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AMD, CA kiss and canoodle on corporate desktop

The wedge and nothing but the wedge

Yesterday, AMD and Computer Associates announced that Unicenter TNG desktop edition will be bundled with PCs using Athlons and K6-2s at no charge from 1 March. While one swallow does not make a summer, the move is significant, but not really for Computer Associates. AMD's Dresden Deathstar fab in sultry, sexy moodUnicenter is one of those corporate enterprise desktop management thangs which allows IT managers to regulate Windows PCs on desktops. It includes asset management, software distribution and network management. This can mean two things, and two things only. AMD machines are either already finding their way into the corporate environment or the management at AMD want them to find their way into that environment and need to provide them with tools. When AMD opened its Deathstar fab in Dresden to journalists last summer, its European marketing director, Robert Stead, made it clear that the company did not just have its sights set on the overclocking headbangers of this world, but wanted a slice of the corporate pie. While people can use this bundled version of Unicenter in the home, few would care to, we suspect. In fact, Rob Herb, chief marketing suit at AMD in the US, confirmed this when he said: "As we move our award-winning AMD Athlon™ processor into the commercial environment, we know that desktop management is a key component of our enterprise strategy." This may also be AMD's way of telling Intel distributor Dell, which it has, definitively visited many times in the last four months, that it is not as fragile as Intel spokesman Michael Dell would have the world+dog believe. AMD is believed to have got its own internal structure into less of a ramshackle state than it formerly was. We understand from sources at AMD US that you now need a stationery requisition form filled in triplicate to get a pen from the cupboard. This is, no doubt, down to the influence of those folk who used to work for Intel and then worked for AMD. It would be very interesting to know what share AMD already has in the corporate environment. But there's no way either it or Intel are going to tell us that.... ® AMD positions K7 for enterprise

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