Embedded Systems

Embedded system start-ups target global market

As mobile devices proliferate and electronic gadgets get richer features, somebody has to design the IP that manufacturers can cobble together to get to the market in a jiffy. Stanley Glancy profiles some of India’s development hot shops in the area of embedded systems that cater to this market

A phone that automatically transfers calls to the phone closest to you, alerts your cellphone to inform you that the sale you have been waiting for has come through or an embedded chip in your forearm. Some of these gadgets are still on the drawing board but a lot of this technology is already available. Gartner predicts that by 2004, a billion mobile devices will be in use worldwide. With the vast potential market out there it isn’t surprising that many Indian technology start-ups are focusing on mobile computing and wireless devices.

According to Srini Rajam, forecasts indicate that the market for the IP being created by Ittiam will be worth $100 million by 2005

Ittiam systems

The market for digital signal processor (DSP) equipment may be dominated by giants such as TI, but the same can’t be said about the DSP software market. This is where Bangalore-based Ittiam Systems operates. Ittiam has already developed and marketed over 30 products in the area of communication and multimedia. It offers intellectual property (IP) in the 802.11x wireless LAN baseband and Media Access Control (MAC) layers. Srini Rajam, chairman and CEO of Ittiam Systems says, "We offer the baseband as a synthesisable Verilog (a hardware description language) that a customer can fabricate into an Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) or integrate into an overall system-on-a-chip (SoC) to add Wireless LAN functionality to the component." Ittiam offers the MAC IP in the form of C code that can be ported onto various embedded processor cores. There’s a reference implementation on ARM processor core (the ARM is used in handhelds). "The entire IP is validated in real-time, performance-demanding situations through our hardware reference boards," adds Rajam. The first wireless Internet cafe in India at Cafe Coffee Day in Bangalore makes use of Ittiam’s access point demonstration board.

According to Rajam, forecasts indicate that the market for the IP being created by Ittiam will be worth $100 million by 2005. DSP systems form the core of devices like mobile phones, digital modems, MP3 players and high-end disk drives. Says Rajam, "Multimedia transport over wireless is the single biggest opportunity in the coming years. The challenge lies in strategic marketing and identifying the right product roadmap, to invest in development and positioning the product in the customer’s mind."

Ittiam’s business model is based on the IP licensing model. The company charges a license fee upfront. Additionally, it receives a royalty fee each time a chip or a unit integrated with Ittiam’s technology is sold. Ittiam hopes to develop full system-level design products that can be used by electronic OEMs, thus getting into volume production and marketing. If Ittiam does manage to break into this space, its revenue target of $40 million by 2005 should be achievable.

Aalayance

This services firm boasts of being a part of developer programmes at global majors like Ericsson, Motorola, AT&T, Nokia and Sony. It has application development teams across the globe that collaborate in offering design, development and deployment services to wireless firms worldwide. Aalayance’s development teams are experts in J2ME and BREW and utilise tools such as MS Visual Studio, ARM BREW Compiler, Verisign Code Certificates, BREW SDK, Aalayance Brew Objects and test handsets such as the Kyocera 3035a and Sharp Z800.

Indian companies are well positioned to take advantage of their technical background to develop a wide variety of wireless devices and applications, says Bill Kahlert

Aalayance’s core business lies in providing wireless cross platform (GSM and CDMA) development teams for game and application development. The company has completed components and directed entire production efforts for games on the PC and mobile devices (J2ME, BREW, PocketPC, PalmOS) and console devices (Sega, XBox). The company provides world-class development, quality assurance and porting services across a range of platforms, devices and carriers. Bill Kahlert, director-strategic marketing, Aalayance says, "Our experience allows us to understand the difference between standard expertise application development and development for the wireless market. This knowledge has been acquired over time, via numerous engagements with wireless firms, and provides us the edge to offer quicker time-to-market products."

Aalayance’s strategy is to focus on wireless applications and game development. Kahlert says, "Wireless development solutions know no geographic boundaries. We feel Indian companies are well positioned to take advantage of their technical background to develop a wide variety of wireless devices and applications. An area of opportunity that has not been exploited is game development for Western consumers. Cultural differences tend to make this a high barrier of entry to this market place."

Impulsesoft

The company sees itself as the provider of technology solutions which can act as connectors between the wired and the wireless world. For instance, if a laptop user wants to connect to the Internet or the local area network remotely (LAN) so that he or she can move around unhindered, that person would need a connector. This is where Impulsesoft steps in. The company works with electronic equipment manufacturers, OEMs and silicon vendors to enable them to bring application specific short-range wireless solutions to the market.

Impulsesoft licenses its technologies and products to big companies like Smart Modular, Matsushita and BenQ. These companies in turn integrate the company’s products with their own hardware and sell it in the global market. Impulsesoft’s has two revenue streams, fixed cost when licensing to OEM parts and from the royalty earned on every unit shipped.

