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About Cygnus

Company Profile

Cygnus Solutions is the leading provider of single-source, UNIX, and NT desktop and cross-platform development tools for 32- and 64-bit microcontrollers. Our company strategy is to continue to extend the functionality and performance of our development tools, as well as to deliver innovative software component technologies for use in embedded systems.

The company was founded in 1989 to provide commercial support for open Internet technologies. Cygnus pioneered the "free software" model -- a business model which has allowed us to drive rapid evolution and adoption of the GNU standard and enjoy profitable growth at the same time. Under the free software model, we make source code available and freely redistributable through our relationship with the Free Software Foundation. We earn our revenues by providing commercial support services directly to the world's leading technology companies, as well as through directed R&D contracts. Driven by our unique business model, the company's sales have grown at a compound annual rate of over 65% since 1992. Our consistent profitability and solid financial position have enabled the company to rapidly expand operations to support the growing needs of our customer base.

Cygnus is a privately held company with venture capital investment from August Capital and Greylock Management. We currently have approximately 100 employees, over 2/3 of which are engineers. We are global in both our operations and our customer set. Our headquarters are in Sunnyvale, California, with additional offices in Cambridge Massachusetts, Cambridge U.K., Tokyo, and Germany. Our historical roots and current strong ties with the Internet community also allow us to leverage the global power of the Internet to drive our toolchain innovation and recruit new engineers for our growing company.

Growing Market

Our customers are developers of systems that use 32- and 64-bit microcontrollers, as well as the vendors of these microcontrollers. This means that the most fundamental driver of our market is the rapid unit growth and constant price/performance improvements of advanced microcontrollers themselves. But we also benefit from advances in all of the related technologies that make end-user solutions more cost-effective and drive end-user demand. These technologies include storage (disk, flash, DRAM), display (LCD), Internet and communication protocols, and wireless connectivity. Collectively, advances in these technologies are allowing ever-greater intelligence to be embedded in traditional embedded systems (telecommunications equipment, automobiles, office equipment), and are enabling completely new classes of computing devices such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs). One thing is for sure: software tools and software content for these devices must keep pace in order to realize the promise of powerful, distributed, but densely interconnected computing power. Our mission is to benefit from, and enable this vision of "pervasive computing" through our software solutions.

Solid Customer Base

We don't deliver technology for technology's sake. Our customers turn to us to create flexibility (our single-source solution provides true multiplatform capabilities and easy retargeting), shorten time-to-market (we can get your software development started before your hardware is ready), and reduce costs (we provide cost-effective support services and redistributable solutions). These are the reasons that the best names in the business have chosen Cygnus. Our customers include the world's top microcontroller companies as well as leading telecommunications, software, game console, consumer electronics, and office equipment companies.

Products and Services

Cygnus provides software development tools and component technologies for systems using 32- and 64-bit microcontrollers. Specific products and services include:

GNUPro Toolkit. GNUPro Toolkit software includes a C and C++ compiler, powerful source-level debugger with graphical user interface, assembler, linker/loader, binary file utilities, and libraries. We offer GNUPro Toolkit under our "free software model": if you are a support customer, we ship you the source code, tested binaries, and product documentation, and you are free to copy and redistribute these components as you see fit.

While the software is free, the support is not. We offer support services that can be scaled up to meet any organization's requirements, providing you with mission-critical support services (rapid response and resolution of technical questions or problems), as well as regular software upgrades. These services are based on a fixed-fee, fixed-time basis (usually annual), and are priced according to the level of support offered and the number of developers using this software for business-related purposes.

Over 200 companies have chosen GNUPro Toolkit due to:

Source Navigator. Source Navigator software is a recent Cygnus product addition made available through our recent acquisition of Multix GmbH. Source Navigator provides a graphical, intuitive, and easy-to-use environment that lets you:

Source Navigator is particularly useful for large software development projects (>100k LOC) as well as situations where developers must work with an unfamiliar source code base (e.g., a reverse engineering situation). Source Navigator offers substantial benefits over competitive products, including very short project open times and reduced system requirements. Source Navigator is sold under a traditional license model on a per-seat basis including single user, 5-user, 25-user, and site license configurations. The basic configuration supports C, C++, and Tcl source languages. Parsers for Java, COBOL, and other languages are optionally available.

Silicon Partners Custom ports and advanced technology development (link to Silicon Partners program). Cygnus offers contract engineering services to address a focused set of business problems. We offer these primarily through our Silicon Partners program, where we work directly with leading microcontroller companies to port GNUPro technology to their latest microcontroller architectures and implement targeted optimizations. Our Silicon Partners choose Cygnus because:

KerbNet authentication/encryption technology components. KerbNet software represents our first entry into the software components space. We offer software and services that allow implementation of Kerberos V5 authentication/encryption protocol into embedded systems. We chose KerbNet software as our first software component because of the growing importance of security in distributed, complex, embedded systems (pervasive computing). We also offer KerbNet software for Unix and NT desktop computing environments through our integration partner, Cambridge Technology Partners.

Management Team

Kaz Hashimoto, President and CEO
Mr. Hashimoto has extensive prior experience in general management at Siemens AG and ADAC Laboratories.
Christine Russell, CFO
Ms. Russell has over 20 years of experience in finance and operations management at technology companies including Measurex and Xerox.
Al Cohen, V.P., Sales
Mr. Cohen has 13 years of sales and sales management experience, including executive positions in sales and marketing with IBM.
Paul Wyatt, V.P., Engineering
Mr. Wyatt has built and led engineering teams at a number of leading technology companies, including AT&T, ASK Group, and TravelNet.

Board of Directors

Kaz Hashimoto President and CEO of Cygnus Solutions
John Johnston Partner, August Capital
Dave Strohm Partner, Greylock Management
Esther Dyson President, EDVenture Holdings
David Henkel-Wallace Company Founder

Company Founders

Michael Tiemann
David Henkel-Wallace
John Gilmore

Cygnus Solutions, 1325 Chesapeake Terrace, Sunnyvale, CA 94089 USA. info@cygnus.com