Hello Harris et al
Obviously there are several LONG TIME HARD AND FAST QNX CUSTOMERS who are
dissatisfied with the way things are right now. I have no doubt that this
has generated some behind closed doors meetings.
Please make a statement about QSSL’s pro-active actions.
I have to admit that silence means you don’t care to me.
–
Bill Caroselli – 1(626) 824-7983
Q-TPS Consulting
QTPS@EarthLink.net
OK - a reply…
First, let me say that your (and by that I mean the group on the last few
threads) complaints are mostly right on the money. There are bunch of
reasons why the things you’re unhappy about have happened. It’s not
super-important why they’ve happened, but rather what we’re going to do
about them.
Some folks are concerned about our direction. Yup, the company has had
several over the last couple of years. Over the past six to eight months I
have led a process resulting in an exhaustive analysis of our markets, and
we have, from the ground up, built a solid strategic plan. I feel good
about that, and I think as we start to execute that plan, it will do a lot
of good for us, and for you. We’re going to continue to sell our products
to the traditional markets we’ve sold to - medecine, industrial automation,
and the general embedded market. We’re going to focus on selling into
networking and automotive as well, which we identified as solid
opportunities for us in growth markets. Yes, we got sidetracked with
consumer for a while, and although we have some consumer wins, that market
turned out to be fraught with peril – immature, jammed full of intellectual
property issues, and pricepoints which were unsustainable for us. Right now
we have adopted what I describe as a “portfolio” approach to the market. We
have our current opportunities in our traditional markets, which generate
the lions share of our revenue. We have some near term bets in networking
that are starting to ramp. And, we have some longer term bets in the
automotive space that may pay off in a few years. This kind of division of
risk, and investment strategy is a sensible way to manage the business. The
company learned a lot about risk management when we dove into consumer the
way we did.
Some folks want to know why we haven’t been advertising. I came on board as
VP of marketing about nine months ago. One of my first actions was to shut
down all of our expenditures, while we figured out what we wanted to do and
where. That’s why you haven’t seen any ads. No point in blowing gobs of
money on ads if you don’t know what you want to say, or to whom you want to
say it. The ads are reappearing, now. Now, they’re mostly going into pubs
targeting the verticals I identified, but they’re happening. We’re also
running seminars in some markets in the US, buying ad space on search
engines, and sponsoring targeted web sites, like litereading.com.
Some folks have pointed out that our tools story is a mess. Whew, and HOW!
WindRiver and Microsoft are beating us up in customer engagements because of
this. Stay tuned. We’re going to fix this.
These threads originally started because some of you have noticed that the
well has been running dry on QNX consulting. The bad news is that the
well’s a little dry all around. Our last quarter wasn’t pretty, either.
But we’re working to change that too, and as the saying goes “a rising tide
floats all boats”. Rest assured, we don’t want to compete with you folks,
and we’re not trying to. Debbie’s job is to figure out how effectively to
work with you.
Now I know I’m a new face around here, but that’s a good thing. I was hired
to be an agent of change, to help build a vision for where we can go as a
company, and to shake up the status quo. I don’t have the QSSL history, and
honestly, I don’t particularly care about it. Heresy, I know 
My job is
to help us be successful, and in the process to enable you to be successful.
Before QSSL, I spent nearly 9 years at Microsoft where, amongst other
things, I ran the strategic planning organization for Windows CE, was
Director of Marketing for Universal Plug and Play and Microsoft’s Home
Networking initiatives, and was also responsible for launching Internet
Explorer v1 and v2. And I’m not the only new talent the company has hired
in recently. I’ve built a marketing team composed of folks who cut their
teeth at companies like Nortel, Entrust, TI, Bell Canada, and Reid Eddison.
We’ve rebuilt our sales force with folks from Wind River, LynuxWorks, and
other major competitors of ours in this space. Major changes are happening
at QSSL.
I hope that gives you some sense of where we’re going, and why we’ve been
the way we have in the last little while. I hope, even though it won’t pay
the bills right now, it gives you some comfort in knowing that we DO care,
and that we ARE working hard to turn things around.
