Intel To Partners: Help Us Harvest Opportunities To Drive Product Revenue

Speaking from the stage during the Intel Solutions Summit, Intel Vice President and Americas General Manager C.J. Bruno asked partners to find new, innovative ways to reach customers and drive growth with the company's client technologies and data center solutions.

While Intel showed off an eclectic array of new technologies in the client computing, data center and Internet-of-Things spaces at its partner conference in Dallas this week, Bruno stressed that the company relies on its Intel Technology Providers to deploy those products in the enterprise landscape.

"We're excited about the innovation that we together have to deliver to your customers," he said. "I want you to lean in on 2-in-1s, all-In-ones, small form factor desktops, enthusiast desktops, all the client technologies ... I want you to use those innovative technologies to refresh. I need you to help us continue to take on tablets in 2015, while together we work on making sure we harvest this unprecented data center opportunity."

[Related: Intel To Partners: Let's Embark On A PC Client-Device- Refresh Crusade]

Partners in the North America market, for their part, have found widespread success in equipping Intel technologies with niche-specific accessories and pushing them in vertical markets.

Martin Smekal, president and CEO of Torrance, Calif.-based TabletKiosk, for example, utilizes a wide array of Intel technology, such as CPUs, solid-state drives (SSDs), wireless radios and other subsystem chipsets.

"We work closely with Intel in regards to their reference designs," he stressed. "We look at Intel as helping us be an innovator, helping us create things. With the RealSense cameras, they've done an incredible job bringing that to the lab, but they're not commoditizing it and making it to an end product. That's really left to the channel partners and bringing it to our solutions."

TabletKiosk deploys those technologies in tablets bundled with specific features, such as keyboards and appendages for niche vertical markets, including health care, point of sale and casino gaming.

For example, the company provides Sahara NetSlate all-in-one tablets to casinos, where they are utilized as touch-screen controllers to run gaming-table-management systems.

Intel provides the performance and visual enhancements to those tablets with its Intel Atom, Celeron or Core i7 processors.

Smekal takes those products and adds on proprietary accessories to make them attractive to casino purchasers, such as a magstripe reader module, bar-code-scanner module and docking stations.

Another company attracting customers through unique solutions is CTL, based in Portland, Ore., which taps into the education vertical to bring Intel's Celeron N2930 processor to schools.

The company deployed Intel's technology to create the CTL NL6 education Chromebook, a rugged, durable product with student-friendly features like built-in Google apps, a rotatable camera and a retractable handle. This specific Chromebook is also drop- and spill-resistant for students who lug their devices around the classroom and cafeteria.

"We have a full suite of products from tablets to heavy Chrome to all ranges of desktops, custom-configured stuff, and the server space as well. Intel's a part of all these solutions," said Erik Stromquist, COO of CTL.

Intel is trying to further enable its 25,000 Intel Technology Providers (ITPs) to push out these niche-specific features through enhancing its efforts to draw partners into vertical markets.

The company recently launched specialty designations last month for the education and the Internet-of-Things retail vertical markets. Those vertical designations provide Intel technology providers with new incentives and technical support to grow sales in highly complex vertical markets.

Intel also launched its Market Smart initiative to equip partners with content and training tools to grow their customer bases in vertical markets.

PUBLISHED MAY 8, 2015