“Wind River’s development team had been running its Tornado
development environment on Windows NT and Solaris, and, due to
developer demand, wanted to port it to Linux. However, doing
so would have required deploying another PC to each developer’s
desk. According to Philippe Maisonneuve, director of the Wind River
Vannes Development Center, “Since many developers already have two
workstations each, deploying another would have been a
nightmare.”
“Some companies in this situation would have considered dual
booting. Maisonneuve, however, understood the limitations of this
scenario. According to Maisonneuve, “Dual booting wasn’t really
considered. It’s too painful, and it limits productivity.”
“Using VMware, the Wind River development team was able to
port the Tornado development environment to Linux without having to
purchase and deploy additional hardware. The development team
installed VMware for Windows NT and Windows 2000 on desktop
machines running Windows NT. They were then able to install Linux
inside VMware virtual machines, allowing engineers to develop for
both Windows NT and Linux on the same physical hardware.”