Alec.
“Alec Saunders” <alecs@qnx.com> wrote in message
news:a2soot$mjd$1@nntp.qnx.com…
OK - a reply…
[cut]
That’s definitely the type of response I had hope for, in term of
of feedback and type information.
Thanks!
“Mario Charest” <goto@nothingness.com> wrote in message
news:a2srs7$daa$1@inn.qnx.com…
That’s definitely the type of response I had hope for, in term of
of feedback and type information.Thanks!
You’re welcome, Mario. I want to hear about it when you guys think we have
improving to do.
Alec Saunders (alecs@qnx.com)
VP Marketing, QNX Software Systems Limited
“Alec” <alecs@qnx.com> wrote in message news:a2t6o5$jpt$1@inn.qnx.com…
“Mario Charest” <> goto@nothingness.com> > wrote in message
news:a2srs7$daa$> 1@inn.qnx.com> …That’s definitely the type of response I had hope for, in term of
of feedback and type information.Thanks!
You’re welcome, Mario. I want to hear about it when you guys think we
have
improving to do.
You can count on that 
By the way I forgot to mention that I have the outmost respect for
anybody that admits to their (QNX) mistake. .
Alec Saunders (> alecs@qnx.com> )
VP Marketing, QNX Software Systems Limited
OK, one question if you are still reading…
*Yes, we got sidetracked with
“Alec Saunders” <alecs@qnx.com> wrote in message
news:a2soot$mjd$1@nntp.qnx.com…
OK - a reply…
First, let me say that your (and by that I mean the group on the last few
threads) complaints are mostly right on the money. There are bunch of
reasons why the things you’re unhappy about have happened. It’s not
super-important why they’ve happened, but rather what we’re going to do
about them.Some folks are concerned about our direction. Yup, the company has had
several over the last couple of years. Over the past six to eight months
I
have led a process resulting in an exhaustive analysis of our markets, and
we have, from the ground up, built a solid strategic plan. I feel good
about that, and I think as we start to execute that plan, it will do a lot
of good for us, and for you. We’re going to continue to sell our products
to the traditional markets we’ve sold to - medecine, industrial
automation,
and the general embedded market. We’re going to focus on selling into
networking and automotive as well, which we identified as solid
opportunities for us in growth markets. Yes, we got sidetracked with
consumer for a while, and although we have some consumer wins, that market
turned out to be fraught with peril – immature, jammed full of
intellectual
property issues, and pricepoints which were unsustainable for us. Right
now
we have adopted what I describe as a “portfolio” approach to the market.
We
have our current opportunities in our traditional markets, which generate
the lions share of our revenue. We have some near term bets in networking
that are starting to ramp. And, we have some longer term bets in the
automotive space that may pay off in a few years. This kind of division
of
risk, and investment strategy is a sensible way to manage the business.
The
company learned a lot about risk management when we dove into consumer the
way we did.Some folks want to know why we haven’t been advertising. I came on board
as
VP of marketing about nine months ago. One of my first actions was to
shut
down all of our expenditures, while we figured out what we wanted to do
and
where. That’s why you haven’t seen any ads. No point in blowing gobs of
money on ads if you don’t know what you want to say, or to whom you want
to
say it. The ads are reappearing, now. Now, they’re mostly going into
pubs
targeting the verticals I identified, but they’re happening. We’re also
running seminars in some markets in the US, buying ad space on search
engines, and sponsoring targeted web sites, like litereading.com.Some folks have pointed out that our tools story is a mess. Whew, and
HOW!
WindRiver and Microsoft are beating us up in customer engagements because
of
this. Stay tuned. We’re going to fix this.These threads originally started because some of you have noticed that the
well has been running dry on QNX consulting. The bad news is that the
well’s a little dry all around. Our last quarter wasn’t pretty, either.
