Former Wind River executive Michel Genard has left the company for a marketing position at Jaluna. Jaluna has also hired veteran executive Manuel Montalban to lead its sales team, as part of a broad effort to increase marketing behind its virtual platform technology.

Jaluna SA (Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, France) was founded in August 2002 by the creators of Sun's Chorus microkernel operating system, which made a name for itself in the telecommunications equipment market. Jaluna received a $12M investment last month, saying it would use the funding to expand marketing efforts around its logical partitioning and virtual platform technology, OSware. The company says OSware enables device designers to “mix and match” operating systems on a single hardware platform, reducing complexity and shortening the bill of materials for devices such as set-top boxes that have both real-time and complex operating system requirements.

Jaluna will also play a key role in a European Union-sponsored initiative to develop EAL-5 Linux. And, the company has announced a technology enabling uClinux to run alongside the native DSP/BIOS environment on single-core Texas Instruments DSPs.

Genard a key Linux leader at Wind River

During a 12-year stint with Wind River, Genard was instrumental in conceiving and executing the company's transition toward Linux. As hardware-assisted tools group chief, Genard shipped the company's first product to support Linux. As GM of the company's tools division, Genard led the company's transition from Tornado to the Eclipse-based Workbench IDE (integrated development environment). He finished up as VP of Wind River's platforms division, which announced a partnership with Red Hat in February, before shipped its first Linux platform at the beginning of November.

Another Wind River executive of more than a dozen years, Dave Fraser, left the company last month for WiFi startup Instant802. “I started almost at the same time as Dave,” comments Genard. “It's expected when a new CEO comes on board. It's time for some people to leave, and others to move up. Four or five VPs have left. I'm sure Ken Klein is fully accountable for his decisions.”

Genard adds, “Wind River is a great school. You can learn any skill, in traditional or commercial embedded systems. I have had an opportunity to work with great people, and great customers.”

Genard to lead Jaluna marketing

Asked how he will market Jaluna's OSWare product, Genard says the emphasis initially will be on getting the technology into more consumer devices such as set-top boxes and mobile phones. “OSWare can run on almost any device. But IP set-top boxes, mobile phones, and [digital TV] are areas where there's a short time-to-market opportunity, and a huge legacy. The whole stack has been running and deployed for years. Now there's a huge momentum toward Linux. Moving from A to B is not that easy. We want to make sure [our customers] can use the same stuff, and not have to re-test and re-validate. Broadly, the consumer market is what's happening today.”

Genard's title at Jaluna will be VP of marketing and business development. Genard will also oversee the company's business and product strategy, and handle corporate communications.

Jaluna's main office is located just west of Paris, near the French offices of Wind River and MontaVista, according to Genard. However, the native of France expects to maintain an office in the Silicon Valley. “I grew up over there, but I've been in the US seven years, and I don't want to go back,” Genard said.

Manuel Montalban

As VP of Sales, Manuel Montalban will lead Jaluna's worldwide sales organization. He has 15 years of software industry experience, including as a co-founder of business rules software vendor ILOG, and more recently as COO of data security software vendor Atempo.

“By allowing [OEMs and integrators] to streamline their development process, Jaluna products open up great market opportunities,” stated Montalban.

Jaluna CEO Michel Gien said, “The appointment of Michel Genard and Manuel Montalban to the Jaluna executive staff and the opening of a US Office are the first outcome of the $12 million Series A funding round closed by Jaluna in September 2004 to finance the international expansion of the company.”

 
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