Intel unveils initiatives to make Cloud faster, easier for businesses

In a bid to make it easier for businesses to deploy scalable clouds so they can deliver services faster and drive revenue growth, Intel Corporation on Thursday unveiled a new range of technologies, investments and industry collaborations.

For fast and reliable data access to the cloud, Intel announced new solid state drives (SSDs) optimised for the Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 v4 product family, enterprise storage and cloud deployments.

While Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 v4 product family delivers the foundation for modern, software-defined clouds, Intel's first "3D NAND" drives have been optimised for cloud and enterprise workloads to deliver fast, dependable data access, the company said in a statement.

"Intel is easing the path with new processors, solid state drives and a range of industry collaborations to help businesses deliver new services at the scale and speed previously found only in the most advanced public clouds," it added.

Despite a willingness to invest in modern software-defined infrastructure (SDI), businesses find the prospect of doing so themselves complex and time consuming.

"Enterprises want to benefit from the efficiency and agility of cloud architecture and on their own terms - using the public cloud offerings, deploying their own private cloud, or both," said Diane Bryant, senior vice president of Intel's Data Center Group.

"The result is pent-up demand for software-defined infrastructure. Intel is investing to mature SDI solutions and provide a faster path for businesses of all sizes to reap the benefits of the cloud," he added.

Intel also announced collaborations with leading cloud software and solution providers to help accelerate businesses' access to enterprise-ready, easy-to-deploy cloud solutions.

Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 v4 product family, built on 14nm process technology, provides the key ingredients for SDI including Intel Resource Director Technology.

It enables customers to move to fully automated SDI-based clouds with greater visibility and control over critical shared resources like processor caches and main memory.

The result is intelligent orchestration and improved utilisation and service levels.