Intel's Centrino Duo Could Boost Custom Systems, Managed Services

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System builders take heed: Intel's latest generation of the Centrino mobile architecture includes several developments designed with the custom-systems integration channel in mind.

The technologies include an interface that lets solution providers optimize the way a whitebook uses the new optional Intel Turbo Memory feature and the release of the first two Intel-branded mobile motherboards. The latter are slated to ship first in June as part of a 15.4-inch configurable barebones notebook through Mitac and other local aggregators, according to Intel.

And system builders could expect to see units shipped to them in the same time frame as tier-one vendors.

"This is a positive move for the channel in terms of whitebooks and custom systems," said Joe Toste, vice president of Equus Computer Systems, a Minneapolis-based system builder. With the new platform, Intel is slashing the time-to-channel of its systems, putting system builders on a more level-playing field with larger OEMs, he said.

"The channel now will have a time-to-market product," Toste said. "In the past, when previous platforms came out, like Napa or Centrino, the channel didn't have a whitebook for six months."

With the Santa Rosa platform, Toste said, he believes his company will have an offering within weeks. "This is allowing the whitebook provider to say, 'Look, we have this too,' " he said.

The new platform also provides Intel's management technology in a mobile solution, a feature that could boost managed service solutions into enterprises that are migrating to notebook solutions.

Michael Waterman, vice president of LAM Systems, a Mechanicsburg, Pa.-based system builder and solution provider, said the addition of the Centrino Duo platform to his lineup will enable his company to offer a greater depth of managed services for mobile systems.

"We are seeing that transition to mobile at this point and are now seeing an opportunity with vPro [on the desktop] to bring managed services into the channel," Waterman said. "The key for us is to be able to tell a story in both directions."

Centrino Duo's inclusion of Intel's hardware-based management technology, AMT, on the mobile platform brings the managed services conversation to mobile solutions, he said.

In some areas, as with LAM Systems' customers in the K-12 education segment, where a limited number of systems are transitioning to notebooks, that will help in presenting a business case to schools.

"We've got to be able to talk about managed services or helping our education accounts be able to manage their own systems when it's cheaper and easier for them to do that," Waterman said.

Bill Davidson, mobile marketing manager at Intel, with responsibility for supporting Intel channel partners, said he believes whitebook designs based on the new Centrino Duo and Centrino Pro platforms will ship within the next 30 days. Compal Electronics of Taiwan is expected to be the first to market through distribution with a barebones kit that also includes optical and hard disk drives, memory and an operating system, he said.

That means solution providers should be able to get Centrino Duo notebooks into customers' hands at roughly the same time as the multinational OEMs, which sell many of the household brands.

"Resellers will be closer to the time-to-market than they were with Centrino," Davidson said.

That doesn't mean the current generation of Centrino will disappear immediately. Davidson said both architectures should be available from ODMs into early 2008.

The two latest additions, Intel Centrino Duo and Intel Centrino Pro, both are based on a next-generation Intel Core 2 Duo processor, the Mobile Intel 965 Express chipset, the Intel Next-Gen Wireless-N Network Connection, and the Intel 82566MM and 82566MC Gigabit Network Connection. The main difference between the two architectures is the management and security features in Centrino Pro, which are akin to the feature set supported in vPro at the desktop level.

Next: How the new Centrino platforms will appeal to VARs

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