Intel’s introduction of new chips for cloud computing and partnerships with open-source cloud tech providers could be the start of something good for digital marketers worried about the sanctity of their data on their wide-ranging cross-channel journeys.
The Intel Xeon E5-2600 v4 family of processors aim to make cloud-hopping more facile and more secure. Users, promises Intel, will be able to move to fully automated SDI-based clouds (think Amazon) faster and with greater control over shared resources like main memory and processor caches. Intel’s budding collaborations with CoreOS and Mirantis, meanwhile, will help its infrastructure-as-a-service customers move computing chores between multiple cloud providers and their own data centers.
“These announcements will expedite adoption, particularly around security, as it remains a persistent concern with numerous industries such as telecommunications and financial services,” said George Corugedo, CTO of RedPoint Global, a data analytics provider for marketers. “Chip-based security features increase encryption and decryption speeds and give users more flexibility and hackers less of an opportunity to get to unencrypted data.”
Better access to clouds for all businesses was another key motivator for Intel’s initiative, according to a company press release. “Enterprises want to benefit from the efficiency and agility of cloud architecture on their own terms, using the public cloud offerings, deploying their own private cloud, or both,” said Diane Bryant, SVP and GM of Intel’s Data Center Group.
Feliks Malts, VP of analytics for 3Q Digital, a Silicon Valley marketing agency, sees the Intel development having a significant impact on big data projects, especially for the “smaller companies that can’t afford the infrastructure typically necessary to execute on machine-learning initiatives with massive sets of data.”
Intel’s arrangement with CoreOS and Mirantis, described in its release as “two of the most popular open-source data companies” will help it orchestrate container and virtual machine-based applications and “simplify choices for cloud operators to accelerate the adoption of cloud solutions.” Containers take chunks of standard software and create Web services from them.
The bottom line for marketers is that cloud advances such as Intel’s can super-charge existing martech solutions, according to Corugedo. “This lets us work with both Amazon and Azure and lets clients choose which environments they prefer without having to build it twice,” he said.
