Intel is forming a brand new business unit today, called Intel Federal, to ‘better address new opportunities in working with the U.S. government.’ The new subsidiary will focus exclusively on selling and advising on computing services in the government.
Initially, Intel says Intel Federal will focus on the High Performance Computing segment, including work on exascale computing with the U.S. Department of Energy and other agencies. Over time, the subsidiary will work with all branches of the government.
Kirk Skaugen, vice president and general manager of Intel’s Datacenter and Connected Systems Group says this of the new subsidiary: “The creation of Intel Federal demonstrates the strategic importance of these programs and will give us the ability to establish and maintain the unique processes, procedures and controls needed to develop and manage programs with the government…Reaching supercomputer performance levels of a hundred times more powerful than today by 2018 will require the combined efforts of both industry and government…We look forward to collaborating more closely with the U.S. government on future supercomputing challenges.”
Dave Patterson, the former president and CEO of Siemens Government Services, will lead Intel Federal, which will have offices in Oregon, California and the Washington, D.C. area.
The government services area can be a huge money maker for IT and technology companies and it makes sense for Intel to actively target government agencies who are looking to adopt new, more advanced technologies. Amazon recently launched the GovCloud to provide a secure cloud computing environment for government agencies.