But we’re working to change that too, and as the saying goes “a rising
tide
floats all boats”. Rest assured, we don’t want to compete with you folks,
and we’re not trying to. Debbie’s job is to figure out how effectively to
work with you.Now I know I’m a new face around here, but that’s a good thing. I was
hired
to be an agent of change, to help build a vision for where we can go as a
company, and to shake up the status quo. I don’t have the QSSL history,
and
honestly, I don’t particularly care about it. Heresy, I know >
to help us be successful, and in the process to enable you to be
successful.
Before QSSL, I spent nearly 9 years at Microsoft where, amongst other
things, I ran the strategic planning organization for Windows CE, was
Director of Marketing for Universal Plug and Play and Microsoft’s Home
Networking initiatives, and was also responsible for launching Internet
Explorer v1 and v2. And I’m not the only new talent the company has hired
in recently. I’ve built a marketing team composed of folks who cut their
teeth at companies like Nortel, Entrust, TI, Bell Canada, and Reid
Eddison.
We’ve rebuilt our sales force with folks from Wind River, LynuxWorks, and
other major competitors of ours in this space. Major changes are
happening
at QSSL.I hope that gives you some sense of where we’re going, and why we’ve been
the way we have in the last little while. I hope, even though it won’t
pay
the bills right now, it gives you some comfort in knowing that we DO care,
and that we ARE working hard to turn things around.Alec.
“Nigel Jones-Quartey” <shissai@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:a304ct$jg4$1@inn.qnx.com…
OK, one question if you are still reading…
*Yes, we got sidetracked with
- consumer for a while, and although we have some consumer wins, that
market- turned out to be fraught with peril – immature, jammed full of
intellectual- property issues, and pricepoints which were unsustainable for us.
This is interesting to me, as a QNXrtp user, does this mean that QNX has a
long term plan that would leave me high and dry eventually? I only ask
because from reading more and more, I (an end-user) am getting the
impression that QNXrtp will be like BeOS, a side project that could be
cancelled at any time. I’d like to get some reassurance, or a realistic
“don’t count on it”.
My opinion: QNXRTP is formost a development platform, I think wanting
to turn this in to a generic desktop platform is up to the community.
I think what Alec means by “consumer” is not the desktop use,
but rather thinks like internet appliances (remember I-Opener and
Audigy…)
thanks for your help,
Nigel Jones-Quartey
Nigel,
your question is interesting.
Our business is Industrial Automation and most customers have embedded
applications as well as huge plants running QNX4. For IA e.g. you got
the following problem:
We lost in that time many pot. customers who had liked to go with QNX6!
Old customers who had a new project didn’t want to go on with anything
old or something new what wasn’t releast and still needed features
missing. Much wasted time for discussions or even to explain what is
NTO, RTP, QRTP, QNX6, QNX RTOS etc. etc. … have a look to the 3rd
party directory and try to find out what OS is what… and resulted on
that you have to explain a pot. customer that QNX RTOS doesn’t mean
that QNX4 is NOT realtime.
Alec, if you should read this, please, have a look to the nomenclature
of all the QNX products and please make life easier for all by using
always the same name for one and the same… it’s extremely confusing
and also crazy marketing!
We ported much open source to QNX6 as well as to QNX4 to make the life
of our customers easier. With XFree86, PyQNX, PVM etc. and also public
available ports from Igor, Frank and others, who are willing to help to
make QNX successful, we have arguments for frustrated old customers as
well as for newbies…
In the meantime we are able to offer our advanced distributed
automation system also under QNX6 and have integrated much platform
independency that we havn’t to care what QSS is deciding tomorrow.
When you can’t rely on the future of a great OS you are using, you can’t
shut down your business just because of your products are based on it.
Our philosophy is to use as much industrial hard- and software STANDARDS
as possible to be independent and to give our customers the chance to
integrate easily also new technologies from tomorrow.
As we have integrated PVM in our product suite, we are able to offer
network transparent interprocess communication to e.g. QNX4, Linux and
Windows
BTW, it would be great to see Qt finally running QNX6 and I know that
Linux guys would like it very much. Qt for QNX6 could generate much
more new customers who would like to move from Linux to QNX6.
