"We want to be the building block of Net economy"

Brian C. Forbes is the Marketing Director for Intel's CISD Customer Division. He is responsible for the Marketing efforts surrounding Intel's rack mounted servers and appliance business. Intel has recently launched its NetStructure range of networking products that will help making Internet experience better. Brain talked to CIOL Bureau about these products and Intel's strategies. Excerpts:

Intel's vision is to be the building block of Internet economy. That involves lot more than just hardware. For this we had to change our strategy. Apart from manufacturing chips, motherboards, and other hardware that surrounds computing we have to see what's required in an Internet economy. What we need is something more than hardware. Networking is integral to an Internet Economy. Therefore, networking and communications form an important part of our strategy and we are quite excited about this.

What is your strategy for the networking business?

We are coming up with the bigger and better products, especially the ones at the server side. Our NetStructure range of products aims at making networks smarter and more efficient. These products are aimed at making your network more internet-centric. For our networking and communications business we have made a number of acquisitions. In June 1999 we acquired Dialogic, a telecommunications company to gain expertise in the telecommunications market. You can expect more acquisitions in future too.

What is your distribution strategy for networking products?

We will be having our channel partners. These channel partners will constitute our distribution network. We will be training our partners for networking equipment.

Will these partners be like GIDs (Genuine Intel Dealers)?

They would be on the same lines but not necessarily the same people. Though we would like our GIDs to be upgraded to our networking channel partners, we will also be having new partners for this business.

What type of products have you introduced?

We have introduced communication and Internet servers and system management products. Our servers are targeted at ISPs (Internet Service Providers), ASPs (Application Service Providers), and e-commerce-enabled sites. Our NetStructure range of products contains caching appliance, e-commerce accelerators, traffic directors, management and server adapters.

How does caching appliance help enhance Internet experience?

According to an IDC survey, the number of URLs on the Web is expected to go up to eight billion from the present two billion (approximately). Similarly, the number of Web users is predicted to be more than 300 million by 2002. This will have considerable impact on the surfing experience. With caching server in place, frequently accessed content does not have to be repeatedly accessed from the origin server. The requested document may be stored in the your corporate LAN, at your ISP or at some other Network Access Point (NAP) or Point of Presence (POP). The server can be configured to make sure that the content is fresh. This reduces the content retrieval time at user end.

What benefit do these caching equipment offer to ISPs and enterprises implementing them at their networks?

Cache reduces Internet bandwidth usage by eliminating redundant requests for popular content. If a cache is the amount outbound bandwidth required can be reduced by 30-40 per cent. This will translate into a significant cost saving to a service provider. Also, caching ensures a higher level of customer satisfaction. Content providers benefit from higher site availability and a better user experience with fewer and shorter delays. By providing a local cache for web content enterprises can monitor the bandwidth requirement to satisfy the employees' needs.

Can your products be integrated with the products from other companies too?

Our products can be used with Intel products as well as the ones from other companies too. These products are aimed at making networks better and more secure.

How much revenue do you expect from networking business?

By the end of this year we expect the revenue to touch $1 billion from our networking business. We expect the revenue from networking products to constitute half the Intel's revenue in future.

Who are your competitors in the networking area?

Our main competitors in the area of networking are 3Com, Lucent, and Cisco. Though these are networking majors and Intel definitely faces competition from them, they don't have the products that can compete with our NetStructure range of products.

Intel recently announced that its products will have support for Linux. Does it apply to these networking products too?

Yes, definitely. We try to make our products suitable for as wide a range of platforms as possible.