Intel Inside the Cloud

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What’s inside a cloud matters. That’s the message the Intel is now trying to promote with its new Powered by Intel Cloud Technology badge.

The Powered by Intel Cloud Technology badge is similar in many respects to the Intel-Inside campaign that Intel ran for years on consumer PCs as a branding effort, emphasizing that what’s inside matters.

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Raejeanne Skillern, Director of Cloud Marketing at Intel, told Datamation that the ‘Powered by Intel Cloud Technology’ badges will be displayed on the webpages of participating Cloud Service Providers, marking the instances that are powered entirely by Intel processors.

Skillern added that instances branded with “Powered by Intel Cloud Technology” badge are taking advantage of specific technologies and features that directly benefit performance and security of Cloud applications. Cloud Service Providers can provide information about the Intel gear they are running, including processor type, as well as a list of Intel enabled features and how they impact cloud performance.

“Intel will drive a direct marketing campaign and participate in co-marketing activities with CSP partners to educate current and potential users of public cloud services on the benefits and impact of underlying technologies on an end-user’s business,” Skillern said. “Our marketing activities will also encourage uses to ‘Look Inside’ cloud services for the benefit of Intel Architecture in the underlying infrastructure.”

In order to use the Powered by Intel Cloud Technology badge, the cloud provider needs to have at least one service or instance offering that is based entirely on Intel processors. The badge can then be used on the service web page or point of purchase console to highlight that instance.

Whereas the Intel Inside program for PCs highlighted the computing power of Intel’s silicon, the Powered by Intel cloud program also emphasizes cloud security capabilities. Intel’s silicon provides multiple security features, including the Intel’s Advanced Encryption Standard New Instructions and Intel Trusted Execution Technology (Intel TXT). Skillern said that the Intel security technologies can be activated by the CSPs in order to deliver data protection and security from hypervisor/BIOS/firmware/pre-launch software component attacks.

Among those that are participating in the Powered by Intel cloud initiative are Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Rackspace. Intel has strong relationships with both vendors.

“AWS was the first to respond to end customers’ need for increased visibility into the underlying hardware in order to make informed decisions, and the first to grasp the importance of offering a range of services to support a variety of workloads,” Skillern said. “The company provides information about the generation of processors powering their instances and available features which helps customers choose optimized instances for their workloads and applications.”

Rackspace is well known in the cloud computing world for helping to start the open-source OpenStack cloud platform. Intel is also an active member of the OpenStack community. Skillern noted that Intel’s OpenStack and Powered by Intel Cloud initiative are two independent efforts, although some of the differentiated capabilities that Intel offers are leveraged through the OpenStack environment.

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at Datamation and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.