I understood that Alec is aware that QSS isn’t able to do all themselves
and that he knows that other companies have software (e.g. tools) which
are really missing for the QNX-world. Also I understood that it’s his
interest to work with and not against 3rd parties what makes an OS more
successful in the market.
I’m convienced that his professional approach will be the best what
could happen for QSSL and wish him good luck! It’s 5 to 12 and he has
the chance to lead QNX to a great future… I cross my fingers,
Jutta
P.S. if anyone is interested in PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine)
downloading at the OpenQNX page: www.sf.net/projects/openqnx
Info (PowerPoint) about the usage of PVM for QNX:
http://www.steinhoff-automation.com/SPS2001_PVM_steinhoff_e.zip
Nigel Jones-Quartey wrote:
OK, one question if you are still reading…
*Yes, we got sidetracked with
- consumer for a while, and although we have some consumer wins, that market
- turned out to be fraught with peril – immature, jammed full of intellectual
- property issues, and pricepoints which were unsustainable for us.
This is interesting to me, as a QNXrtp user, does this mean that QNX has a
long term plan that would leave me high and dry eventually? I only ask
because from reading more and more, I (an end-user) am getting the
impression that QNXrtp will be like BeOS, a side project that could be
cancelled at any time. I’d like to get some reassurance, or a realistic
“don’t count on it”.
thanks for your help,
Nigel Jones-Quartey“Alec Saunders” <> alecs@qnx.com> > wrote in message
news:a2soot$mjd$> 1@nntp.qnx.com> …
OK - a reply…First, let me say that your (and by that I mean the group on the last few
threads) complaints are mostly right on the money. There are bunch of
reasons why the things you’re unhappy about have happened. It’s not
super-important why they’ve happened, but rather what we’re going to do
about them.Some folks are concerned about our direction. Yup, the company has had
several over the last couple of years. Over the past six to eight months I
have led a process resulting in an exhaustive analysis of our markets, and
we have, from the ground up, built a solid strategic plan. I feel good
about that, and I think as we start to execute that plan, it will do a lot
of good for us, and for you. We’re going to continue to sell our products
to the traditional markets we’ve sold to - medecine, industrial automation,
and the general embedded market. We’re going to focus on selling into
networking and automotive as well, which we identified as solid
opportunities for us in growth markets. Yes, we got sidetracked with
consumer for a while, and although we have some consumer wins, that market
turned out to be fraught with peril – immature, jammed full of intellectual
property issues, and pricepoints which were unsustainable for us. Right now
we have adopted what I describe as a “portfolio” approach to the market. We
have our current opportunities in our traditional markets, which generate
the lions share of our revenue. We have some near term bets in networking
that are starting to ramp. And, we have some longer term bets in the
automotive space that may pay off in a few years. This kind of division of
risk, and investment strategy is a sensible way to manage the business. The
company learned a lot about risk management when we dove into consumer the
way we did.Some folks want to know why we haven’t been advertising. I came on board as
VP of marketing about nine months ago. One of my first actions was to shut
down all of our expenditures, while we figured out what we wanted to do and
where. That’s why you haven’t seen any ads. No point in blowing gobs of
money on ads if you don’t know what you want to say, or to whom you want to
say it. The ads are reappearing, now. Now, they’re mostly going into pubs
targeting the verticals I identified, but they’re happening. We’re also
running seminars in some markets in the US, buying ad space on search
engines, and sponsoring targeted web sites, like litereading.com.Some folks have pointed out that our tools story is a mess. Whew, and HOW!
WindRiver and Microsoft are beating us up in customer engagements because
of this. Stay tuned. We’re going to fix this.These threads originally started because some of you have noticed that the
well has been running dry on QNX consulting. The bad news is that the
well’s a little dry all around. Our last quarter wasn’t pretty, either.
But we’re working to change that too, and as the saying goes “a rising tide
floats all boats”. Rest assured, we don’t want to compete with you folks,
and we’re not trying to. Debbie’s job is to figure out how effectively to
work with you.Now I know I’m a new face around here, but that’s a good thing. I was hired
to be an agent of change, to help build a vision for where we can go as a
company, and to shake up the status quo. I don’t have the QSSL history, and
honestly, I don’t particularly care about it. Heresy, I know >
to help us be successful, and in the process to enable you to be successful.
