If Otellini had his own slogan it might be, “More is as good as Moore.” His answer to Intel’s source for future growth — find a billion more PC users. He thinks that billion awaits in developing countries, and so has pledged to invest $1 billion over the next five years to bring PC technology to less technological societies. As his tribute to Moore’s Law, Otellini triumphed in November when Dell, HP, IBM and others released quad-core-powered computers using Intel’s Xeon 5300s. Archrival Advanced Micro Devices is not expected to match the quad-core feat until mid 2007.
Ruiz spent the past year hammering on his “customer choice” theme, most recently delivering that message during Oracle’s fall OpenWorld conference. That Ruiz netted a top billing at the event, which had previously not highlighted AMD, signals his company’s growing significance for industry buyers. That he got Michael Dell to join him on stage, reminding everyone of Dell’s historical decision to shed its Intel-only strategy and begin offering AMD-based computers, speaks further to Ruiz’s growing stature.
It’s a testament to Szulik’s success that he spent 2006 volleying power punches with Larry Ellison, Oracle CEO. Szulik chalked up a win earlier this year when Red Hat acquired JBoss, amid rampant speculation that Oracle was pursuing the Java application server vendor. Last month, Ellison evened the score by announcing Oracle would offer support contracts to Red Hat users at cutthroat prices. In the meantime, Szulik brought Linux deeper into the data center with Red Hat’s September beta release of its enterprise-class operating system, complete with Xen virtualization.
> Enterprise computing
Daniel Warmenhoven
TITLE
CEO
COMPANY
Network Appliance
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Ever pragmatic, Warmenhoven admits that as much as he would love to see NetApp supplant EMC as storage market leader, he might not be able to orchestrate that during his term as CEO. But then again. . . Under Warmenhoven’s guidance, NetApp continues to deliver solid midrange storage systems and strong financials, all while supporting rapid growth. Watch for NetApp to soar if Warmenhoven successfully transitions the company into a vendor of on-demand and high-performance enterprise-scale systems.
