Intel has doubled down on its operations in the UK as it continues its aim to support and power the computing networks of the future.
Speaking to TechRadar Pro at the recent Intel Open House event in London, the head of the company’s UK business said that the country still offers huge opportunities across multiple industries.
“We're very happy with the business that we've seen over the last two years,” Adrian Criddle, UK General Manager and Vice President, Intel, told us. “I would say that it's probably exceeding our expectations across consumer and business in the PC space.”
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“We keep finding more and more opportunities...that were untapped before,” he added, “The UK is still seen as a fantastic opportunity...it's a very attractive space still.”
Intel has declared itself in a transition away from its traditional PC-centric role towards being “data-centric”, as it looks to supply not just CPU hardware, but the whole stack.
A key part of this is Project Athena, which sees Intel offer up dedicated components to vendors and partners, potentially opening up a huge new market for the company.
"What we do is try and make sure the Project Athena platform can provide the building blocks of everything, then people can innovate over the top of it for their own users,” Criddle says.
“Evolution happens in the tech space in little chunks...what we do is try and add some revolution into that evolution.”
"You've got to find a balance between setting the standard that that's ultimately rigid, and what's going to help the ecosystem holistically in terms of cost control, bringing the new technology as fast as possible."
"But you've also got to allow them to add their own innovation and their own unique value proposition, and unique selling points, so that they can actually show creativity and innovation in themselves as well."
“It's a journey, and it won't all happen in day one - trying to move an ecosystem can take a while as there's a lot of barriers...we have to make sure the whole ecosystem is buying into it.”
Criddle notes that customer needs are changing, as workers increasingly demand flexible working conditions that necessitate lighter, more longer-lasting devices. Younger workforces also demand the latest tools, with a new employee base helping push PC refresh numbers across a range of industries.
Project Athena looks to help the company address these changing demands, giving them more ways to work with their customers throughout the world, and potentially bringing huge rewards.
“We've had to be dynamic,” Criddle says, “the days of building something and hoping people will buy it are long gone...a certain level of customisation or flexibility is absolutely key.”
“Fundamentally, you can't build millions and millions of individual pieces of technology for a customer...but the way customers implement our technology, with different software and different solutions, we can help with that.”
"We have to scale through our partners and our customers,” he adds, “and I think that's really important that it's not just about Intel, doing everything, what we're trying to do is to enable our customers and our partners to be successful as well, and their customers and their partners.”
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