepresentation between embedded vendors, what is a developer, manager or executive to believe, and how is one to make sense of whether one product or another is best suited for one’s use? No wonder potential users are leery of advertised and promoted claims.

Is it possible that those making the most noise and creating the most FUD are those messing up the scenery for the rest of us? Moreover, are these disruptions taking us away from the real signs that are defined by developers and managers that detail their likes, dislikes, and issues of greatest importance? Finally, what are the market trends that are characterized by revenue growth, best practices and ROI calculations?

I chose the above graphic to illustrate my frustrations (and I suspect the frustrations of others) with the misleading hype that has unfortunately become part of our embedded market culture. What I loved about the graphic was the ridiculous message that hid the information of most importance to the reader – the bridge was out!

So what should the embedded market signs tell us – based on year-over-year EMF Developer Surveys, vendor reported shipments and EMF privleged information - about the road ahead and how to avoid the bridges that are out?

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The Cheshire cat said to Alice, “if you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there – and when you get there, there’s no there, there” – Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

The Cheshire cat could have been talking to some embedded vendors. If you don’t  understand or track the broader marketplace and what your customers and potential customers are doing and experiencing,  then how can you possibly develop the best strategic plan?

Historically, new and more forceful markets that redefine economic demand replace markets that create economic downturns. Today we are at a transition point in our economic recovery that will redefine markets, and we are currently witnessing an irrevocable upheaval in the marketplace for software design and development tools, components and services. There will be winners and losers. How then does an embedded vendor mitigate against uncertainty and find direction? We believe that market intelligence is the antidote to market uncertainty.

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The Restructuring of America’s Aerospace and Defense Industry and how the ripple down consequences will impact the Embedded Industry

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 that observers (embedded vendors included) who expect small changes are mistaken, thereby fostering a false and dangerous sense of security across much of the industry and government.

The impact to our economy goes far beyond our current financial problems and involves fundamental structural changes taking place in the industry and in the market. As in prior shifts of this nature, there will be winners and losers – however these shifts may be profound, creating more dramatic winners and losers than in the last cycle.

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It looks like Déjà vu all over again – Yogi Berra

OK. Every meeting I go to I’m asked my opinion regarding Intel’s acquisition of Wind River – so here goes. To be honest, people richer than me are behind and part of this acquisition, so who am I to think that I know better? To be sure, some of the people richer than I am have screwed up on a far grander scale than I have, so why not offer my perspective?

My first response to the question is a flashback to the “Shortest Book” jokes that I used to revel in decades ago. “Ethics for Enron Executives” would certainly be among the “shortest book titles”. My contribution to this arcane joke file was “Famous Jewish Weightlifters” a title that my rabbi didn’t understand.

Recently I thought of adding “Successful Intel Acquisitions and Spin-offs” to the list. Those of you old enough to remember Dialogic and Ziatech (as well as a number of software-based hardware analysis and virtual development platform spin-offs) will get my point.

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Sadly, like an All Pro quarterback whose arm has long ago lost its zip, the Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) returned to Boston the week of September 21, 2009. Once the “must attend event” of the fall season, this important venue continues to struggle with most of the major embedded vendors absent. Other company executives were present to speak with the press – but they didn’t host a booth. I was on a panel with Robert Day; VP marketing for LynuxWorks, who was in prominent attendance – but LynuxWorks didn’t have a booth.

Gone are most of the major chip companies. Only Microsoft, IBM Rational and Green Hills Software continue to host impressive booths. In year’s past Green Hills hosted a demonstration event in which was attended by a dozen or more viewers every hour. This year we saw only a handful of interested developers at each presentation

So what is it that accounts for this lack of participation? The decline began long before the economic crisis that we are experiencing – although the number of layoffs and the unwillingness of embedded OEMs and systems integrators to today invest in new technologies is certainly a contributing factor. In year’s past ESC Boston was a magnet for downscaled engineers to trot out their resumes. Given the severe downturn, many disenfranchised engineers didn’t see the point of pursuing a pointless effort.

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Embedded Market Forecasters conducts syndicated research that provides a view of the “forest” of the embedded world. The real question is what do you do with the information at hand? Along with the data, EMF provides the tools and expert analysis to turn the data into market intelligence. You can look at the results and draw correlations and conclusions. You can see the forest – but with the latest research dashboard tools, you can also see the trees.

Moreover, you can see relationships between the trees. For example, one can not only see what target OSes are developers are using, but one can also look simultaneously at many OSes to determine how many developers are on a project (and what types of developers), how many months it take from design start to shipment, what percentage is canceled and how many months the project runs before cancellation (same for designs completed behind or ahead of schedule). This is what Market Intelligence provides that Market Research does not.

Click to view a brief video!

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