It's a dramatic change in Wind River's product portfolio, and could be one of the most significant announcements in the company's history, said Naren Nachiappan, vice president and general manager for device software at Wind River. "For the very first time, we're doing things beyond development systems and OSes," he said.

Word of the development first surfaced in April, when Wind River revealed an upcoming launch that will extend DSO beyond the development phase. Early reports indicated that the new software suite would cover activities coming into play after a device has been deployed, including diagnostics, updates and the managed remote services capabilities of devices.

Traditionally, Nachiappan noted, the job of the embedded systems developer ends as soon as the device is deployed. But today, he said, device manufacturers need to stay connected to the customer, and to do that they need to deliver remote service capabilities.

The Management Suite consists of two parts. One is an upgraded version of Wind River's existing Workbench Diagnostics tool, which lets developers instrument, diagnose, and correct software defects in running systems. The other is a new tool called Field Diagnostics, a scalable remote diagnostics system.

Workbench Diagnostics previously allowed one developer to debug one device. The new version lets multiple developers debug multiple devices. "You can collaborate with different workgroups, QA groups, manufacturing groups, and development groups, all sharing the same log files, sensor points and diagnostics," Nachiappan said.

Field Diagnostics, said Nachiappan, brings the capabilities of Workbench Diagnostic into the field, with the critical addition of security capabilities. It allows diagnosis of a target device running at a customer site. A site manager can block access to devices, enable access for certain periods of time, selectively enable access, or set audit trials to keep track of data that's going back and forth.

In addition to analysis, Field Diagnostics permits first-pass debugging and repair, with access to a library of pre-built diagnostics and patches. If engineers need to add new code, however, they'll need to go back to Workbench Diagnostics to create that code.

The Management Suite currently supports Linux or VxWorks operating systems, and will be available for more operating systems in the future, Nachiappan said. The suite will be available in the third quarter of 2006.