Intel will perform major surgery on its channel

Intel looks set to carry out some serious surgery to its channels and take the axe to some of its programmes to cope with huge changes in the way the industry is going.

This is a little surprising given that C.J. Bruno, VP Sales and Marketing Group, President of Intel Americas was telling the world that 2011 was a strong year for Intel’s channel.

Speaking at the Intel Solutions Summit, in America, he said that the channel saw a record average selling price which was up 10%, year over year. Revenue growth was up 20% and Xeon processors saw explosive growth of 40% through the channel. SSDs – those are solid state devices – saw 50% growth.

Intel also trained 700 partners on its digital signage and its Technology Provider Programme saw an increase of 20%.

But Intel is also planning to unify its channel programs which seems odd given this success. It would appear that it wants to get out of its normal integrator and system customers and get to the resellers of OEM branded gear. Intel is having a few problems getting some of its partners to sing from the same hymn sheet.

Steve Dallman, Intel’s VP/GM of its Worldwide Reseller Channel told eChannelline Line that Intel was trying to change to keep up with its customers.

Intel was trying sort out everything that’s resellers, whether they resell, build or deal with embedded markets. As a result it is seeing itself chatting to people who have gone into vertical markets.

This means that it has had to redesigned its membership programs to deal with people who used to integrate and now don’t.

Dallman said that there were 8,000 new resellers in North America that don’t fit into traditional categories, that aren’t pure integrators.

It is not as if Intel is trying to cut money on its programmes. It is just that it is trying to train more people to sell its products and widen the net to bring in those who were not part of the system builder community.

Resellers who sell branded solutions are making Intel lots of cash and it has been expanding its benefits to take them into account.

One of the reasons for the change of focus has been the consumerisation of the the IT market which means that consumers are making more of the decisions.

Intel is spending a fortune to pay ethnographers studying family IT use patterns to keep resellers informed.

Dallman said that the channel adapted very quickly and Intel needs to move just as quickly to train new people who came into the market.

Intel is about to bring out Small Business Advantage, which will appear this year with Intel’s third generation chips.

Intel Small Business Advantage is a technology focused on the channel and is a business platform technology which means that enables the Channel to come up with packages for the lucrative SME market. It has power efficient features, security features like USB blockers and PC maintenance, some of which were tied into Windows 7.