With over 2,000 customers developing on MontaVista Linux across a wide range of industries, MontaVista is the undisputed leading provider of commercial-grade Linux development platforms for intelligent devices and communications infrastructure.

Leading the Charge in Commercial Grade Open Source Linux

MontaVista is the center of intellectual capital on Linux for intelligent devices. With world-class Linux OS offerings backed by a complete set of developer tools, best-in-class professional services and support, the broadest range of supported hardware platforms, and industry-leading test environments, MontaVista is the most complete provider of Linux solutions.

MontaVista invests a significant percentage of revenues back into new developments for Linux, and as a member of the open source community, MontaVista cycles those developments back into the community. This intellectual capital developed by MontaVista benefits the broader Linux intelligent device community in various ways; for example, MontaVista makes its test facilities and training and professional services support commercially available to any company who requests it, regardless of whether or not that company is a MontaVista operating system license holder.

This leadership has translated into success with customers. With four of the top five network equipment providers using MontaVista Linux, as well as some of the largest mobile phone, consumer electronics, and telecommunications firms in the world - MontaVista is by far the most-deployed Linux for embedded devices, powering over 40 million devices around the world.

The Challenge Facing Intelligent Device Developers

The world is flooded with intelligent devices. From mobile phones to GPS systems to MP3 players, the list grows by the day. And while seemingly insatiable market demand for intelligent devices creates great opportunities for device vendors, it also brings great challenges.

Products teams need a platform that allows them to deliver the best possible product in the shortest possible time. This need becomes more acute every day. Consumers demand more from the devices each year - more functionality, more quality, more interoperability; however, business pressures demand vendors adopt shorter design cycles with smaller budgets.

Finding a development platform that enables design teams to deliver the best products as quickly and inexpensively as possible has never been more critical. One common approach is an "assemble-your-own" development platform built using open source Linux; while this affords the development team greater control, it can significantly delay time to market. Another approach is to purchase a proprietary development platform, but while proprietary environments can be used immediately, they typically don't provide the development team with adequate control to customize their development platform.

The MontaVista Solution

MontaVista Software addresses this challenge by providing commercial-grade, open source Linux development platforms that allow designers to innovate across a wide range of intelligent devices. As integrated, pre-tested development platforms, MontaVista solutions provide the time to market benefits of a proprietary solution, but with all the control and flexibility of an open source Linux environment.

MontaVista Linux development platforms allow designers to innovate across a wide range of intelligent devices. With offerings geared toward industrial automation, consumer electronics, mobile, medical and telephony, MontaVista has a broad range of offerings designed to suit nearly every development need.

In addition, MontaVista provides complete, end-to-end support for each of its development platforms. License holders are eligible to sign up for industry-leading product maintenance and support. Furthermore, the MontaVista offers a complete line of Professional Services offerings consisting of standardized services such as benchmarking, feature integration, and LSP porting, as well as customized offerings to support customers' specific development requirements.

MontaVista Linux

MontaVista Linux is designed for the scalability, dependability and performance required for today's intelligent devices. It supports the broadest range of processor architectures used in high-end embedded systems today, including x86, PowerPC, ARM, SH, and MIPS. MontaVista Linux supports more than 60 COTS and reference boards and includes a comprehensive set of development tools with its MontaVista Linux.

MontaVista Linux provides a variety of capabilities exclusively for intelligent device applications. Back-plane communication allows multiple board-level systems to communicate over a common bus interface. Headless operation enables the embedding of Linux in a video display, keyboard or mouse. Networks can be installed and booted without the need for rotating media. The Flash memory file system supports rugged solid-state storage. Finally, run-time instrumentation makes it easy to monitor system integrity and performance.

The Company

MontaVista was founded by James F. Ready, an acknowledged pioneer in the off-the-shelf operating-systems business with more than 25 years of experience in the embedded-software industry. While at Ready Systems in the early 1990s, he foresaw that Linux would become an important factor in the embedded market. The Ready Systems merger with Microtec Research and subsequent acquisition, in 1995, by Mentor Graphics afforded Jim Ready the opportunity to pursue his vision with the creation of MontaVista.

MontaVista is headquartered in Santa Clara, California, in the heart of the Silicon Valley. Having raised $21 million in its latest round of funding, MontaVista is funded by leading venture capital investors US Ventures Partners and Alloy Ventures; as well as strategic customers including IBM, NTT DoCoMo, Intel Capital, Panasonic (Matsushita), Samsung Ventures America, Siemens Venture Capital, Sony, Toshiba America and Yamaha Corporation.

The name MontaVista Software comes from the company's first location, in Monta Vista, an unincorporated area in Cupertino, CA.