Intel is making a concerted effort to get
traction among cloud customers -- an area where the company already
dominates, but is seeking to further entrench itself.
Intel on Wednesday announced a new initiative aimed at the cloud
space. The new
“Powered by Intel Cloud Technology” program purportedly
aims to improve customer experience and value as well as the company’s
cloud service capabilities.
In an emailed exchange, an Intel spokesman said it has partnered with
16 leading cloud service providers who have, when combined, in total
$3.5 billion of cloud revenue. Those partners plan to provide a service
that allows their customers to get a sense of the hardware behind their
Intel-based cloud technology. Intel spokesman explained that such a
brand visibility is important, just as drivers of a car want to know
what kind of engine runs inside of it.
Intel’s new program helps communicate differentiation, Intel claimed,
and it improves service performance -- although the company failed to
offer specifics. Intel promised it will also improve reliability and
security, thus assuring that customers get solid return on investment.
The program includes Intel’s integrated Cloud Finder online search
engine, which enables customers to find companies that provide cloud
services built on similar Intel technology.
Charles King, president and principal analyst at market research firm
Pund-IT, said in an interview with EE Times that Intel’s new program
came out of cooperation between Intel and Amazon. “You could call this
arose from a very successful experimental collaboration with Amazon,” he
said.
Building a window into the cloud
As for how this
program helps differentiate Intel from its competitors in the cloud
market, King indicated that there was little competition Intel needs to
differentiate itself from as it stands. “I’m not quite sure that there
are any competitors doing anything similar to this,” he said. “I think a
program like this is necessary because in highly virtualized x86 cloud
service environments there are choices that customers can make regarding
infrastructure components, the amount of memory, the kind of storage
components involved, etc. This program allows customers to figure out
what kind of service and what kind of components they need to sign up
for.”
Intel may, however, be looking to protect itself from new competition
emerging as a result of cloud companies running ARM-based servers.
King, however, dismissed that possibility, saying he is not high on ARM
servers. The fact remains that new companies are moving into the cloud
space and a fair amount of disruption is emerging from different areas
of the cloud and server markets.
There is a disadvantage to not having a certain level of transparency
of this kind, according to King. “On the down side, if businesses go
into cloud services without an exact idea of what kind of services they
need, they can run into some serious disappointment, which is really not
good for anybody,” he said. “Intel is in a literal sense attempting to
build a window into the cloud, which allows everyone to understand
what’s going on in a much clearer and more intelligent manner.”
As for how this will impact the future of cloud services, King said
that if the program works ideally, as Intel intends it to, it should
help cloud services be more predictable and more transparent in a way
that should benefit everyone involved. That includes the customers, he
said, but also the cloud service providers involved in the program as
well as Intel itself.
Intel explained that cloud service providers need to handle a variety of workloads their customers have.
For instance, customers may have simple web hosting but not know
exactly what’s inside. The variability of what the customer gets could
be up to 60%, Intel said. The cost of using the service may go up
compared to what a customer would have paid if better hardware was
available. This program is going to expose those features so that the
user is able to make more informed decisions.
Intel CPUs power 90 percent or more of the cloud today. Instead of
promoting sales of high-end CPUs, Intel said that the new program’s goal
is to expose the instances of high-end and lower-end hardware so that
people who buy it are aware of the technology they are going to use
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