Linux professional services and consulting firm Embedded Alley (EA) announced it has hired MontaVista's Ken Keller as VP of engineering. A pioneer in Carrier Grade Linux (CGL) development, Keller (pictured) will lead the EA technical team, and focus on communications infrastructure products, says the company.

Keller was hired by MontaVista back in 2000 to head up its Arizona design center team. At the time, he was said to have brought "over 24 years of experience in the real-time / embedded industry" to MontaVista. Keller's team designed and developed MontaVista's first CGL products, resulting in today's MontaVista Carrier Grade Edition (CGE). Prior to MontaVista, Keller was manager and chief architect for Motorola Computer Group, Cross Industry Business Unit.

In his new role as engineering VP, Keller will bring to bear his skills in building highly available platforms for telecom and other mission-critical systems to help grow EA's communications infrastructure business, says the company. He will also refine engineering processes, establish program management standards, and implement project and engineering automated tracking systems, says EA.

Stated Paul Staudacher, Embedded Alley president, and another former MontaVista exec, having joined EA in September, "With Ken on board, we can focus our technical team on meeting customer and market requirements, enabling planned growth in both products and services."

EA offers a number of Linux consulting services, including working with customers to develop and maintain their software development kits (SDKs). The firm's Silicon Vendor Partner Program (SVPP) provides customized SDKs that vendors can freely distribute, and includes mainline kernel maintenance and regression testing.


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