Intel enterprise platforms and the missing code books

Tags: Intel, Microprocessors, IDF, Enterprise Platforms, Marketing

Today, we had two back-to-back keynotes. Pat Gelsinger, founder of IDF and the host for many many years, talked about enterprise platforms and Don MacDonald presented Intel's vision and products for the Digital Home. We'll take those one by one.

Pat Gelsinger used to be head of Intel Laboratories and Research. Now he's in charge of Enterprise Platforms. Let's face it, enterprise platforms aren't as sexy as the latest cool research project, but they do make a lot of money for Intel. And Pat did show off some interesting announcements, including ones around virtualization, automated management, VOIP, and high density servers. And yes, they even showed Itanium 2 systems running. My takeaways for the interesting bits of Pat's speech were:

• Intel's virtualization technology makes automated PC image loading and management possible


• Intel and Cisco are aligning their strategies for protecting corporate networks and PCs against viruses and intrusions


• Intel and Skype are joining up to offer business audio voice over Internet (VOIP)


• Intel has some new low-power processor designs to aid datacenters and high-density server environments.


• Despite rumors of its demise, Itanium 2 is being deployed and being used in real world applications.
  

We do have one recommendation for Intel though: they need to provide code books for these speeches. Every speech referred to a minimum of six or eight code names, and even veteran analysts were getting confused. Hiding behind code names doesn't promote audience understanding, and if the information is being made public, then the code names have outlived their usefulness.