Cloud will have huge impact on SME’s
August 7, 2011
Cloud computing, as everyone knows, has been the topic of the new decade thus far, and the proliferation of hand-held devices like
Excerpts:
It is said that the future of computing is datacentres. Can we say that Intel’s forays into cloud computing and management of datacentres are a sort of de-risking due to slowdown in PC shipments?
It is not true that PC shipments are slowing down. Our recent results show that PC business is up and growing. We had a record quarter and are likely to grow by 6- 8 % in through the year. PC shipment is a huge business for us. We are shipping a million PC CPUs a day. PC is one part of the business, but the huge explosion in devices is a huge opportunity for us. Cloud can have huge impact on small and medium enterprises and the consumers. This is a once in decade kind of change. Our vision is to provide building blocks across the whole spectrum. Part of the future is in datacentres. In Intel, we have the vision for cloud called the ‘compute continuum’.
Tell us something about PC shipments to India and China. Is it growing faster than the rest of the market?
PC shipments to India and China, the emerging markets are definitely higher than the rest of the world. Increase in shipments to China is approximately 20%, which is on the higher side when compared to the developed world. If you take Asia-Pacific and China, not counting Japan, 57% of Intel’s revenue comes from this part of the world. Emerging markets are huge growth drivers for PC, servers and notebooks.
Has the economic slowdown in US and Europe affected your sales?
Our server sales are quite strong. Our server business clocked $2 billion in the last quarter. In the datacentre business, we grew 15% in quarter-on-quarter. It grew almost 50% on a year-on-year basis. We are witnessing strong business in the back-end operations like the datacentre business in all markets. In the consumer
How big and important is cloud computing for Intel? What are your plans?
The cloud segment is up 50% in the first half of 2011, demonstrating how fast that business continues to ramp. We believe that we are very early in the cloud build-out and Intel remains extremely well positioned to profitably grow from the explosion of mobile devices and internet-based services.
By 2015, a billion more people are expected to be on the internet. There will be 15 billion end-points in the internet by 2015. The flow of data will be huge. For every 600 smartphones, you need a server, likewise for 122 new tablets, you need a server. The explosion of devices is going to drive the business but we can’t do things the way we have been doing so far. So we opted for the Open Data Centre Alliance (ODCA), which will work towards a ‘federated’, ‘automated’ and ‘client aware’ environment. We cannot scale the present model. We need to develop a federated cloud for service delivery, which means public and private cloud, which is inter-operable. Then the service must be automated so that you can dynamically allocate resources. Client aware, which means intelligence to know what is at the other end so that you can tailor experience according to the bandwidth.
If you change to cloud architecture you can drive greater efficiency. Better power efficiency, security and operational efficiency.
Are the emerging markets taking to the cloud model? Do you think internet speed will be a hindrance for India to adopt the cloud model?
You see huge investments in the emerging markets by the government. They are taking internet to schools, increasing the bandwidth, actually there is a big push in places like India, Vietnam and China. There are many operators who are investing in datacentres in the emerging markets. Internet speed is a big problem everywhere, including my home in the US. What matters is how fast we are investing in infrastructure to put people on the Net. We can change how we deliver services depending on the capability of the client device and the bandwidth. We need to tailor the experience according to the bandwidth.