While all remains quiet on the Microsoft at Work front, Novell Inc continues to forge ahead with its competing NEST Novell Embedded Systems Technology initiative. The company has formed a Real-Time Operating System Vendor Programme, for which it has signed up vendors it says account for more than 60% of the real-time operating system market. The vendors – Accelerated Technology Inc, Integrated Systems Inc, and Wind River Systems Inc – have committed themselves to implementing their operating systems on Embedded Systems Technology, and to marketing and reselling the NEST client Software Developer’s Kit (CI No 2,597) to their development partners. One name notable by its absence is Echelon Corp, which has been in long-running but covert talks with Novell. Chris Sontag, Novell’s director of marketing for the Extended Networks Division, said that this is because Novell has drawn a distinction between real-time operating systems and Echelon’s LONworks. While he acknowledged that in a way you could say they are a very low-end embedded operating system company, he said the fact that Echelon has concentrated on producing a system based around its Neuron chip rather than integrating it within equipment, means it is not specifically an embedded operating system. Sontag said that Novell wanted to sign up the real-time operating system vendors since they could provide it with more embedded vertical marketplaces than Novell could attack on its own. He also elaborated on how Novell views Embedded Systems Technology as fitting in with the other, similar, initiatives with which it is involved, notably the IBM Corp SmartOffice consortium (CI No 2,618) and Operation Camouflage (CI No 2,642). While he admitted that there is some level of overlap, he qualified this by saying that the space [NEST] is operating in is at the network communications layer for embedded devices. These network operating system offerings are more on the back-end.
