Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said he wants to “quickly” establish the company’s business of selling software through SaaS products and software platforms – this measure will allow the electronic giant to more effectively oppose competitors. Intel made $100 million in software last year alone, and it’s not over yet.
During the February meeting with investors, the company, whose software ambitions are like NVIDIA, for the first time disclosed the amount of earnings in this area. Greg Lavender, head of the new software division, told shareholders that the software is a “great opportunity” and could bring in as much as $150 million this year. $70 billion, most of which is silicon. But keep in mind that current Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger was previously the head of VMware, and his reign came at a time when virtualization technology was booming.
Intel software products permeate all areas of the company, including the client computing division, the data center and artificial intelligence division, as well as the network solutions and peripherals division. Clients are offered both their own developments, created by the company from scratch, and products of acquired enterprises. Mr. Gelsinger is sure that this strategy is capable of providing the company with a stable permanent income, which, even with significantly lower revenue, is more interesting from a business point of view than proceeds from one-time sales of chips.
Intel made $100M from software in 2021 and wants more
Gizchina News of the week
The company is going to offer really interesting products; such as the development of Israeli startup Screenovate, recently acquired by Intel; which will debut on Intel Evo laptops by the end of the year. We are talking about the technology of combining screen space on different devices running different operating systems; it allows, for example, using a tablet as a second screen for a laptop; or controlling smartphones and wearable gadgets directly from a PC.
Gelsinger called this decision “the transfer of the ecosystem to the PC” and announced its intention to monetize it; although, in all likelihood, it will be explicitly paid for by the company’s partners, not end users. Another example is the takeover of the Polish startup RemoteMyApp, which developed its own cloud gaming platform. This technology will debut on the market this year under the name Project Endgame; and the technical basis will be the new Intel Arc GPUs.
Responsible for implementing Intel’s software and SaaS strategy is Lavender, who was VMware’s CTO when Gelsinger led the company. Last year, Lavender took a similar role at Intel and led the software and advanced technology division. A top executive recently stated that the company generated $100 million in revenue without any tangible effort to build sales. New Intel software products represent a wide range of solutions built on the company’s own frameworks, tools and libraries; plus solutions typical for a chipmaker: BIOS, firmware, OS, and virtualization technologies.
