Wind River Systems

Wind River's embedded real-time operating system, VxWorks, introduced in 1987, has become an industry standard for performance and sound operation. The success of VxWorks, now part of the company's revolutionary Tornado environment for embedded development, has made Wind River a premier supplier in this market. Factors that contribute to the company's future growth include market growth, technology leadership, customer support and partnerships. Key Dates: Company's VxWorks is chosen as the computer operating system for the Mars Pathfinder space mission. Wind River Systems, Inc. is a leading provider of embedded software and services for 'smart' devices. The company's technology is found in products--such as laser printers, automotive braking systems, robots, cellular phones, and traffic signals--that have computer-enhanced capabilities. Organized into five distinct business units (Platform Engineering, Consumer, Networks, Services, and Transportation/Defense/Industrial), Wind River creates the operating systems and development tools for the computer chips (comprising more than 90 percent of all microprocessors sold) that enable such devices to operate intelligently. A key to Wind River's success is its relationships with technology leaders. The company's clients include Cisco Systems, Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., Intel Corp., International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), and Sun Microsystems, Inc. In fact, more than 30,000 developers across the high-technology industry incorporate Wind River technology in some 30 million devices. In recent years, Wind River has concentrated on developing the software and infrastructure required to connect products and appliances to the Internet. The company also made two significant acquisitions in 2000 when it purchased Embedded Support Tools Corporation and Integrated Systems Inc. Wind River Systems cofounder Jerry Fiddler did not set out to enter the computer industry. Rather, after graduating with a degree in music from the University of Illinois, he hoped to pursue a musical career, applying for a position as the resident composer at the University of Illinois' dance department. He discovered, however, that an advanced degree was required for the post so he re-enrolled at the University. Instead of studying music, he pursued a master's degree in computer science because he was interested in the field of computer-generated music. But after obtaining his master's, Fiddler had difficulty finding meaningful work in Illinois. So he headed for California in 1977. With his computer background, Fiddler was hired by the University of California's Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. There he wrote software that enabled computers to control large systems, such as linear accelerators. In addition to formulating systems that operated in real-time (as opposed to the interrupt-response times that are common to most personal computers), he learned to write programs using coding conventions (techniques that allow programmers to re-use chunks of code). He would later apply these lessons to Wind River. In 1981 Fiddler quit his job at the lab to pursue his interest in computer-generated music. But to pay the bills, he launched a consultancy business focused on real-time. (His early clients included the National Football League and film director Francis Ford Coppola--for whom he designed a unique film editing system.) Also in 1981 Fiddler took an extended vacation and asked David Wilner, a former colleague at Berkeley, to oversee his business. Wilner was enchanted with Fiddler's work and, upon Fiddler's return, they formed a partnership called Wind River Systems (named after Wyoming's Wind River mountain range where Fiddler had vacationed). They officially incorporated their consultancy in 1983, with each partner contributing $3,000 and a desk to the business. They flipped a coin to determine who would serve as CEO; Fiddler won. For the next four years, Wind River continued to specialize in consulting about real