In a deal estimated between $14M and $20M, Wind River's Workbench developer toolsuite has been selected by Boeing for the US Army's “Future Combat System” (FCS) program. Wind River says its tools will enable the program to standardize on a single development environment across multiple sub-projects involving multiple operating systems. The deal also validates the open source “Eclipse” platform that underpins the Workbench tools, Wind River says.

Linux and other open source software have already played a major role in the FCS project, which aims to standardize and unify the computing and communications platforms used by various branches of the US government and military. For example, LynuxWorks won a large FCS operating system contract last spring, thanks largely to the Linux application binary interface layer available in a highly secure version of its LynxOS RTOS (real-time operating system).

Wind River's WorkBench is based on Eclipse 3.1. Eclipse is an open source framework for cross-vendor tools integration that was originally donated to the open source community by IBM. It has since been widely adopted by the device development community, with TimeSys, Wind River, MontaVista, LynuxWorks, Sysgo, Enea, and possibly others offering Eclipse-based toolsuites. Additionally, Eclipse tools are offered by chip companies such as Intel and Texas Instruments, and by software companies such as Devicescape, to name a few.

Wind River has been especially active in adapting Eclipse for embedded use. For example, it founded a top-level Eclipse Foundation device development project. Additionally, it has worked to integrate its popular “ScopeTools” products, which it acquired from RTI about a year ago, into the Eclipse framework.

Wind River describes the US Army's FCS project as “one of the most complex software development projects in history.” The Army chose Boeing to serve as the project's “lead systems integrator” (LSI), and Boeing in turn chose WorkBench tools because of their “ability to operate across multiple development sites, hosts, operating systems, and companies,” Wind River says.

According to the terms of the deal announced today, Wind River will supply support and development services, in addition to about 2,000 software development seats. WorkBench is typically priced between $7,000 and $10,000 per seat, with aerospace and defense seats ranging toward the upper end of the scale.

Wind River reported revenues of about $235 million for fiscal 2005, with about a quarter derived from the aerospace and defense market, where the company claims to have 900 operating system and tools customers. Communications has historically been the company's primary focus, and it brought in close to half a billion dollars per year during the telecommunication industry's mobile phone and Internet infrastructure build-out era, in the late nineties and turn of the century. At that time, Wind River was the embedded industry's OS/tools marketshare leader, a title since ceded to Microsoft. Wind River began to aggressively embrace Linux, open source, and open standards about two years ago, a strategic shift that began in its tools division.

The FCS program includes a significant communications and networking component that connects some eighteen individual combat systems, including those deployed on manned and unmanned systems, and on individual soldiers, Wind River says. WorkBench tools will be used in ongoing development of the “system-of-systems common operating environment” (SoSCOE), as well as battle command (BC) software, tactical and strategic communications, and intelligence, reconnaissance, and surveillance (ISR) sensors.

Wind River says it believes the aerospace and defense (“A&D”) industry is undergoing a period of rapid transformation characterized by a proliferation of interconnected devices — not entirely unlike trends that have helped Linux rise to prominence in embedded devices for consumer markets. The company says A&D manufacturers must “optimize their device software development processes,” in order to hasten development cycles and ensure the utmost device functionality. Wind River says it won the FCS contract in a competitive bid process against a multitude of undisclosed companies.

Paul Shoen, director of software for SoSCOE, stated, “The FCS program sought a common software development environment that was an extensible, standards-based platform, to address a broad range of needs for its software development projects. Based on these and other defined criteria, the historical evidence of Wind River Workbench's Eclipse foundation promises a significant increase in productivity due to its flexibility, ease-of-use and scalability.”

Wind River CEO Ken Klein stated, “Wind River is honored to be part of the FCS 'One Team' — a highly-skilled task force of organizations committed to the success of the U.S. Army's transformation initiative. As the common development suite for FCS, Wind River Workbench, along with our world-class support and specialized professional services team, stands to further solidify Wind River's position as the de facto industry standard for the A&D market.”

 
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