2007's Top Innovators

/**/ /**/

chip

Intel received a score of 82 in product innovation, well ahead of rival AMD, which finished in a three-way tie for second place along with Hewlett-Packard and Cisco, all of whom posted scores of 78. Xerox, IBM (System i) and Samsung finished in a three-way tie for the third spot with 77 scores.

Intel's Client and Server Processors victory came with the vendor receiving the highest scores in four of the six criteria that make up the

product innovation category: quality and reliability (Intel scored 87 compared with an average of 74); richness of product features/functionality (Intel scored 82 vs. an average of 71); technical innovation (Intel scored 85 vs. an average of 70); and, finally, marketability (Intel scored 82 vs. an average of 67).

Solution providers said Intel's impressive product blitz in the past year put the chip maker at the top of the product innovation pyramid. With a product onslaught that began with the Woodcrest Xeon 5100 dual-core chip and Core 2 Duo last summer and continued with the launch of the quad-core processor in November, Intel leapfrogged past AMD, solution providers said. Of course, AMD has just fired back with the release of Barcelona last month, calling it the industry's first native quad-core processor.

id
unit-1659132512259
type
Sponsored post

Joe Toste, vice president of marketing for systems builder giant Equus Computer Systems, Minneapolis, compares the contest between the two bitter rivals to a fight between boxing legends Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. "It's like an infinite boxing match," said Toste of the product innovation punches being thrown by the two vendors. "It gives the customers more choices and makes for a healthier channel ecosystem. It allows the channel to position itself against multinationals and allows new systems builders to enter the market."

Toste said Intel's product onslaught hit AMD hard. In late 2005, about 25 percent of the systems that Equus built went out with an AMD processor. That has shrunk to 7 percent in the last year, he said, leaving Intel holding a whopping 92 percent share of Equus' systems business. Dell's taking on the AMD line definitely impacted AMD's share, Toste said.

"AMD had everything going for it as 2006 started," Toste added. "Intel literally turned the tide in the second half of the year. The lion roared and came back, and we continued to see that in the first half of 2007. The AMD competition has made Intel a lot more empathetic and understanding toward their customers. Now it's up to AMD to battle back."

Intel is so highly regarded because of its outstanding product reliability, quality and world-class institutional support for the channel, with standard motherboards and advanced warranty replacement, Toste said, adding AMD has made gains in such areas, but Intel holds a decided advantage.

"What Intel has done over the last 10 years has made it a trusted and reliable partner," he said. "Intel is far, far ahead of everybody in terms of how they listen and support the channel. No one can touch them."

That said, Toste expects AMD's quad-core Barcelona product to have a big impact. He said that AMD could double its share of the Equus systems business to 14 percent by the end of 2008.

Intel is also taking it up a notch with a new innovative mobile motherboard program that could ultimately open the door to the same type of motherboard standardization that powered the astronomical desktop and server systems- builder business explosion, Toste said.

Right now, every notebook motherboard is tuned and integrated to a specific product. The standard motherboard being spearheaded by Intel could be used in different notebook chassis. "Within the next 12 to 18 months, we will be able to buy packs of Intel mobile motherboards and integrate them into various manufacturers' notebook PC shells. So instead of us going to the whitebook ODM and buying the whole thing, we can take the mobile motherboards and marry them to shells from different manufacturers, and give us more control," Toste said. That's a huge breakthrough, he said.

He praised Intel for its perseverance and continued investment to drive a healthy whitebook channel ecosystem. "The level of innovation Intel is providing for channel partners here is amazing," he said. "I am pretty surprised at how committed they are to this. I want to quadruple my notebook business. And I think it's possible over the next couple of years with Intel driving the notebook ecosystem like they did the desktop and server markets."

Next: Serving Up Innovation

/**/ /**/

Serving Up Innovation
As for innovation in the Mainstream Business Servers market, Hewlett-Packard was at the top of the pack. The computer giant received the highest overall score in the category for compatibility and ease of integration with an 82 score vs. an average of 71.

Sam Haffar, president and co-CEO of Computex, an HP partner in Houston, said HP's strong performance for innovation in the ARC awards is not surprising, given the vendor's long and cherished legacy as an engineering-oriented company. "HP is truly an engineering company," Haffar said. "They are innovators in every sense of the word. ... They bring that innovation to every aspect of their business from desktops to notebooks to servers. They just put out cool stuff."

Haffar compares HP's products to those from rivals like Dell and EMC in competitive bids, and HP comes out on top at least eight out of 10 times each and every time they do a side-by-side product comparison. "We compare side by side to Dell and EMC on the storage side and IBM on the server side, and it's an easy sale," he said. "Dell is not an innovator. They are a 'me too' product company. They are a clone-maker. They don't do any engineering. HP is way, way ahead of the competition. They also have a great PartnerOne channel program which rewards us. We are very tightly aligned with HP," Haffar said. As part of that tight alignment, Computex has invested more than $1.3 million in an HP Solutions Lab, which showcases the vendor's technology, including blade servers.

Haffar said the heavy investment has paid off. He expects his HP business alone to be up 80 percent this year to as much as $25 million. "It's incredible right now," he said. "We need more engineers and sales reps. I am fully booked until the end of the year."

Next: Network Infrastructure Leader

/**/ /**/

Network Infrastructure Leader
Cisco's top position in product innovation in Network Infrastructure is also paying off in big sales growth for its partners. Bob Olwig, vice president of business strategy for World Wide Technology, a St. Louis-based solution provider that won Cisco's U.S. and Canada Partner of the Year for 2007, said Cisco is the fastest-growing part of World Wide's business, which soared to $2.1 billion in 2006, up from $1.8 billion in 2005. That 2006 performance marked the 17th consecutive year of double-digit growth for World Wide. "We certainly see a strong return on investment in the form of new customers and broadening our presence with existing customers by providing business-relevant solutions," Olwig said.

Olwig credited Cisco CEO John Chambers for pushing the innovation envelope at Cisco. What's more, he said Cisco's tight relationship with the channel puts it closer to the customer so the vendor is able to identify, and then tap into, new opportunities, such as videoconferencing with its new TelePresence product. "Cisco values the channel, and that keeps them close to customers," he said. "They do a good job of developing the business-value proposition with resellers. They share the market data and billion-dollar bets they are making, and convince channel partners it's a worthy investment."

World Wide, for its part, has followed up its big bet on Cisco's core routing and switching to move into security, wireless and unified communications with Cisco. World Wide is also one of a handful of partners carrying Cisco's TelePresence videoconferencing product. "TelePresence is one of those applications that really allows customers to see the value of the network," Olwig said. TelePresence can be used as it is by Cisco itself to save literally millions of dollars in travel expenses and improve team collaboration. "They are definitely drinking their own champagne," he said.

World Wide is also leveraging Cisco's innovative Industry Solutions Partner Network, which encourages solution providers to team with ISVs and provides a virtual life platform in which they can meet and interact. World Wide, for example, is implementing Cisco wireless ISV AeroScout RFID solutions in health care.

As for the future, Olwig is confident Cisco will remain a product innovation leader. "I think they will continue to move toward more business-relevant applications beyond the core infrastructure," he said. "I see Cisco moving more in front of the end-user customer rather than just in the data center or the wiring closet."