Kash,
Intel actually admitting we're screwing up.
Who's in charge?
zdnet.com
Intel exec: 'No excuse' for recent missteps
By Lisa DiCarlo, PC Week Online
February 24, 2000 12:40 PM ET
HANNOVER, Germany -- As Intel Corp. spreads the gospel here about its role in creating a global Internet economy, it's clear the company has been somewhat humbled by its many missteps over the past year. But with huge projects like Itanium and Willamette on tap for 2000, Intel doesn't have much, if any, margin for error.
The Enterprise Server Group is the latest to suffer from problems -- a bug in the 840 chip set that forced the company to discontinue the sale of three supporting motherboards. The problem will be fixed in the next stepping, or production cycle, of the chip set, the company said.
The 840 snafu follows other problems with the 810 and 820 chip sets last year, along with what appear to be chronic shortages of Intel's highest-performing processors.
"There's no excuse for it," said Mike Fister, vice president of ESG, during an interview at the CeBIT trade show here. "We want to be the best supplier to our customers, and we're not. We feel like we've lost some credibility [among ourselves]."
Fister, who said he doesn't believe Intel has lost credibility with customers, could not offer any concrete explanation for the problems.
Diversification to blame?
But the timing of Intel's execution problems in its core chip business coincides with the broad diversification of the company. Fister, however, said there was no connection between the two.
Still, former key executives that oversaw quality manufacturing and execution -- such as Gerry Parker -- have taken other jobs at the company in new areas like services and Internet initiatives.
At the same time, Intel is also dealing with lackluster support in some areas of software development. For example, it is scaling back development efforts for Solaris on IA-64 due to "no ISV recruitment [and] no momentum," according to Fister.
That could hurt Intel's chances to penetrate the torrid Web server market, where Sun Microsystems Inc. and its Solaris operating system lead by a wide margin.
Also, last year Compaq Computer Corp. said it would not port Tru64Unix to the Itanium processor but instead focus on development for its own Alpha platform.
Although that doesn't leave Intel with much more Unix support than it currently has for the Pentium architecture, Fister is bullish on the prospects for Monterey on Itanium. Monterey is the Unix OS being developed by SCO Inc., IBM and others.
He said the next few months will be "critical" for drumming up more software support for Itanium.
"It's tough. We're there, but it's challenging. We're not trying to get thousands of applications out there" for Itanium, Fister said, explaining that there will be a windfall of applications by mid- to late 2001, when the second generation of Itanium, code-named McKinley, debuts.
|
