Intel Restructured Into Five Platform-Level Groups

Among the noteworthy pieces of Intel's reorganization, announced last Monday, was the creation of a Channel Products Group headed by Intel Vice President William Siu. The group will combine resources at the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company to help its channels build and deliver products to customers based on market-by-market needs.

Siu, in an interview with CRN, said he was not yet ready to outline specific steps he will take that will affect the North American channel. However, he is evaluating operations with an eye toward leveraging all of Intel's technologies to help system builders add more value with forthcoming technologies such as dual-core processing and virtualization.

"We have a lot of technology, and my agenda is to create the value around those technologies and those platforms, and with that create new market opportunities for us and our partners," he said. "We have to look beyond the traditional play of the white box and just cost, cost, cost as an issue.

"We are going to increase the focus, increase the commitment, and make it a strong thrust," said Siu, speaking of Intel's increased focus on the channel. "We want to take it up a notch."

Steve Dallman, Intel's director of distribution and channel sales and marketing, will continue to report to Sophia Chew, vice president of sales and marketing and general manager of the channel group, and to Tom Kilroy, president of Intel America. Chew now reports to Siu and Anand Chandrasekher, director of the sales and marketing group.

The company is now structured as five business units: the Mobility Group, the Digital Enterprise Group, the Digital Home Group, the Digital Health Group and the Channel Products Group. The purpose of the reorganization is to provide the full breadth of Intel's resources to each strategic line of operations, Dallman said. As an example, each group now gets access to its own chipset engineering resources, whereas before they might have had to share them.

Several Intel channel partners said the reorganization prompted new concerns over Intel's ability to protect their margins on systems, but they did not see the new Channel Products Group as a vehicle to immediately change that.

"I think, right now, it's going to be a marginal difference unless I see otherwise," said John Samborski, vice president of Ace Computers, Arlington Heights, Ill.