Intel Flexes Data Center Solutions Muscle As AMD Heats Up
The semiconductor giant says its Intel Select Solutions program is a major competitive differentiator in the data center market that saves partners a significant amount of time in configuring and optimizing servers for workloads ranging from hybrid cloud to AI.
by Dylan Martin
Intel said it's gaining traction with its program for verifying and optimizing data center solutions for various workloads that can help partners save a significant amount of time and close server deals faster.
The Santa Clara, Calif.-based chipmaker highlighted the progress and benefits of its nearly four-year-old Intel Select Solutions program in an interview with CRN as it faces steeper competition from its x86 CPU rival, AMD, and plans to launch its next generation of Xeon Scalable processors, code-named Ice Lake.
Intel Select Solutions was formed in 2017 to make it easier for the company's partners to build and sell solutions optimized around its portfolio of data center products, which includes Xeon processors, Optane Persistent Memory modules, solid state drives and Ethernet components.
Partners, including OEMs, system integrators and solution providers, can work with Intel to create and validate reference architectures — server recipes, essentially — for a variety of workloads, from hyperconverged infrastructure to SAP HANA. Such solutions are then marketed by Intel through its website and several other avenues, including videos and events.
…
One channel partner that has gotten behind Intel Select Solutions is St. Louis, Mo.-based World Wide Technology, No. 9 on CRN's 2020 Solution Provider 500 list, which has set up several solutions from the program in its Advanced Technology Center. The company has worked with customers on Intel Select Solutions involving Cisco HyperFlex, Google Cloud Anthos and Microsoft SQL Server, among others.