S Bhaskar, chief technology officer of Impulsesoft believes that wireless data services has tremendous growth potential. The convergence of personal devices like mobile phones, PDAs and digital cameras is already happening in products such as the Sony Ericsson P800. The major challenge of these converged devices is to provide the multiple features without being too technically-oriented.

"Our strategy is to enable the convergence of personal devices while providing the near natural experience through our IP. For instance, we will enable our customers to deliver wireless multimedia services to personal area network devices (like mobile phones, laptops and cameras) with our short range wireless solutions," says Bhaskar.

The company has developed Bluetooth protocol stacks, which it licenses to companies like the US-based Smart, the manufacturer of memory-modules. Though Bluetooth has not exactly set the market on fire, industry watchers say that it is only a matter of time before it achieves market acceptability. In the long-term, Aalayance wants to extend wireless multimedia services that are rolled out over GPRS and 3G.

The company has a three-pronged marketing strategy. Explains Bhaskar, "In Tier I of our strategy, we will be working with learning partners’ for validating our technology and business model. In Tier II, we aim to work with ‘market makers’ who will provide the growth impetus, and finally in Tier III, we will be targeting a wide market with multiple variants of our solution."

Base

Mumbai-based Base Information Management (Base) provides organisations with SMS-based mobile solutions that integrate with the core business applications. "It’s very cost-effective to use SMS for communicating between a mobile device and a company’s central server. Base’s solutions have been deployed on handsets from Nokia, Siemens and Motorola using SMS, GPRS and data line," says Nilay Sharma, director for Base. "Our solutions enable corporates to leverage the power of SMS to deliver mission-critical information to their mobile workforce, suppliers and customers in a convenient and cost-effective manner. An enterprise can mobilise data through the SMS route to mobile phones or SMS-enabled PDAs by defining the business rules for ‘push and pull’ from any database," adds Sharma.

Pradeep Arora says the combination of IP and services that DCM offers will prove to be a powerful offering

Sales teams, business partners or clients can access corporate information like inventory status, prices, promotional schemes, special discount, customer contacts, credit balance, status of their order, and even place an order through the mobile phone.

Sharma says, "Standalone mobile applications defeat the inherent purpose of being online. Mobile applications should be an extension of the ERP, CRM or SCM systems of an organisation." But connectivity options offered via GPRS and WAP continue to remain beyond the budget of most companies. This in turn hampers growth in this area. Entry-level phones are not Java-enabled as they are a tad expensive. The good news, however, is that prices are dropping.

The release of J2ME standards proved a boon to Base, which used the platform to develop solutions that enabled usability of applications through the mobile phone, irrespective of whether it is connected to the network or not. Users can work on the application even if they are in an area where the network signal is weak or missing, store the results in the handset’s memory and then communicate the data to the corporate server when they get back into an area with coverage. The application has the capability to communicate to the central server through GPRS or data line. According to Sharma, "Base’s solution enables organisations to achieve tremendous improvement in response time, reduces back office co-ordination with field staff, enables a more accurate forecasting, captures the sales orders online and reduces turnaround time for the order."

Cellnext

The youngest member of the Escorts Group, Cellnext Solutions is the mobile Internet solutions and services arm of the industrial giant. The company has been catering to the wireless communication industry as well as the wireless IT needs of the enterprise market using wireless data technologies like SMS, WAP, MMS, GPRS, SAT, J2ME and 3G. The company also provides application design, development and integration services to both enterprises and wireless telecom operators. Other than this, it provides wireless ASP services to both enterprises and operators.

Some of the products from the company’s stable include pBizGateway—a pervasive middleware platform, MMSC—a carrier grade, scaleable multimedia messaging centre and SS7—an application development platform that provides extended features to telecom operators in the area of missed call capture, roaming service management and inter-carrier messaging. It also provides a WAP gateway, SMS gateway, IVR platform and numerous SMS, MMS and IVR-based application and content.

Atanu Mandal, CEO of Cellnext, believes that with wireless technology slowly gaining momentum, there is a huge market potential for Cellnext’s products. Says he, "The wireless communication industry is looking at value-added services to increase their revenues. With operators having the infrastructure and enterprises having quality content, there is an opportunity that can be tapped by linking the enterprise with the operator through innovative product development."

Cellnext has three business streams—ASP, solutions and product. It functions as an ASP for enterprises and cellular operators to meet their mobile messaging needs. This segment of the business is well established in the Indian market. The company has set-up a relationship with several Indian telecom operators and some large enterprises in the last two years.

