We get the impression Intel Corp is feeling the pressure from Oracle Corp CEO Larry Ellison’s relentless claims that Network Computers will be a cheaper alternative to PCs. Why else would they pack a few thousand people into New York City’s Madison Square Garden and roll out chief Andy Grove basically to say it isn’t so? The chip giant set out a strategy for enterprise customers to reduce the cost of ownership of their PCs, and, cleverly, it involved a lot of products from Intel. The firm quoted Gartner Group estimates that annual PC total cost of ownership is more than $9,000, but Intel claims that can be reduced by 37% with remote management tools and instrumentation. Aside from hours of dialogue with executives from Microsoft Corp and other companies – so scripted at times one felt as though the Republican convention had taken over – Intel unveiled a few products, including the availability of three OEM server platforms with single, dual and four way Pentium Pro processors with L ANDesk server monitor software. The firm also debuted its LanDesk Support Center, an integrated package of Inference Corp’s CasePoint search engine, Oracle7 Workgroup Server database software and Intel’s LANDesk Alert Management System. The management software costs from $8,700 for one console and 100 managed nodes.
