For a leading high-tech company, Intel Corp. can be a very bureaucratic company that often hauls out the rule book rather than works with partners, according to the head of one Canadian distributor.
But the company’s new director of North American channel sales and marketing insists that description doesn’t fit him.
“That’s one of my hot buttons. I’m not very bureaucratic,” Nick Davison said in an interview this week at the annual Intel Solutions Summit (ISS) in San Diego.
“We need to listen to our customers and respond pretty quickly, and hold to our commitments. I hope that next time you talk to that distributor he’ll have a different opinion.”
Davison, an Intel engineer and marketing executive who joined the company in 1979, was elevated to his new post in January from his previous position as director of retail sales, in which he dealt with the largest store chains in North America. In his new post he deals with all Intel channel outlets.
Among his priorities in the new position is to make it easier for partners to go to market with Intel products by providing product samples, improving technical support and simplifying marketing program terms and conditions.
That’s why he was pleased with reaction of premier system builders at the conference to upcoming changes in the Intel Inside Track 2 program, which make it easier for partners to spend accrued marketing dollars in the way they want. The existing program, which finishes at the end of April, restricted how and where those dollars could be spent.
The new program will offer changes such as online templates for print ads and brochures that let partners tailor messages in their own way rather than limited to Intel’s restrictions.
Davison said he will also listen closely to resellers and work with industry partners to help them deploy solutions.
One of the programs he wants system builders to take more advantage of is building PCs around Intel’s vPro architecture, a platform of CPUs and motherboards with dedicated chipsets that let partners remotely manage desktops, even if they’re turned off.
Introduced last year, Intel sees vPro systems (also called Active Management Technology) as a way to differentiate themselves from AMD PCs, as well as a way for partners to get into managed services.
The ISS conference features several sessions dedicated to encouraging partners here to get into remote desktop services.
Connected to a managed service offering from companies such as Microsoft, CA and LanDesk or N-Able, vPro systems can let IT administrators probe why a PC has failed and take steps to revive it.
One of Intel’s motherboards includes a Trusted Platform Module letting a user created an encrypted hard drive, which could appeal to government and medical markets.
“Everyone I’ve talked to this week wants to get into managed services,” said Davison. “They view that as an important profit stream and a way to get closer to customers and solve more of their business problems. So (vPro) is an important vehicle to help them do that . . . It’s very important for our (reseller) customers to go upstream.”
Earlier this month Intel launched a partner program specifically for VARs providing managed services, offering specific business, sales and marketing training.
He also wants to see more system builders join the year-old Verified By Intel laptop-building program, which some executives here acknowledge has been a slow starter. A number of Canadian partners told CDN it’s easier to sell low-priced brand-name laptops than build white books.
“I’m probably not as negative as some of our executives (on VBI),” said Davison.
“If you look at how long it took to build out the common building block for business and desktop (PCs), it took years. If you look how long we’ve been doing in notebooks, it’s a relatively short time. During that time we’ve made some good progress, most notably in more SKUs, more form factors.”When Intel launches the Santa Rosa Core 2 Duo mobile CPU in May there will be more VBI chassis options, he added.
The company is expected to announce shortly a new North American purchasing aggregator to help push parts prices lower.
Although he’s only been in his new job for a short time, Davison said his years of experience with the company has let him see differences between the Canadian and U.S. markets.
For example, he’s noticed that governments have a different buying season here, which requires Intel to stage products to distribution at different times. There’s much less online retail in here than in the U.S. as well.
He’s also noticed that major retail chains here are six months behind in terms of the Intel-based products they order. “I’d like to see them move a bit faster,” he said.