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SAN FRANCISCO– Intel CEO Paul Otellini demonstrated social networking tools his programmers are working on to help the chipmaker’s 86,000 employees in 120 companies around the world connect.
Otellini, showing his wares at Web 2.0 Summit here Nov. 6 before joining event co-host John Battelle on the couch for a conversation, also offered an intriguing demo of a handheld device loaded with translation software.
Otellini said social networking tools can be applied in enterprise but haven’t been to date. IBM, Microsoft, Cisco and others in a long tail of collaboration software providers would beg to differ.
“That’s an opportunity for you, but it’s a need for me running a large company on a global basis,” Otellini said, noting that with 86,000 employees scattered around 120 companies around the world, social networking tools are important.
He then demonstrated the enterprise collaboration tools, using the scenario of a new hire named Lily, who works in marketing for Intel in China. He showed tools that let her network with her new colleagues and participate in e-learning work. Lily leverages e-mail, instant messaging, team workspaces, voice and video from one portal.
Otellini stressed that these tools don’t yet exist either at Intel or anywhere else. He may or may not have seen the work Pfizer, IBM or Sun Microsystems have done in connecting their thousands of employees via professional networks that embody all the best social software elements of Facebook and LinkedIn, as well as communications tools.
Indeed, eWEEK has seen dozens of similar products and experimental features, and the demonstration mirrored technologies we’ve already seen from IBM, Sun, Cisco and even businesses that aren’t technology based, such as Pfizer.
Otellini Discusses Social Networking and Mobile Devices
Yet, the fact that he led his presentation with enterprise collaboration highlights the importance of such technologies. It’s important for market bellwethers to set precedents for businesses in the long tail who can find themselves believing that since big companies are doing it, they might entertain the notion, too. Otellini added:
“There’s an interesting thing about businesses and software; they pay for it. If you’re looking for a business model that might be interesting, finding a way to capture the needs of enterprises…is a pretty good way to make a living, he said, pointing to Microsoft and Oracle.“
Such comments are why companies such as Socialtext, Yammer, DimDim and the hundreds of other collaboration software providers were created in the last one to six years. Indeed, Battelle later commented that it looked like a mashup of LinkedIn, Facebook and Socialtext, among other things.
Does that mean Intel is going to start selling enterprise software? It’s doubtful, but it shows the company is embracing Web 2.0 guru Tim O’Reilly’s mantra of the network being the platform.
Otellini then turned the conversation to a demonstration of a mobile device that an Intel employee used on stage to translate street signs and restaurant menus written in Mandarin into English. The device also translated a voice request from English speech into Mandarin. Was it a prototype built by Intel? He did not say who built the device.
Asked later by an audience member how soon such devices will be available, Otellini predicted three to four years.
He also he said that in 2009 Intel will deliver mobile chipsets that will be as powerful as the chipsets in Intel Centrino laptops from a couple years ago. By 2011, Intel plans to roll out chips for mobile devices that are as powerful as today’s mainstream desktops.
Intel is sitting pretty compared to its chief foe AMD, which just let 500 employees go. The No. 1 chipmaker is planning to launch the first of its chips based on the new Nehalem microarchitecture Nov. 17 here in San Francisco.