Intel Leads In $900M Funding Round For Cloudera
Intel Corporation invested heavily in cloud services software group Cloudera.
The investment round totaling $900M was led by Intel and new reports suggests the chip maker put in $740M. Intel received 18 percent stake in the company. A simple math will indicate that the valuation of the company is now north of US$ 4.1 Billion.
Cloudera offers Big Data Services to large corporates and is keen to expand its services and client base. Looking at the investment, it is amply clear that Intel is highly interested in furthering its business via Cloud Services. The company seems aware of the future and has realized that Cloud hosted services and applications will be the next big thing.
Intel has been making processing chips for the PC and laptop segment for quite some time. In fact, considered the pioneer in the field, Intel perfected the art of fitting multiple cores and enhancing the processing capacities of the CPU. Its latest line of Core i Processors have been widely acknowledged to keep the highest ratio of processing power and per watt power consumption. In simpler words, Intel has successfully developed chips that work faster and smarter, yet consume low power.
However, just like PC makers, Intel has felt the pinch of the shrinking market. Eaten largely by portable Internet-enabled devices like Smartphones and Tablets, the PC market is shrinking alarmingly. Hence Intel is actively exploring other avenues like the Hybrid PC and the server segment, along with the mobile devices. It even developed chips that successfully stuffed Android and Windows in the same device.
In extension to its intention of diversification, Intel had tried to enter the Streaming TV services, but ended up selling the entire unit to Verizon, as reported by CNET. However, the cloud services are a different affair altogether. Remotely hosted applications and services allow even dumb devices connected to internet, become smart and offer solutions that were once the dominion of PCs.
Commonly referred to as Internet of Things (IoT), devices are increasingly being connected to internet, with examples ranging from washing machines to refrigerators. Additionally a whole new segment, called the wearable technology is emerging pretty quickly, and Intel is already active in the same, reports Lilliputing.
All these devices will require Cloud hosted services and they will require specially tuned processing chips. Intel appears to have realized this huge need and hence perhaps needs companies like Cloudera on its side.
Cloud Computing has already enabled startups to scale–up fast. With Intel and Cloudera, even IoT devices could evolve just as quickly.
[Images Via Intel and Cloudera]