Nilay Sharma says the release of J2ME standards proved to be a boon to Base, which used the platform to develop solutions for the mobile phone

Currently, the company is investing around 20-25 percent of its profits into R&D, in order to boost its product business. According to Mandal, "This is one area which has proved to be a challenge to the company as they have to compete with products and companies that are already well-established in the market. But though this space has a longer start-up time in the long-run it would mean higher profitability for the company."

Mindteck

The company offers solutions like interoperability across communication standards and protocols, applications development for both portable terminal devices and application servers running heterogeneous operating systems, protocol stacks, implementation of voice/audio codecs, Bluetooth and wireless LAN security in the embedded wireless networking area.

Says C V Ramdas, general manager-Technology for Mindteck, "We provide unique software frameworks that help application developers by reducing their effort in developing applications that can be used across heterogeneous platforms and standards/protocols."

Mindteck has executed projects in gaming, SMS/MMS, application servers, and wireless LAN security (802.1X) in the process assimilating a vast database of knowledge. The company is currently in the process of consolidating its frameworks, and creating IP. The strategy behind this move is to commercialise its strengths in this space.

The company is currently focusing on creating more IP, products, frameworks and stacks in the embedded domain. Ramdas believes that there is a huge growth opportunity for Mindteck especially in verticals like maritime, insurance and financial services. Mindteck is also betting on Bluetooth as a major growth area. Says he, "Bluetooth is acting as a catalyst with most of the major product manufacturers adapting to the technology." But Ramdas feels that the most important aspect for the company is to continue to offer interoperability across standards. According to him, if the company manages to consolidate its IP offerings then it should see a definite growth in its wireless business in the coming years.

DCM Technologies

A SEI CMM Level 5 certified company, DCM Technologies’ offerings in the wireless and mobile computing space include 802.11 WLAN MAC IP, Bluetooth software stack and SyncML protocol for synchronisation. DCM provides design services to high-technology companies in the areas of ASIC/PLD (programmable logic device) designs, embedded software and communications software. Pradeep Arora, general manager-Marketing for DCM Technologies believes that the company’s strength lies in its ability to customise solutions to a client’s needs, ability to speed-up time to market, reduce development costs and allow designers to focus on improvements and differentiation in their end products.

"Our solutions are comparable or even better than many international products in terms of speed, performance, code size and partitioning between hardware and software for optimum performance," he says.

DCM is bullish on the WLAN market, as this is one market that has been growing. DCM, like most other players in this space is also betting on Bluetooth technology, which despite initial hiccups is stabilising in the global market. This is where the company’s flagship product SyncML comes into play. Arora believes that this product has a good potential in today’s mobile world where mobile data gets synchronised to the desktop without any need for complicated procedures. DCM sees a huge potential for SyncML in mobile computing and communication devices like laptop, PDA and other handhelds.

The company plans to target key markets like the US, Europe and Japan for its products. According to Arora, the combination of IP and services that the company has to offer will prove to be a powerful offering. DCM intends to entice potential customers by offering them onsite as well as offshore services on fixed cost as well as a T&M basis.

The company expects to see widespread acceptance of the technology not only in western countries but also in India. Arora feels that application support in this space will be yet another growth area for Indian companies. Lack of finance is the only obstacle here. This hampers a company’s ability to spread its reach and also lowers its risk taking capabilities. Despite this, DCM plans to support current as well as future developments in the technologies identified in this space.

V Rama Kumar says the challenge for Tarang is to get organisations to trust it as it is relatively new to the game

Tarang

Accessibility to technology anytime, anywhere, is Tarang’s mantra for the emerging wireless world. To enable this, the company has been working on developing a multichannel solution for the corporate world.

Tarang’s offerings include Account Aggregation, Enterprise Plus, ATM Service Manager and finally Pervasive Service Manager. Says V Rama Kumar, CEO, Tarang Software, "The area of Web, wireless and payment has not been targeted objectively yet. The complexity of managing a network of ATMs and ensuring maximum availability has a direct impact on the satisfaction of a bank’s customers. This has made it imperative for banks to link a customers various bank accounts." Tarang plans to tap this potential through Account Wallet, which provides a unified view of multiple Web-based accounts. Tarang’s ATM Service Manager can be used by financial institutions to manage their network of ATMs and related channels."

Tarang is predominantly focused on the financial and technology verticals. According to Kumar, there is a tremendous demand for creative solutions in this space as competition has made it critical for enterprises to have a differential advantage in order to capture more market share. Tarang’s strategy is to implement a solution for a client, gain confidence and later on moving towards more customised projects.

The challenge for the company is in getting organisations to place their trust in a company, which is relatively new to the game. This can happen only through successful implementations and ensuring customer contentment. To meet these requirements the company plans to focus on its core strengths, i.e. building customised solutions for customers in the domains of web, wireless and payments.