John Lambert
Virtutech President and CEO

From the Desk of the CEO

2008 turned out to be a pivotal year both for the virtualized systems development movement and Virtutech as the leader in this space. Across the board we saw customers, drawn from multiple market segments, moving from the pilot stage into broad-based adoption of virtual platforms, and doing so as a key component of their overall systems development strategy.

What factors then are driving this accelerating trend? Clearly, the biggest force remains one that has been with us for quite some time: the rapid rise in software forming the key economic differentiation in any new system, product or service. Despite this shift having been evident for the past 15 years or more, development processes applied inside companies have not evolved at anything like the rate necessary in order to keep pace. As a result, product companies are now hitting a wall. Further improvements to the current way of doing things are no longer yielding any significant benefits. What’s needed instead is a new way of approaching the whole end-to-end approach to designing, developing and delivering a software-intensive product. That, in short, is the opportunity now being embraced by the marketplace and is itself only made feasible because development can move into the virtual domain rather than having to rely solely on the physical world of embedded boards, racks and physical equipment.

Looking now at where we are as 2009 gets underway, all the drivers we saw pushing customers to reach that point of realization have been greatly magnified by the global economic situation. When your business is growing it’s sometimes hard to find time to focus on improving efficiency and effectiveness; growth is all you focus, on and the negative impacts of ignoring everything else can be hidden under the covers, at least for a while. However, the world is now a very different place. Finding new ways of efficiently developing a new data switch, navigation system or multi-function printer is an absolute priority, and one that trumps all others.

It’s clear to all of us that once a customer has embraced virtualized system development there’s no going back. The benefits are too great, the advantages too obvious. Coming into 2009, the continued pace of growth we see in our business pipeline reinforces that this movement is here to stay and that it’s rapidly gathering pace. We’re thrilled to be in a position to help drive this wave and excited to have the opportunity to work with you all.