Linux for real-time apps: Making waves in India

Nandita Singh

HYDERABAD: Chennai-based Altosys Software Technologies Ltd is riding on the RT LinuxPro wave. Just six months after it forged a partnership with FSMLabs as the sole distributor of its product RT Linux Pro 1.2 the company claims that it has managed to garner $100,000 from 45 clients.

According to the company, the development license–priced at Rs 2.5 lakh for the basic package of RT Linux Pro 1.2 and Rs 5 lakh for advanced package, which includes the source code–is not difficult to sell. “The benefits of RT Linux were already known to those involved in real time mission critical applications just that they could not migrate to it because of the open source code. The IP issue was the bottleneck,” explains Altosys’ technical head for RT Linux Pro Babu Krishna Murthy. But this product by FSMLabs has taken its patented RT Linux technology from the research lab into industrial use.

According to FSMLabs Director of Engineering Cort Dougan, RT Linux Pro 1.2 is the third commercial release of the company’s RT Linux hard real time operating system. “This release is the result of testing, testing and more testing in rugged, demanding real time environments,” Dougan adds.

Dougan who was in Hyderabad to interact with a select group of clients drawn mainly from defense and telecommunications background is positive that Indian software developers can do wonders with this RTLinuxPro Development Kit, a development system complete with a solid embedded Linux kernel.

“Altosys R&D team in India is also working at adding value to the RT Linux Pro 1.2. We have worked at porting the tool chain on a windows client and providing an interface on a windows client and we are working at improvising the performance in real time networking,” said Murthy adding that all of these products would be integrated in the existing version 1.2. The company plans to release the next version RTLinux Pro 2.0 in a month’s time.

With most of their clients from mission critical applications from defense and research organizations the market for the company is well defined and the fact that the OS costs one-fifth of any competitive real time system helps.

In order to be close to the market Altosys is looking at opening up an office in association with channel partners in Hyderabad, Pune and Delhi. The Chennai-based company has an office in Bangalore, the city with its largest client base of 20. In Hyderabad, the company counts RCI, BSL, ASL, ECIL and BHEL as its major clients.

(CNS)