Regaining A Technology Edge
For Intel's channel partners, the chip giant's technology edge proved difficult to resist. Factor in a solid management team, regular bursts of innovation, stellar partner support and plain, old-fashioned listening to the customer, and it's no wonder Intel swept the Client or Server Processors product category in this year's VARBusiness Annual Report Card survey.
Intel earned an overall 78, solidly trumping both competitors in the category, AMD, with a 74, and Sun Microsystems, with a 61. The vendor swept all subcategories with its strongest showing in support, where its subcategory average score was a 78, a full 8 points above its closest rival, AMD, with a 70.
In quality and reliability, solution providers gave Intel a stellar score of 87, the highest score given to any vendor in that criterion, shared only by one other vendor in this year's entire study, IBM, in the server product category.
Randall Copeland, CEO of Richmond, Va.-based custom system maker Velocity Micro, singled out Intel's top executives for praise. "Intel is a fantastic partner. After a couple of years of kind of falling behind, they really fought their way back. [CEO] Paul Otellini and [chief sales and marketing officer] Sean Maloney especially are brilliant guys, who know what the customer and partner needs," he said.
Intel's ability to find another gear after losing market share to AMD was something to behold, said Dominic Daninger, vice president of engineering at Reason, a Burnsville, Minn.-based subsidiary of Nor-Tech, specializing in high-performance computing (HPC).
"Clearly they had been suffering due to not having much of a footprint in HPC, not having a dual-core, and they wanted to do something to change that. Well, they did it and more," Daninger said.
"They've been very strong in support for us, in particular in this HPC area. Once they got a product that competed in that area, they've been unbelievably helpful, with parts, support, linkage to other motherboard manufacturers, marketing funds, etc.," he said.
Copeland echoed the praise for Intel's partner support, saying Intel's commitment to customer needs has made all the difference for Velocity Micro. "Everybody I work with at Intel is fighting to help me win every day. AMD has that as well, but the difference is that Intel has a product for every need and all the people on the street making this happen," he said.
But if Intel is riding high right now, the competition is heating up, warned Copeland and Daninger. Both said their companies are taking long looks at AMD's new quad-core processor family. AMD's quad-core server chip, code-named Barcelona, was launched Sept. 10, while the vendor's quad-core desktop product, Phenom, is due out by the end of the year.
"Being so far ahead in the quad-core market gave Intel a huge edge this past year. And from a channel perspective, I expect that very soon we will only be selling quad-core processors at Velocity Micro," Copeland said.
"We've been as high as 80 percent AMD, and then when Core 2 Duo came along, it went to 90-to-10 Intel, almost overnight," he said. "But when Phenom arrives, I expect we'll move to about 75-to-25 Intel."