Intel Corp, the World’s largest semiconductor manufacturer has trialed plans to become an e-commerce application service provider offering software for rent round the clock from centrally-controlled server farms. Intel is expected to give details of the service next week.
Intel chairman, Andy Grove trumpeted the service as computing power a bit at a time, in a speech to the Confederation of British Industry, a prominent lobby group for UK businesses. It will be initially targeted at small and medium-sized companies without the spending power to buy in-house data centers to underpin e-business operations. Intel is moving to seize business in an ASP market expected to grow to $2bn in net worth by 2003 according to latest research from market watcher, International Data Corp. The chip giant estimates that at the moment only 4% of the serves required by 2005, as firms adopt internet technologies and e-commerce, have been deployed.
Grove said the information stored on the machines would change from the relatively mundane and no mission critical to the actual life and blood of commercial order processing, inventory control and the like. With data integrity at a premium, Intel says its servers will offer state of the art controls and encryption plus sophisticated data management and 24/7 availability. á
