Subsequent to Lineo's recent decision to divest itself of several “non-core” product lines, the original founders of Rt-Control Inc., which was acquired by Lineo in February 2000, have formed a new company called Arcturus Networks. Rt-Control and its founders were notorious as the creators of the tiny uCsimm SBC and its companion (and now highly popular) Linux operating system, uClinux. To learn more about this new company formed by Rt-Control's former founders, LinuxDevices.com executive editor Rick Lehrbaum spoke with Michael Durrant, one of the key founders of Arcturus Networks . . .

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LinuxDevices.com: When was Arcturus Network founded, and by whom? Who are the current owners and key management?

Durrant: Arcturus Networks Inc. was founded in October 2001. The founders and principle owners of Arcturus Networks are Jeff Dionne, Michael Durrant, and John Fabrizio. Arcturus Networks is a privately held company with the following key management: Jeff Dionne, CEO; Michael Durrant, VP Marketing; John Fabrizio, VP Finance & Operation; Peter Wheeler, VP Sales; Gil Hauer, Director of Engineering; David Steele, Director of Marketing.

LinuxDevices.com: Why did you start the company? What are its goals?

Durrant: Arcturus Networks as an engineering product company was created with the overarching goal of providing solutions and technology advancements in three primary areas with goals focused on the short to medium term . . .

• Firstly, Arcturus Networks is targeting the data routing and virtual private network (VPN) solution space of the residential gateway and small office / home office (SOHO) market offering both hardware and software solutions.

• Secondly, Arcturus Networks has targeted management configuration solutions as a major differentiator for our products.

• Thirdly, Arcturus Networks has targeted the convergence technology of Voice and Data. Clearly this is our primary focus as Arcturus Networks moves forward. Voice over Packet solutions are very important to our solution sets. Whether we move towards silicon based solutions or firmware our goal is to ensure that our solutions meet and exceed the needs for the next generation voice and data products.

LinuxDevices.com: How are you funded? What are your growth plans?

Durrant: Arcturus Networks is a privately held company, capitalized by its founders and through revenues derived from existing product lines. Our financing structure and growth plans consider both market potential and strategic alliances. What I can say is that the company is on track for acquiring and building technology specific to our three main goals. From this technology Arcturus Networks will license or sell technology rights into the secure router (VPN) and telecommunications industries.

LinuxDevices.com: What are your target markets, and what sorts of products and services will you be offering?

Durrant: In many instances the products that Arcturus Networks produces will be complementary to other products. OEMs that are currently in the residential gateway (RG)or voice-over-packet space would be very interested in licensing our technology, and this is key. We are not intending to compete with the existing manufacturers of router, gateway, voice-over-IP, and VPN products. We offer, and will continue to offer, reference designs that these manufacturers can license into their designs. As well, we will innovate firmware and software solutions that will expand the reusability of existing and future designs. Ideally, our technology will ride on top of many machine architectures that may or may not support silicon-based solutions for hardware encryption, memory management, or voice compression.

LinuxDevices.com: Please briefly describe your initial products.

Durrant: Arcturus products and solutions are a combination of hardware reference platforms, embedded firmware and operating system including base networking, and advanced data and management protocols. Arcturus solutions enable the turnkey development of Internet access devices or residential gateway products based on various system-on-chip microcontrollers and hardware reference designs. Future products will build on this, with the addition of voice capabilities. Most recently we have been building and testing solutions for two popular ARM chipsets (one Conexant and one Samsung); both work well in our space.

LinuxDevices.com: The “About Arcturus” statement says: “Arcturus Networks is the center of engineering excellence for uClinux embedded firmware operating system and uClinux hardware reference platforms including the popular uCdimm, uCevolution, and uCsimm.” From this, it sounds like you have taken over the uClinux OS as well as the uCdimm/uCsimm SBCs from Lineo — is that correct? Are your products generally going to be powered by uCdimm family SBCs? (running uClinux, presumably?) Also, do you expect Arcturus to be the “powerhouse” behind continued uClinux development? I noticed that the uclinux.org website now lists Arcturus, Lineo, and SnapGear as sponsors.

Durrant: Arcturus Networks Inc. is a new company. We have created strategic alliances with companies like SnapGear and Lineo. Arcturus Networks is a distributor and reseller for their products, and moving forward the uClinux line of hardware and software products is now an Arcturus Networks offering. We have announced that our uCdimm family of modules will be expanded to include the very popular Motorola MCF5272 ColdFire processor.

The founders of Arcturus Networks are the original founders of Rt-Control Inc. and the developers of uClinux and the uC family of products. This is something that we are very proud of and see as a personal accomplishment. However, Arcturus Networks will leverage uClinux where suitable as well as innovate new solutions where appropriate.

I would characterize Arcturus Networks and SnapGear as the powerhouse and the dynamo. Both companies place their feet squarely in the Linux space including our appetites for both mmu-full and mmu-less microprocessors. As sister companies we offer complimentary products and will represent each reciprocally where appropriate.

LinuxDevices.com: Who (and what) are your main competitors?

Durrant: The exhibitors list for VoiceCon 2002 is a fair representation of the class of both customers and competitors. We will be in Washington, DC in February exhibiting at VoiceCon. Just last week we exhibited in Washington DC at the ComNet Conference and expo. At that show their were two classes of serious exhibitors — the first being the cable and physical infrastructure group companies, pitching their cabling, connectors, enclosures and UPS systems. This is not one of our target groups. The other class of exhibitor represented those with intellectual property, either hardware or software, in the Communications Networking space. These vendors represent both our competition and more importantly potential customers and partners.

LinuxDevices.com: How important is Linux (and Linux-related software) to your company and its products?

Durrant: While many pieces of our communications software suite will operate on many operating systems, Linux and uClinux are our primary deployment base operating systems. Jeff and I have been in the Linux space since first installing a SLS floppy distribution of Linux using the 0.99.14 kernel. While we will offer solutions outside of a pure Linux OS, it is guaranteed that we see Linux and the GNU tools as a very important part of our company.

LinuxDevices.com: What is the company's strategy/philosophy with respect to 'open source'?

Durrant: Our contributions to the open source community are well known. I foresee that Jeff and I will continue to release code into the open source and continue to support the open source community.

LinuxDevices.com: Thank you for taking the time to speak with LinuxDevices.com, and best of luck with your exciting new company.

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