Q&A: Intel's Arun Shenoy talks Santa Rosa

Intel today officially launched the next generation of its Centrino mobile platform, formerly code named Santa Rosa. IT PRO spoke to Arun Sheroy, director of Digital Enterprise for Intel in the UK to find out what this news means for business users.

By Maggie Holland, 9 May 2007 at 14:53

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All eyes were on Intel today as it officially unveiled its latest Centrino platform for mobile computing amid great fanfare.

IT PRO was lucky enough to get some 1:1 time with Arun Shenoy, the man charged with looking after Intel's key customer and partner relationships in the UK. He's been with the chip giant since 1994 so has witnessed the company undergo many changes and been involved in numerous launches.

We wanted to know why this launch is such a big deal for Intel, the industry and IT managers and cut through the hype to get to the answers about what it all really means.

If you had to summarise the announcement in five words or less what would you say?

Management. Security. Management. Security. Leadership.

Building on those words, can you provide a general overview what Intel has been talking about today?

If you go back four years to 2003 to when we launched the first evolution of Centrino technology, we talked about four vectors for the first time, which were performance, wireless, battery life and new form factors.

We have spent the last four years building on those vectors. We've dramatically increased performance, extended the wireless capabilities with Draft N so that wireless connectivity is five times the bandwidth provided by the old standards, battery life is significantly better than previous platforms and we've added lots of new form factors.

On one level we have made significant progress innovating on what was already a very strong platform. But what is very exciting today for IT managers is that we have brought the security and manageability capabilities announced last year with vPro into mobile platforms as well as delivering on the previous four vectors.

There's been a lot of talk about what you've been doing in this area for some time and many have been waiting for today's news with baited breath, but how big an announcement is this for Intel?

It's the biggest announcement we will have in business this year. It's on the same kind of level announcement-wise to vPro last year.

From a business standpoint it's the biggest new platform we'll be announcing this year and the vast majority of our marketing money in the second half of this year will be spent on positioning the platform and informing end IT users that these capabilities exist.

How big an announcement is this for the industry?

Obviously I'd say very big but let me expand on that a little bit. Just looking at Centrino Pro on the basis of improving on the four vectors we talked about before we launched in 2003 and I don't think it's a very strong industry message. But the fact that we're bringing manageability and security to the client estate that didn't exist before is very big news for the industry and as such we expect to see a big ramp up in mobile shipments this year.

In 2003, for example UK mobile shipments were 20 per cent and at the end of 2006 they were up to almost 46 per cent. We expect them to go beyond 50 per cent this year. The single biggest reason for that is the confidence that IT managers can take away from this platform in terms of manageability and security. And, as more and more people work remotely, they can also extend the reach of their enterprise infrastructure out to those workers.