Valley's Developonline.com gathers 11 firms to share hardware platforms
September 18, 2000
Jane Larson
The Arizona Republic
DevelopOnLine.com is announcing today that it has lined up, to contribute
to its Web site, 11 major corporations that will let anybody in the world
test-drive their ideas for new high-tech products.
The Intel Corp. spinoff said Avnet Inc., Motorola Inc., ST Microelectronics
and others have agreed to share their open-hardware platforms, the computer
building blocks developers use to come up with new products, on the Web
site. It will be previewed at an industry conference in San Jose, Calif.,
next week and officially launched to the public Oct. 2.
The announcement is the first major milestone for the Valley-based firm,
which spun off from Intel's Chandler operations in May with 30 employees
and $15 million in venture capital investment. Lining up key players
besides Intel was seen as crucial to DevelopOnLine's plan to give
new-product developers all the tools they need to quickly test, build and
market their ideas.
"In the old days, you had to have an XYZ engineering degree and be sitting
in a Fortune 100 company to have access to this kind of lab," said Jim
Kearns, vice president of business development at DevelopOnLine.com. "Now
you can have your laptop and have your idea running on these platforms."
The platforms have been carefully guarded within large corporations, get
more powerful every 18 months, and not every company has all the platforms
available, he said.
So finding the best one to use has been an obstacle for developers who live
in other parts of the world, work for smaller companies or simply have
their own ideas for products.
Developers will be able to shop for the best platform to use, combine
products or write software for new applications, then run the prototype on
line to see if it works, Kearns said.
Besides Intel, Motorola and Avnet, the first companies to provide their
technology through DevelopOnline are Analog Devices, Compaq, IBM, Lineo,
MontavVista, PLX Technology, National Semiconductor Red Hat and ST
Microelectronics.
Intel, Motorola and the other contributors benefit in a couple ways from
joining the project. Developers will pay contributors for the use of at
least some of the platforms, plus the manufacturers "get a channel to get
access to a global talent pool," Kearns said.
DevelopOnLine.com expects three areas to be hot spots for development:
handheld and wireless applications, set-top boxes and networking devices,
Kearns said. Eventually, even consumers who have gotten used to configuring
their own computers and stereo systems may be using the Web site to test
new ideas, he said.
The company will be measuring its success according to the number of users,
the number of projects they start, and whether it can prove that its system
shortens the product-development cycle, Kearns said.
"We believe we can cut six to 18 months out of the development cycle simply
by letting people identify and find these building blocks," he said.
The contributor companies are paying DevelopOnLine.com to host their
platforms on its site, so the startup is booking revenue already, he said.
DevelopOnLine.com has grown to 80 employees and will move in October to the
Centerpoint building in Tempe's Tech Oasis from temporary quarters in
Mesa's Bank of America building. It is privately held.