Though Microsoft didn’t share financial details about the acquisition, it indicated that it is part of a $5 billion investment in IoT that the company announced in April 2018.
Microsoft has acquired Express Logic, a San Diego-based software company specialized in real time operating systems (RTOS) for IoT and edge devices powered by microcontroller units (MCUs).
With this acquisition, Microsoft said it will unlock access to billions of new connected endpoints, grow the number of devices that can seamlessly connect to Azure and enable new intelligent capabilities.
By 2020, Gartner predicts there will be more than 20 billion connected devices.
One of Express Logic’s most important products is ThreadX, a real time operating system for MCU based devices that has achieved over 6.2 billion deployments.
Following this acquisition, Express Logic’s ThreadX RTOS has joined Microsoft’s growing support for IoT devices.
“Our goal is to make Express Logic’s ThreadX RTOS available as an option for real time processing requirements on an Azure Sphere device and also enable ThreadX-powered devices to connect to Azure IoT Edge devices when the IoT solution calls for edge computing capabilities,” asserted Sam George, Director, Azure IoT at Microsoft.
Though Microsoft didn’t share financial details about the acquisition, it indicated that it is part of a $5 billion investment in IoT that the company announced in April 2018.
The company been making a number of investments from product innovation – including Azure Sphere, Azure Digital Twins, Azure IoT Edge, Azure Maps and Azure IoT Central – to new partnerships with DJI, SAP, PTC, Qualcomm and Carnegie Mellon University for IoT and edge app development.
Express Logic’s engineering team joins Microsoft
Meanwhile, Express Logic CEO William E. Lamie revealed in a separate post that the company’s engineering team was joining Microsoft immediately.
He said, “We are very excited to share that Express Logic has been acquired by Microsoft. Effective immediately, our ThreadX RTOS and supporting software technology, as well as our talented engineering staff join Microsoft. This complements Microsoft’s existing premier security offering in the microcontroller space.”
“We look forward to continuing our efforts to help simplify embedded IoT development and continuing to build customer loyalty by helping our customers get to market quicker with solutions that are simple, safe, secure and that can take full advantage of the IoT,” he added.
