• silicon.com
• Technology
• Hardware

By Tim Ferguson, 26 May 2009 17:15

COMMENT

...but we see a lot of interest. Blogging at Intel is pretty prominent – even our CEO Paul Otellini blogs occasionally - which is interesting. It's a way to discuss issues and send messages out and work through things. We do webjams on occasion in different parts of the company.

So things that you see on the consumer side, you look at it and go 'boy, there's business applicability there that we can take advantage of'.

Is this a result of Generation Y workers coming into the company?
I think without a doubt the millennials and Gen Ys are much more comfortable with social networking as an example. But I think on the other hand, we're a technology company and we have a lot of people that love technology. We get interest from all the different groups but I do think that there's a higher degree of comfort especially from the Gen Ys that are part of our mix.

What we try to do is listen to them and go experiment and what it does is it leads to an environment that really supports collaboration. We've got people talking to each other, interacting, sharing ideas and issues and it gives us the ability I think to get our work done a little bit better.

In my conversations with other CIOs...there are IT shops trying to be efficient – consolidate datacentres, reduce capital spending where you can - but I think IT can also play a role in helping the business side to be more efficient by good use of technology.

There're kind of two perspectives: there's how can the IT group be more efficient in itself but [also] how can the IT group also help the business be more efficient - and it's typically the application of technology.

What challenges are you facing as CIO?
Right now I think the challenge is to make sure that we execute on the programmes that we've got. We've got to deliver on our core programmes to our schedules. If you were an employee asking me that question in IT I'd say well, first of all we've got to make sure we keep Intel running and that's absolutely fundamental. So every CIO, IT organisation [is] really the central nervous system of the company. You've got to keep that company running. So you've got to really pay attention to your operating infrastructure, make sure it's up to date on its information security protocols and all those things and keep that environment running.

And secondly we make investments, we drive programmes, that are intended to drive business value with the businesses and we've got to make sure that we execute on those programmes and the business groups get that business value so that as we go through this economic cycle, we come out of it stronger.

What role does the IT department play in the development of Intel technologies?
We really like to work with our product side and help in ways that we can. We participate in the design activities, the early design phases – we will actually sit down and participate in those kinds of discussions. But we also like to participate in the early prototyping and application applicability on the business side.

I think we've got something like 200 WiMax activities under way in IT with the business as an example. We've done a lot of lab testing [with WiMax] but also application testing in different places around the world. We're actually using WiMax in a number of places to support connectivity between facilities or between employees in their work area.

I [also] think a whole new world has opened up [with mobile devices] in terms of what IT can do to help to support the business - the traditional things like your email access or getting internet access and all that stuff. I've seen IT shops that actually have application groups focused specifically on handheld mobile device applications that allow or create ERP connectivity and other applications into the handheld. And we've done some of this - where we've got a technician that needs a bit of information as they work on one of our factory machines can pull it up on a handheld. That means they don't have to get out of their bunny suit and go find it, they can just do right there while they're working on the machine.

What do you think is the most exciting emerging technology?
Wireless is magical - it really is. Taking our business hats off for a minute, if we think about what you can do today versus what you could do five or ten years ago, we're still kind of sort of scratching the surface with what we can do with wireless technology. And when I say scratching the surface, I really mean that – I think there's just so much more that could be done over time with mobile devices - managing your presence, getting information to you when you need it [and so on]. I actually think that in time, anything that has a computing engine in it will also have wireless connectivity built into it - it will be unusual for a device not to be connectable to the network. And just imagine everything you use or own being networkable – your car connecting into your home network, when you pull into the driveway perhaps, it gets an update from the manufacturer that downloads some music to it - all that stuff.