Ruiz and Dell stage show indicates closer relationship

Stan Beer
Tuesday, 24 October 2006 10:17

Opinion and Analysis

Let's face it, most corporate CEOs are not great comedians and, from most reports, the bosses of AMD and Dell are no exception to the rule. However, the joint stage show of Hector Ruiz, CEO of chipmaker AMD, and Michael Dell, founding CEO of computer maker Dell, at Oracle Open World yesterday was not really meant to be funny.

The walk on cameo of Michael Dell during the keynote address of Ruiz signals a significant strengthening of ties between two companies that only a few months ago had no business relationship.

Leaving aside Intel's new star recruit Apple, Dell was the last major personal computer manufacturer that was still an exclusive Intel shop. The dam began to show some cracks and trickles in May, when Dell announced a deal to include AMD Opteron chips in its high-end servers. The trickles starting gushing in September when Dell included AMD chips in two of its desktop computers.

The appearance on stage of Ruiz and Dell together at a business technology oriented technology conference was the bursting of the dam. It is being widely viewed as a formalizing of an alliance between the two companies.

During his own keynote, Michael Dell said the company's decision to partner with AMD was based on customers' demands for more choices.

In perhaps a touch of irony, just as AMD has got its foot in the door of nearly all the major computer manufacturers, Intel is once again kicking goals with its new generation of multi-core processors, such as the Core 2 Duo.