Intel Announces European e-Business Solutions Centers

First locations planned in England, Sweden, Germany, France, and the Netherlands

April 7, 2000: Intel Corporation today announced the creation of e-Business Solutions Centers in Europe. The centers will provide comprehensive facilities and resources for creating and validating e-Business solution stacks running on Intel Architecture, and represent a multi-million dollar investment by Intel in European e-Business development.

The first centers in Stockholm, Sweden; Reading, England, and Munich, Germany, will open over the next six months. Future European centers in Amsterdam and Paris are planned.

Making the announcement in Amsterdam, where he was addressing business leaders, Robert Eckelmann, Intel vice-president and general manager, Intel Europe Middle East and Africa, said: "The market today demands robust e-Business solutions and rapid deployment cycles. By extracting and documenting best known methods for the development of solutions on Intel Architecture, the e-Business Solution Centers will be able to significantly speed up time-to-market for customers deploying solutions on IA.

"The Intel e-BSCs will offer unparalleled facilities for software developers, Internet solution providers, dot.corp and dot.com companies to validate, load test and deploy applications and solutions, and carry out comparative benchmarking."

Eckelmann continued: "We will work with industry players to provide the best facilities and resources available to enable third generation e-Business. The centers will also feed proven e-Business recipes and opportunities to hardware and software platform providers for customer adaptation and deployment."

Leading industry players added their support to the announcement.

Patrick Lelorieux, VP Industry-Standard Server Business Division, Compaq EMEA, said: "We fully support Intel's e-Business Solution Center initiative and are working with Intel to complement our existing competence center offerings to this initiative. By making e-Business solution centers available to customers, companies can significantly speed up their e-Business time to market for solutions based on Compaq and Intel architecture."

Mike Lawrie, General Manager IBM EMEA, commented: "Expanding upon IBM's co-operation with Intel in wireless Internet initiatives, we see the alignment of e-Business centers as key in delivering state-of-the-art e-Business solutions stacks. The Intel centers, along with IBM's own centers, will allow established and new companies in Europe evaluate the technologies for real e-Business deployment."

Meanwhile Intel also announced that seven leading e-Business solutions providers (eBSPs) in Europe have joined its e-Business Solution Provider Program announced in March.

The Intel eBSP program aims to create a 'best of breed' e-Business integration framework operating on Intel® architecture-based systems. The program includes use of the e-Business Solutions Centers and other Intel labs, engineers, technical marketing support, and training and certification programs. eBSPs will have access to Intel's database of collateral, white papers and solution briefs, and the availability of Intel client and server hardware, software, and networking products.

The first European eBSPs to join the program are: AGENCY.COM and iXL in the UK; Icon Medialab Europe; DDB Interactive and Matra Grolier Network, France; Connecta/Information Highway, Nordic, and Actis Systems, Russia.

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