Intel Corp has a specific vision for the future with regard to business computing. This revolves around the concept of just-in-time business, the idea being that time is of the essence for businesses that want to stay competitive in the global village of today. Certainly, senior vice-president David House’s feeling is that there are now only two types of business, the quick and the dead. And according to him, the industry is no longer looking at increasing individual productivity as was the goal of the 1980s. Rather it is aiming to make companies as a whole more productive, the buzz-word being computer-supported co-operation. His dream for the future is electronic information access, whether the medium be paper, video, transparencies or whatever. He wants to see an integrated messaging system, which can prioritise messages from all sources including facsimile machines, electronic mail, the telephone or even hand-written notes. And finally, his aim is to reduce the time wasted on travelling to those business-critical meetings, wherever they may be, by means of real-time video conferencing via, of course, one’s own personal computer. To achieve all this, the Santa Clara, California company has been concentrating its activities on several areas of technology as the way ahead, primarily hook-in networking products and servers, portable computers using the 80386 and 80486, interactive video (CI No 1,788), and upgrade processors, such as Overdrive (CI No 1,928). To David House, realisation of his vision is not too far away: he expects the dream to become a reality sometime in the next 12 months.
