The brief history of DSO is very interesting indeed.
It all starts with Ken Klein, the CEO of Wind River. Klein took the helm at Wind River at the beginning of 2004 to turn the company around after three years of flagging revenues.
In his previous gig at Mercury Interactive, from which he drew the current Wind River executive team, Klein transformed an undistinguished maker of IT management apps into "the global leader in Business Technology Optimization (BTO)," boasting a 55.6% market share in automated software quality assurance testing. (You'll really want to hear about how they can "optimize your business value.")
In February 2004, Wind River announced that they were "the global leader in device software optimization (DSO)," in the press release where they introduced the term. But until recently, nobody else in the industry seemed interested in DSO.
Here the story takes a sinister turn with the entrance of Gartner analyst Theresa Lanowitz. In June, a Wind River press conference at the Paris Air Show included "comments on the market trends around DSO" from Lanowitz. Now you'll find her touting the virtues of device software optimization at DSO.com. A quick Google for Lanowitz tells us she's a Research Director who "specializes in mobile and wireless application development and software quality assurance." Google also reveals an intimate connection between Lanowitz and Mercury Interactive, with no fewer than 59 hits for her name on Mercury's websites. It's also worth noting that her official bio on Gartner's site
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doesn't mention any research or experience in the mobile or embedded spaces.
It was also in June that Green Hills took up the DSO banner, in a press release where they announced the settlement of a lawsuit with Wind River. Since Klein took over, Wind River had refused to supply Green Hills with copies of VxWorks for integration with their MULTI IDE, breaking an agreement the two companies had made previously. Though the settlement agreement doesn't mention it, it appears that Green Hills agreed to adopt the DSO terminology in return for their shipments of VxWorks.
I'm posting anonymously because I work for a competing vendor, and I don't want my company to become known as the global leader in embedded industry mudslinging (EIM). But these DSO shenanigans are just too good to keep to myself.