In this episode of the SYSGO TechCast, we take you behind the scenes of what it means to support real-time operating systems in critical environments. Whether you're a developer, architect, or systems integrator, this episode offers a real-world look at the people, tools, and mindset behind top-tier embedded system support.

Tune in and get an inside look at how SYSGO helps customers bring their critical applications to life — reliably and securely.

Read the Transcript

Ben: Hi everyone and welcome to the SYSGO Techcast. I'm Ben from the marketing and communications team and today we are diving into the world of real-time operating systems, customer support, and what it really takes to help customers working with high assurance and better systems. Joining me is Daniel, who's been at the core of SYSGO's customer support and training efforts. So, welcome Daniel. 

Daniel: Hi everyone. So I'm Daniel dos Santos. I'm already for six years at SYSGO. This year will be my seven year actually. And yeah, I'm taking care of the port and the training department. So by us, all engineering team is getting involved. So it's also good for our customers because when they've actually submitted the request and support, they have direct contact with our engineers, including myself. So I'm really happy to be today part of this Techcast and to answer some questions. 

Ben: Great. You have been with SYSGO for quite some time. Could you tell us a bit about
your journey into your support role? 

Daniel: I'm actually more into electronics or the degree actually micro electronics and I'm a bit more close to the hardware. And while I was actually looking for a new challenge and found a job offer at SYSGO looking for a support and training manager. So in the past, I already had, I would say the same kind of profile managing also, support teams and providing trainings. So I've already spent quite a lot of experience in speaking from customers, providing
trainings and also dealing with support issues and managing them to get the right answer and also solving issues with the help of the team. So that being said, I actually have this hardware electronic background, so which is really helpful as our our PikeOS. Our product is an hypervisor type one, which is directly running in the hardware. So it's good to understand how the hardware works and then to see how PikeOS will use those resources in a real-time environment. So it's, I would say it's quite good for me or interesting also to to see both sides. So the hardware parts and also of course the operating system which comes on top.

Ben: Nice, very interesting. So SYSGO works across various industries like aerospace, automotive and other high tech sectors. What kind of customers are you typically supporting on a day-to-day basis?

Daniel: Yeah, people contacting us, I'm speaking about the support side of course. They are engineers that are working really closely with their platform with the hardware and using PikeOS and also the tools through CODEO. So the I would say we in support with directly have contact with those kind of people on the customer size. Daily working on the project. So they contact support and this is usually engineers. So software engineers, application engineers, also architects. So people actually building the operating system deciding actually how many partitions and so on. Our resources will be shared among different partitions. Of course the range is quite large. So it comes from installation issues. So really the start when someone starts with the product and wants to install them and until up to really more technical issues or even consulting. So people that are actually starting or will start a project. So they might have some questions and this is more consulting. Of course we try to answer and but if it gets a bit more into the consulting then the customer will be actually we get involved with sales or our software sheet that might help also on that aspect. 

So FAE are also playing a role I will say in the first role as a support because they might get also some questions or some issues reported. So they are also the role of reporting them into the tool and then answering them or asking from help. So this is usually also part. So the the if I is they are also sometimes involved in some issues. And also some IT people because we have to see also how products are being installed in an environment at the customer. And most of the cases actually it's the IT department installing the packwests and code they also yeah we we have also these kind of profiles also with when it comes to installation issues. 

Ben: Since you have mentioned CODEO - what makes CODEO such a central tool for developers working with our platforms? 

Daniel: Yeah CODEO is actually our main tool and despite the fact that you can also do most I would say everything through command line. CODEO is IDE. So it's a powerful tool for our customers who have everything at one place. So you can for the integrator for the architect which is building the operating system up to the engineers developing the applications. So everything is centralized in this CODEO and convenient I would say for everyone and it's the main tool providing additional tools as monitoring tracing and debugging. So all of this is concentrated in this IDE which is our CODEO. 

Ben: The CODEO IDE is by the way part of our ELinOS Embedded Linux which can be downloaded as a test version at sysco.com/get-elinos - but coming back to support. So when a customer gets PikeOS or ELinOS, what kind of support do they receive out of the box?

