Intel touts new opportunities for channel 18 March, 2010 By Mark Cox

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That's the message that Intel gave to 375 of its' premier partners at its' just-concluded annual Intel Solutions Summit in Las Vegas, and it was the same message that Eric Thompson, Director, North America Distribution Sales & Channel Marketing, imparted to a press conference for the channel press from the U.S., Canada and Latin America.

"The channel is poised to take advantage of the corporate refresh," Thompson said. "We believe 2010 will be a year of fantastic growth."

That growth, Thompson said, will come in part from new products, like the 2010 Core processor families introduced earlier this year along with the board-level products to go with them, and the Xeon 5600 server processors announced this week.

"The Xeon 5600 is not just for the large corporate data center," Thompson said. "It has applicability to small business and the small data center. It's an amazing upgrade over the 5500 (Nehalem) chip, which is only one year old. It generates 40 percent more performance per watt." Its' security features enables a more secure environment for encryption, without generating the massive overhead Thompson said encryption could entail.

Intel is also supporting the 5600 launch into the channel with related price cuts and a promo.

"Custom system builders need platforms to go with these chips, so we've lowered our pricing on these platforms and boards by 10-15 percent on 70 percent of them," Thompson said. "It makes the new server configurations very cost-effective. And to make it even more attractive, we are launching our "56" promotion -- $56 savings on all server boards or systems that support 5600s."

Thompson also touted Intel's ESAA program, which facilitates software elements coming together with hardware to get solutions to market faster and at lower cost. It provides access to over 700 recipes, including over 200 at the Intel Xeon 5600 launch, as well as software promos like special pricing for VMware with Intel Servers, and a promo saving up to $400 on VMware vSphere 4 Essentials.

New business area opportunities also abound for the channel, Thompson said, with a key one being solid state drives.

"Last year we essentially doubled SSD growth quarter on quarter in North America, and are on the same trajectory for Q1 2010," Thompson said. He conceded such exponential growth is somewhat easier in a new category which is small to start, but said that its' growth was genuinely explosive, taking off in high end PCs, storage PCs, and as boot drives in normal PCs where security or ruggedization is needed. Intel is shipping three types, the X-25E for the enterprise, the X-25M for the mainstream market, and their newest addition, the X-25V for the value market, which has been shipping for a few weeks and has a $USD 125 price point.

"Solid state drives are revolutionizing storage," Thompson said. "These products are an important differentiator for the channel to build into their solutions."

Another differentiator Thompson cited was RAID, with the availability of Intel 6 GB SAS RAID making it easier to deploy.

While overall PC shipment numbers give the impression the desktop is on its' way to join the abacus as an obsolete technology, Thompson said that reflects consumer trends, and that the reality in the channel was very different, something that was stressed at the Intel Solutions Summit.

"It's easy to think of the desktop as yesterday's platform, but we are seeing a resurgence in desktop differentiation we haven't seen in a few years," he said.

Some business applications aren't making the transition to mobile at all, and the desktop in business environment is actually growing at a 6 percent CAGR, he said. Intel's vPro platforms can help differentiate here.

The highest selling prices are actually to be found in desktop performance machines, mainly aimed at the gaming and enthusiast market.

"This market is done with the most innovation in the channel," Thompson said.

Media-oriented lifestyle and all-in-one PCs are another thriving desktop market, growing at a 15 percent CAGR, and Thompson says the channel can get in the forefront in the transition to these innovative platforms.

The Intel Atom processor also has targeted non-mobile applications for the business market, Thompson said.

"It is the backbone of digital signage applications, and is used in control applications in the small manufacturing environment. Partners also use these to augment full function PCs."

Thompson said the new Intel Spring Peak mobile family is also opening up new channel opportunities.

"These are revolutionary channel products," he said. "Dock stations are often a requirement for government and some business contracts, and the channel has not had a dock station in the past."

Thompson also said that while their system builder channel remains central to their partnering efforts, they want to expand their effort among more traditional resellers.

"We've had the Intel Technology Provider Program in place a couple years, which is aimed at resellers as opposed to system builders, as an adjunct to our system builder program. We want to expand that," he said.

While Thompson did not specifically say whether new programmatic initiatives would be forthcoming in this space, he did say both that they wanted to reach out to resellers that serve mid-market and enterprise class end users, and that Intel is looking to expand its' partner base over the next couple years in the SMB reseller space. Intel rival AMD announced two weeks ago that it was increasing its' efforts in this space by adding a commercial track to its' partner program specifically to reach out to these types of partners, who are not system builders, but who still use component parts in products and solutions they sell.

"We find mainstream solution providers have value in understanding where Intel technology is going and the capabilities we are building into our platforms that can solve their customers' problems," Thompson said.

Thompson did say that they are committed to pre and post sales support for partners, that they have brought virtual conferences to the table for partners and will do more in 2010, and that the partner program needs to keep up with the changes happening in the industry.

"We need to evolve partner program to meet that change he said." As an example, he cited the growth of small form factor products, and the need to help partners establish relationships with Taiwanese and Chinese ODMs so they can accelerate in these new form factors. He also said there is a need for more partnering among partners, which they encourage and facilitate through the Intel Solutions Summit.