Embedded Systems Design Europe - April 2008 - (Page 5)

commentary Editor Colin Holland Tel +44 (0) 208 319 1324 email: chollandse18@mac.com Editorial address: PO Box 32444, London SE18 3ZP Advertising Production Manager Lydia Gijsegom & Maggie Fleerackers Tel +32 (0) 2 740 00 50 email: production@eetimes.be Circulation Luc Desimpel Tel +32 (0) 2 740 0055 email: luc.desimpel@eetimes.be Art Manager Jean-Paul Speliers Tel +32 (0)2 740 0052 email: jean-paul.speliers@eetimes.be Finance Ricardo Pinto Ferreira Tel +32 (0)2 740 0051 email: ricardo.pintoferreira@eetimes.be Advertisement contacts see page 43 Editorial Director Jean-Pierre Joosting Tel +32 (0)2 740 0056 email: jean-pierre.joosting@eetimes.be Publisher Andre Rousselot Tel +32 (0)2 740 0053 email: aroussel@eetimes.be European Business Press 144 Avenue Eugène Plasky 1030 Brussels - Belgium Tel: +32 (0)2 740 00 50 Fax: +32 (0)2 740 00 59 Email: andre.rousselot@eetimes.be www.embedded.com/europe VAT Registration: BE 461.357.437 RPM: Brussels Company Number: 0461357437 Kontron – Thales deal driven by VME’s longevity O Techinsights – a division of United Business Media, LLC Paul Miller President, Chief Executive Ofﬁcer © 2008 E.B.P. SA, a Techinsights company • Embedded Systems Design Europe is published eight times a year. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system without the express prior written consent of the publisher. The contents of Embedded Systems Design Europe are subject to reproduction in information storage and retrieval systems. º • Embedded Systems Design Europe is available free to qualiﬁed readers and to others for an annual subscription of €150. Refunds on cancelled subscriptions will only be provided at the Publisher’s discretion. Subscription queries tel: +32 2 740 00 50 • Printed by Perka. n page 10 we report on Kontron’s latest ﬁnancial ﬁgures which have seen good growth but it is the company’s purchase of Thales Computers, completed last month, which has been exercising the industry analysts. Venture Development Corp. says the Thales division ﬁlls a need for Kontron to strengthen its positions in the VME and military/aerospace markets. But believes there is more that can be learnt from the deal and that both companies were ripe for this transaction. Kontron recently divested its rugged mobile computing division (sold to Crane Corp. in August 2007). This deal virtually eliminated Kontron’s footprint in the rugged mobile business, and negatively impacted total revenues. For a company with aggressive, public growth goals, deals that reduce scale are not part of the core plan. However, the divestiture produced cash at a time when the global M&A markets preferred cash deals from operating companies versus highly leveraged deals structured by ﬁnancial buyers. Kontron needed to replace that lost revenue quickly – and with a property that was in alignment with its core business. The preferable deal would be for a company that would help Kontron balance some risk in its technical portfolio. Towards the end of last year VDC thought Kontron’s position on VME appeared to be focused on support for clients with legacy product requirements, but, no signiﬁcant new investment in VME solutions. And while the ATCA and MicroTCA markets are developing, they have met only the most conservative market forecasts. At the same time, VME – through a number of new implementations – was actually gaining share in a number of markets. So Kontron, for all its strength, appeared to be developing an Achilles heel, says VDC. And it was too little exposure to VME, especially in COTs markets. Further, if Kontron was going to realize its full potential in the embedded COTs market for military/aerospace systems, it would need a VME offering hence the deal. Thales offerings are complimentary to Kontron’s. There is no material overlap, therefore rationalization requirements are minimal. And those that emerge, should not be a distraction for Kontron. This is a company that has efﬁciently and intelligently executed much more complicated rationalizations with much larger portfolios in the past. VDC concludes that it is not a bad deal all the way around. ■ What’s Embedded? It is a question that I get asked regularly. In his column our U.S.colleague Jack Ganssle recently asked “Can you deﬁne ‘embedded system’?” and honestly admitted he couldn’t. As Jack says “In the olden days it was pretty easy. Anything with a microcontroller was pretty clearly an embedded system. Yet a few quirky examples, like the keyboard controller in a PC, made a precise deﬁnition difﬁcult. Now things are obscured when we ﬁnd processors derived from PCs in an what are clearly embedded systems, like an instrument. Then there’s Windows and Linux, which can run on a desktop or buried in some dedicated system.” To see what conclusion Jack comes to visit www.eetimes.eu/206904210. 5 Colin Holland is editor of Embedded Systems Design Europe. He can be contacted at cholland@cmp.com. www.embedded.com/europe | embedded systems design europe | APRIL 2008 005_ESDE.indd 5 11/04/08 13:45:21 http://www.embedded.com/europe http://www.embedded.com/europe http://www.eetimes.eu/206904210 http://www.embedded.com/europe

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Embedded Systems Design Europe - April 2008

Embedded Systems Design Europe - April 2008 Contents Chip Industry Confronts 'Software' Gap Wind River's VxWorks OS Part of the nEUROn UCAV Demonstrator iSuppli Cuts Electronic Equipment Forecast Study Says GigE Vision Not Mature Chip Aids Wireless Health Monitoring Kontron Reports Strong Financial Growth Xilinx Completes Virtex-5 Line-Up French Project Builds Open Platform Home Automation Group Uses Enocean Radio Layer MIPs Adds Multi-Core Option to Portfolio Cover Feature: Next Gen Programmable Chips: Why Can't Hardware Be More Like Software? Improving Productivity & Quality With Domain-Specific Modeling Efficient CRC Calculation With Minimal Memory Footprint Do-It-Yourself Linux Embedded Development Tools Hardware/Software Verification Enters the Atomic Age New Products Advertising Contacts

Embedded Systems Design Europe - April 2008

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