Intel's cloud strategy is music to Seagate's ears

Taking the stage at Cloud Expo after Openstack was Raejeanne Skillern, Director of Marketing, Cloud Datacenter & Connected Systems Group for Intel. Intel and Seagate have been collaborating on compute and storage in the traditional IT space for decades, so I was keen to hear about their approach to cloud.

What I found was that Intel and Seagate’s cloud strategies are not only well aligned, but complimentary. Raejeanne kicked off the session talking cloud trends (which I will spare you the details), then got into the meat of Intel’s strategy and vision for cloud:

Focus on open standards – Intel is the technical advisor to the Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA) – sharing best practices and enabling partners to collaborate on solutions. ODCS has 300 members globally.
Develop Optimized platforms – Micro-servers, converged compute + networking, big data analytics.
Create a community – Intel cloud builders and cloud providers

Compare that to Seagate’s strategy for cloud:

Products: broad device portfolio based on open architecture
Innovation: invent technologies that deliver solutions optimized for cloud
Partners: build an ecosystem of alliance partners – cloud builders, software vendors, hardware providers.

Both companies stress the need to matchmake. Seagate is focused on helping cloud providers and end users partner with cloud builders. Intel is doing the same, but another very cool thing Intel has launched is cloud finder – enabling end users to find the cloud providers that can deliver the specific cloud services they are looking for.

Not only are Seagate and Intel’s strategies complimentary, but also the focus and direction. For one, both believe there is strong growth opportunities with smaller, more regional focused cloud providers. Secondly, like Seagate and storage devices, Intel is looking at helping cloud providers choose the right processor or mix of processors per cloud workload. Raejeanne referred to this as Brawny vs. Wimpy cores. Finally, we both see the 3 pilars of cloud – Compute, Networking, and Storage – beginning to blur from intelligent storage tiering to thin provisioning.

It was great to see so much synergy with Intel’s cloud vision and strategy. Perhaps this was an omen that we should be working even closer together than we are today. I plan to connect with Raejeanne tomorrow, we’ll see where it goes…stay tuned.