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Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (100249)	3/4/2000 7:05:00 PM
From: Tony Viola	Respond to of 186894

Ten, Intel investors, an interview with Andy Grove on Intel's role shifting: aolpf.marketwatch.com Web Rules Exclusive Andy Grove sees Intel's role shifting Server farms and slimmed-down PCs to serve Net By Tom Murphy, infoUSA.com Last Update: 6:03 PM ET Mar 4, 2000 Internet Daily Net Stocks Editor's note: This is the first in a series of exclusive columns by author Tom Murphy previewing his book "Web Rules: How the Internet is Changing the Way Consumers Make Choices," which is due out next month. SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- Intel-style chips sort the data inside 95 percent of personal computers. But what will happen to Intel's market as more data is processed on networks and less on the desktop? In an interview last fall, Intel co-founder and Chairman Andy Grove discussed how the world's largest chipmaker (INTC: news, chart) is bracing for that transition through new initiatives like building vast processing centers to handle network traffic. Just a few years ago, the former Time Man-of-the-Year scoffed at the notion of network computing as it was being touted by Oracle's Larry Ellison (ORCL: news, chart) and Sun's Scott McNealy (SUNW: news, chart). Grove predicted then that consumers would always insist on handling personal finances and correspondence on a personal computer in their homes, guaranteeing a healthy and growing market for Intel's chips. He still sees a continuing role for slimmed-down PCs as network nodes, particularly as concerns grow about storing personal data on a public network (and we'll revisit that theme in a future column). But now Grove says "we're moving more and more to network computing, and that is where we should be moving." Points of access Grove sees three main areas of data processing in the future and says Intel will compete in all three. The first is in the "hundreds of millions of access points" to the Internet, devices he described as "PCs streamlined for their predominant use being Internet access." The second is in the area of communication control -- shaping and storing digital signals moving from computer to computer. The third is the transfer of data that most of us think of when we view business on the Internet -- serving Web pages, tracking transactions, mining data. "And our chips are used, or are aimed at being used, in all these areas," said Grove. In addition to the chips Intel already manufactures for servers, he said the company has "a major set of developments" geared toward developing network processors. Intel outside? "Our developments need to be shaped so that they are more responsive to the needs of Internet computing than they were some time ago," he said. And that could lead Intel to become a public utility for data processing. In essence, Intel would create centers filled with enough processing power to support tens of thousands of slimmed-down computers connected to the Internet. I asked Grove if these centers could be thought of as "server farms." "Yes, absolutely. I think that's actually a very good way of looking at it," said Grove. "We're figuring out exactly how we're going to brand them, but we're going to brand them as some sort of Intel service." But these server farms wouldn't merely process data. They'd also house many of the applications and data used by their customers, including businesses that don't want to fund an in-house information technology group. Says Grove: "Nobody knows what portion of the use is going to be bought as service as opposed to being bought as product, but we want to be neutral to the possible shapes in that development." Tom Murphy, author of "Web Rules" is Editor-in-Chief of infoUSA.com and former Managing Editor of CBS.MarketWatch.