Intel reveals its four thrust areas for this year

GOLD COAST, AUSTRALIA: Talking about its plans to drive demand in a sluggish APAC market Intel outlined its four key customer verticals that it hopes will generate better business opportunities this year—consumer, business PC market, servers and government.

Elaborating on these, Navin Shenoy, VP—Sales and Marketing and GM of Intel Asia Pacific talked about channel partners taking part in the government economic stimulus programs across the region. “Worldwide, governments have announced $2-3 trillion stimulus packages and they realize that a good percentage of this needs to be oriented towards IT. This creates tremendous opportunity for the entire industry in APAC,” he said.

In India Intel is in close conversation with the government about the local stimulus packages as well, and Shenoy cited the example of the Flood IT program announced by the Gujarat government. Interestingly, this program invited the local channel’s ire because the government decided to buy from the OEMs direct, bypassing the partners. So how will Intel ensure that it keeps it channel’s interest in mind when it discusses rollout of IT project with the bureaucrats?

Answering this, Shenoy stated that the decision to buy from the channel or from vendors rests entirely with the government. “There are trade-offs to these IT project rollouts. However, it’s our job to ensure that our partners are ready to participate in these programs whenever needed. We can merely plan the role of orchestrator in this situation,” he added.

There is no doubt that most governments have realized that the economic benefit of buying products locally is high as it creates new job opportunities. According to a survey, for every $100 spent locally, $48 stays within the country, which means that it will give the much needed fillip to the economy.

The second market that Intel is focusing on this year is that of consumer computers. It believes that customers now need lighter, ultra-thin products which consume lower power at mainstream prices. “Today such products are available but they are executive jewelery as their price ranges from $699 to 899. We will continue to launch products like Johnstown and Misty Lake which will drive down the product prices and improve customer experience,” added Shenoy.

This aside Intel is trying to entice the corporate customers to shift towards netbooks. Most organizations have desktops which are three years old and Intel estimates that the maintenance cost of these machines increases drastically every year. “This means that it costs more to maintain a three year product than acquiring a new product. This is how we are telling customers that they need to refresh their products to avoid these maintenance costs,” Shenoy added. He also estimated that Steve Dallman, VP—Sales and Marketing Group and GM of Worldwide Reseller Channel Organization, Intel too agreed that customers overall now had a very compelling reason to transition from their old machines, which signals good business opportunities for the channel in turn.

“37 percent of today’s notebooks and 60 percent of laptops are over three years old. We are telling our partners to educate their customers on how they can get better RoI by investing in new systems, with minimal or no maintenance costs,” he pointed out.

Partners servicing these machines too end up deploying more resources to service these machines, which is a business expense they can avoid. This is also probably why most desktop vendors offer only three-year warranty.

The last thrust area for Intel is the server business, where the company is launching server certification programs to increase the channel’s confidence and improve their credibility when they offer their server platforms to enterprise customers.