Edge computing and 5G services are set for a boost from Intel announcements at the virtual iteration of the global Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2021.
According to Renu Navale, vice president and general manager of the edge computing and ecosystem enabling division at Intel, the company is working with its ecosystem partners to simplify edge, cloud and networking challenges.
“Communications services providers (CoSPs) and enterprises are embracing a cloud-native approach across the network to increase flexibility, agility and scale,” Navale said in Intel’s official show announcement.
Intel’s Xeon scalable processors, ethernet network adapters, FlexRAN reference software and OpenNESS open network edge services software are being teamed with Red Hat’s OpenShift container platform for hybrid environments. Intel believes this will help accelerate the development of automated cloud-native infrastructures for 5G services.
“An overwhelming number of hardware solutions has created a need for ones designed to work together to optimise business processes,” according to Intel.
“CoSPs benefit from having more complete solutions as they transform their networks, while enterprises equally gain value from unified management and orchestration from edge to cloud.”
The announcement was just one of many by Intel at the big annual show. Overall, the vendor’s focus was about ‘doing more with the power of computing‘.
Intel executive vice president Gregory Bryant [pictured, above] and other Intel executives talked up how Intel aims to innovate across process technology, packaging and architecture to deliver digital transformation for both business and consumer computing environments.
“We live in a world where computing is now pervasive. Computers are no longer just a PC or a server,” Bryant said.
More Intel highlights
At CES 2021, Intel introduced some 50 processors for business, education, mobile and gaming computing platforms, which it estimates will play out in 500 new designs for laptops and desktops in 2021 alone.
Bryant also highlighted a deal with Amazon Web Services (AWS) for its Habana Gaudi AI accelerators and news from Intel-owned autonomous vehicle technology provider Mobileye.
Stephanie Hallford, vice president and general manager of business client platforms at Intel, confirmed that the pandemic was accelerating business transformation.
Companies worldwide were adapting to new cloud realities and increasingly supporting remote work — which Hallford suggested will provide opportunities to develop around the Intel vPro and upcoming Evo platforms.
“While we forecasted the need for remote security and manageability, Covid-19 greatly accelerated and complicated these requirements,” she said. “Intel vPro is the world’s most comprehensive hardware-based security available for businesses today; software alone is not enough.
“Our vPro is the only solution with hardware-based remote manageability giving businesses the ability to reach, and if needed patch, all their systems regardless of location.”
Hallford reiterated that business-class performance now means enabling productivity, video collaboration and content creation even in a remote work environment.
Chuck Simmons, vice president at Accenture, told the conference attendees that their clients had faced many challenges already in the pandemic.
“With remote workers, particularly at home, it is so difficult for us to dispatch an expensive resource to repair that PC. With Intel and the vPro platform, we’re can get to that device remotely, monitor it, manage that device, and more importantly, resolve any issues,” Simmons said.
CES 2021 runs until 15 February 2021 online.