Daniel: So when someone buys a product it gets automatically a standard support contract assigned to that product. So it means that for any I would say questions that are related to the product or the configuration this is all covered by the or looking for of course a bug or something like that which is project related. So this is all covered by this standard support contract. So when we get the request the first thing we do is that we look at the request if it's something which is product related then configuration related and we help our customers. Or if a customer reports already a kind of format looks like to be a bug then of course we need to take the time to reproduce this and this is also being handled by this customer contract standard contract. And in this phase of course when a request comes in you need to identify first what it is about. Is this something more configuration? Is it more consulting? Is it project related? Because we might have already some projects going on with someone. 

So there's a identification phase from where this comes from and then we analyze the issue and this will be redirected to the right person. So if someone is already following a project so it will be redirected to that specific person. If this is a more general configuration issue this is done handled by the component owners of the specific part of our PikeOS or ELinOS or CODEO. And then on top of that of the standard support you have other support contracts that can be added. So you have a long term-support contract aside with the certification one and this comes with some hours of support additionally. So this could be interesting one of course you might think that in the following after starting the project or after the delivery of the project or the BSP that have been developed by ourselves. The customer might want to have more indeed hours or more hours that could be used by us to work more in close or more close to the project. So usually these packages are 50 or 100 hours and when the customer has a long support contract with us this might be really interesting because if something comes along then we can dedicate time which has been assigned to these contracts. 

Ben: Okay and how does the support look like when more complex projects with the need of certification come into play? 

Daniel: Yeah so whenever there is some certification involved and then we deliver documentation artifacts and so on in terms of certification there is also things that are linked to the support and are managed by our certification team. So as soon as there's some corrections the customers will be informed and then they actually can download any kind of update or rectifications or fixes in regards of the certification kit that have been provided with. So this is really what's been about some customers that really have on top of the regular products they have been delivered with the certification kit and of course they get also the support on that to get up to date in terms of safety and security.

Ben: Most of your support work likely happens remotely or through online tools, but there are situations where direct, on-site support also becomes necessary, right?

Daniel: In regards of on-site solving issues this is usually something which is more done by an engineer which is following a project so let's imagine that a customer is working with us closely and we are delivering to them maybe a customized BSP and then there are some visits being done by an engineer which is working closely to this BSP on-site with the customer and some issues can be discussed and sold directly on the spot when the engineer is there. So this is a bit more like another kind of support more related to the delivery to the project itself so where actually some questions and issues can be directly sold on-site.

Ben: At the beginning we already talked about PikeOS which is our flagship product with Type-1 hypervisor. What are some unique challenges or advantages you see when supporting PikeOS?

Daniel: Well the first thing is as I told at the beginning it's really directly in the hardware so if you compare that with a provider Type 2 let's say VMware which is one of them which is running on top of another operating system so there's a kind of abstraction of the hardware so you don't really care in that respect answer you just let's say take a window then you run VMware and you run on top of that Linux okay you need to take care of a few things but you don't really really know exactly how you would manage memories and so on. In comparison with PikeOS this is running directly on the hardware you need to understand the hardware first also so you need to have knowledge about how much memory the interface what is available and and then on top of that PikeOS comes with some drivers those drivers will allow you to use some devices on the on that hardware and you might want of course to optimize the usage of the memory of the board so working with PikeOS makes things, I would, say a bit more interesting for someone who is more close to the hardware because there's this aspect which you don't see usually I would say in a provider Type 2. Of course once someone buys a product we have different products we have of PikeOS and we have ELinOS and those products are also linked to other components so if I take PikeOS you have our so-called personalities so this means that on top of PikeOS you can run different kinds of partitions and in several those partitions you can have different kinds of personalities or flavors with the API so you have for example the POSIX you have the ARINC and then you have also the possibility to run the power revitalized Linux which is usually the ELinOS our other products or the weekly on top of PikeOS you have also the hardware virtualization so which allows you to run post unmodified operating system on top of PikeOS so you have those components and then come on top and of course when someone purchase these components they will also get the support for them so all of this is decided at the start when product is purchased what kind of elements or components needs to be added to the project and this will be actually delivered based on the license. 

Ben: This has been a great deep dive into what it means to support real-time systems and complex platforms like PikeOS. Don't miss out on part two of this techast so stay tuned and see you next time.