Q&A: Graham Palmer, Intel UK MD

How big a focus is the cloud for Intel?

It has been a major and ongoing focus for a couple of years. We have our Cloud Builder infrastructure and architecture.

There's also the Open Datacentre Alliance, which is a much broader industry initiative, focused primarily at large consumers of cloud services and defining what they want.

Cloud computing as a term has become a panacea for every related to service delivered over the internet.

Cloud computing is a major focus for Intel and one we'll only grow going forward.

What else are you focusing on?

Within our core business, Ultrabooks will absolutely be the key focus and will introduce a new dynamic into the mobile working environment.

We'll see them appear for consumers in the run-up to Christmas. We'll then see that move into the business community through 2012. We're pretty bullish about our expectations of Ultrabooks.

Servers continue to be a massive asset for us and massive growth area. The interesting twist is people say that Intel is not in the smartphone or tablet market at the moment. But our analysis says that for every 120 tablets, it drives another server and for every 600 smartphones connected to the internet that's another server.

That's why we've seen such substantial growth in our server business in the last 12-18 months. It's driving massive investment.

Having said that, smartphones and tablets are a major focus for us and we're committed to bringing those devices through 2012 you'll absolutely see that happen.

Within advanced markets like the UK we are focusing on areas with embedded device types where computing power is built in. In emerging markets, there's a massive growth opportunity as the next billion people get connected to the internet.

There's still a huge amount of growth for us in both mature and emerging markets.

Maggie Holland

Maggie has been a journalist since 1999, starting her career as an editorial assistant on then-weekly magazine Computing, before working her way up to senior reporter level. In 2006, just weeks before ITPro was launched, Maggie joined Dennis Publishing as a reporter. Having worked her way up to editor of ITPro, she was appointed group editor of CloudPro and ITPro in April 2012. She became the editorial director and took responsibility for ChannelPro, in 2016.

Her areas of particular interest, aside from cloud, include management and C-level issues, the business value of technology, green and environmental issues and careers to name but a few.