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Yesterday Intel announced that they were buying Wind River, a big name in the embedded OS market whose software shipped on everything from cars to the Mars Rover. Trying to sort out what the acquisition means, I asked a few questions to our CEO, Mark Lee. Before starting OSA (acquired by Avocent) and DeviceVM, Mark had spent 8 years at Intel - so he would know.

Q: Mark, why did Intel buy Wind River?
A: Intel is smart to look to move up the value stack, but the purchase of Wind River is questionable. A software business is about the people, the talents. Wind River's expertise is largely around VxWorks, a proprietary OS that continues to lose ground to open source Linux. The embedded software business model is complex, since Wind River serves many different verticals. There are lots of professional services and complex licensing schemes. Intel’s business model is about scalability. The two don’t jive well together.

Q: WindRiver was also refocusing on Linux, wasn't it?
A: Yes, but there are many stronger Linux players who have no legacy baggage. Intel has been evangelizing Moblin Linux to different Linux OSVs, like Novell, Ubuntu, Xandros, Red Flag - including Wind River. Now the company in effect is competing with these partners - Intel calls them “fellow travelers”. Ironically, out of all Moblin OSVs, Wind River is the only one without any major netbook or MID OEM wins.

Q: What do you think of the ecosystem impact of the Wind River acquisition beyond Linux players?
A: The majority of Wind River’s silicon partners are non-x86: ARM, MIPS, PPC, Sparc, etc. They are Intel competitors. It is hard to see any of these companies continuing to work with Wind River. Much of Wind River non-x86 revenue and customer base will likely go away. I don’t know nor see any non-x86 device manufacturer will move to Intel Atom just because Wind River is optimized for Atom. If more devices move to Atom, it will be on the hardware merits of Atom, and because of the expanding success of Linux overall. With our Splashtop, for example, we are building a great instant-on Linux platform to make Atom more successful.