Before QSSL, I spent nearly 9 years at Microsoft where, amongst other
things, I ran the strategic planning organization for Windows CE, was
Director of Marketing for Universal Plug and Play and Microsoft’s Home
Networking initiatives, and was also responsible for launching Internet
Explorer v1 and v2. And I’m not the only new talent the company has hired
in recently. I’ve built a marketing team composed of folks who cut their
teeth at companies like Nortel, Entrust, TI, Bell Canada, and Reid Eddison.
We’ve rebuilt our sales force with folks from Wind River, LynuxWorks, and
other major competitors of ours in this space. Major changes are
happening at QSSL.I hope that gives you some sense of where we’re going, and why we’ve been
the way we have in the last little while. I hope, even though it won’t pay
the bills right now, it gives you some comfort in knowing that we DO care,
and that we ARE working hard to turn things around.Alec.
Mario hit the nail on the head. We were pushing QNX in the consumer
electronics industry for a while, and it turned out to be a harder business
than anticipated.
Regarding the QNX RTP, the way to think about that is that it’s a
development platform, for non-commercial use, to enable a QNX user
community. Commercial users have always been required by the terms of the
license for the RTP to purchase commercial development seats, and licenses
to the OS if they wish to redistribute the OS with their product. We’re not
planning to change the strategy of having a non-commercial product available
for downloaders.
–
Alec Saunders (alecs@qnx.com)
VP Marketing, QNX Software Systems Limited
Alec, if you should read this, please, have a look to the nomenclature
of all the QNX products and please make life easier for all by using
always the same name for one and the same… it’s extremely confusing
and also crazy marketing!
Got a team working on it right now.
Thanks for the other feedback, too, Jutta.
–
Alec Saunders (alecs@qnx.com)
VP Marketing, QNX Software Systems Limited
Now I’m worried!
We currently use QNX4.xx and the photon gui as a turnkey DESKTOP app for the access control and building security industry.
If I read this correctly we are not being encouraged to go down the same path with the new generation of QNX. In other words the QNX RTP is not, for us, just the development environment. It’s an integral part of our future product, at least I hope it is.
Previously, Alec Saunders wrote in qdn.public.qnxrtp.advocacy:
Mario hit the nail on the head. We were pushing QNX in the consumer
electronics industry for a while, and it turned out to be a harder business
than anticipated.Regarding the QNX RTP, the way to think about that is that it’s a
development platform, for non-commercial use, to enable a QNX user
community. Commercial users have always been required by the terms of the
license for the RTP to purchase commercial development seats, and licenses
to the OS if they wish to redistribute the OS with their product. We’re not
planning to change the strategy of having a non-commercial product available
for downloaders.–
Alec Saunders (> alecs@qnx.com> )
VP Marketing, QNX Software Systems Limited
If I read this correctly we are not being encouraged to go down the same
path with the new generation of QNX. In other words the QNX RTP is not, for
us, just the development environment. It’s an integral part of our future
product, at least I hope it is.
You could still use it in that fashion, Ian, so don’t be worried. Remember,
I’m an ex-Microsoft guy. When you talk about a “Desktop”, I think of a
general productivity workstation – lots of office productivity apps, etc.
–
Alec Saunders (alecs@qnx.com)
VP Marketing, QNX Software Systems Limited
Phew !
Previously, Alec Saunders wrote in qdn.public.qnxrtp.advocacy:
If I read this correctly we are not being encouraged to go down the same
path with the new generation of QNX. In other words the QNX RTP is not, for
us, just the development environment. It’s an integral part of our future
product, at least I hope it is.You could still use it in that fashion, Ian, so don’t be worried. Remember,
I’m an ex-Microsoft guy. When you talk about a “Desktop”, I think of a
general productivity workstation – lots of office productivity apps, etc.–
Alec Saunders (> alecs@qnx.com> )
VP Marketing, QNX Software Systems Limited
\