Paul, eye opener article interviewing Steve Dallman, director of North American distribution and channel marketing at Intel, about the white box market, and other stuff.
Dallman: Intel has had a lot of focus on growing our channels business, and we're seeing probably about a 40 percent year-to-year increase being shipped into the white-box market through authorized channels.
If Intel is gaining in the white box market (although the article doesn't amplify the "authorized channels" part) and the big OEMs are backing off from AMD, where are all the Athlons going? Some Black Hole? What color is Jerry's limo?
Unfortunately, I think the Sept. 11 events really triggered a lot of procurement from the government agencies. I think they were refurbishing and putting the things in place they need to track all the things they have to track, like hijackers. There's been a huge surge in that type of thing.
9/11 effect like a lot of us speculated?
Wireless is big. Even Steve Raymund, [chairman and CEO of] Tech Data, was on the news the other day and said wireless will be big next year. Intel thinks wireless is going to be very big for us: wireless products, access points, networking cards, as well as the silicon that goes into the wireless solution. We've made some acquisitions, which are bearing fruit now, so we're kind of excited about wireless.
Intel should have a definite advantage in anything wireless.
I think what's happened is that SMB and corporate are coming in and buying the mainstream boxes again. The 1-U and 2-U are very big. Clustering seems like something everybody's interested in. One gig over copper has gotten to a price point that's very practical, and it increases the bandwidth of the server.
Servers making a comeback. Gigabit ethernet chips and NICs...Intel can sell those also.
The systems builder channel market is 40 percent of Intel. That makes them our largest customer. When you're our largest customer, you're considered our most important customer.
Bigger than Dell and Compaq combined?
crn.com
Tony |
