SINGAPORE--This week marks the fifth year since the 64-bit Itanium chip made its debut in the market. Its maker Intel is now on a quest to broaden the chip's footprint in the Asia-Pacific region, and has turned to software powerhouse Microsoft to do that.
Despite Itanium's somewhat shaky history, Intel has high hopes for the chip's future in anticipation of the introduction of dual-core Montecito systems, due out in the next couple of months. The chip giant is also looking to tap the huge Windows installed base to expand Itanium's opportunities.
Microsoft, too, is hoping for the recognition it desires in the high-performance, mission-critical computing environment.
Together, the two vendors have cranked up the engines to get more Microsoft applications on the Itanium platform. According to Simon Piff, regional solutions manager of enterprise server marketing group, Microsoft Asia-Pacific and Greater China, both vendors recently finished a joint six-country road show in the region.
Piff told ZDNet Asia: "We ran 25 three-day hands-on labs across the region, accompanied by an average of 25 to 30 partners for each of these events. We're really helping them understand the difference between running [applications] on Itanium platform versus anything else."
In an interview with ZDNet Asia, Gary Willihnganz, Intel's Asia-Pacific director of marketing, said: "The enablement piece of it is critical because it divulges the momentum [of Itanium]… It's a stepping stone into emerging markets as well."
Of the 7,600 applications now ported to Itanium, 300 were developed in Asia. The Itanium Server Alliance, formed last year with partners such as Fujitsu, HP, Hitachi and NEC, has been developing applications for Itanium as well, and doing a lot of "enablement work", said Willihnganz.
According to IDC's Asia-Pacific Enterprise Server Tracker report, a total of 4,765 EPIC (Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing)--Itanium 1 and 2 servers--worth US$264.7 million were sold in the Asia-Pacific region, excluding Japan, in 2005.
IDC classifies EPIC servers as part of the enterprise-class, non-x86 server segment--together with RISC (reduced instruction set computer) systems which include servers that run on Sun Microsystems Sparc, IBM Power and Hewlett-Packard PA-RISC and Alpha, and CISC (complex instruction set computer) systems, which are IBM zSeries mainframes.
Within the non-x86 servers segment, EPIC servers accounted for 6.7 percent of the total server shipments and 7.5 percent of the total spending in 2005 for the Asia-Pacific region.
HP is the primary vendor selling EPIC systems in the region, accounting for 85.8 percent of total unit shipments and 83.4 percent of revenues sold in 2005.
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