Intel offers software for blog-loving SMEs

Intel has announced a collaboration software suite that it will offer to small and medium-size businesses via its resellers.

The chip giant held a press conference at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco to give details of the move, alongside open source support provider SpikeSource and other companies.

Called SuiteTwo, the package will include software from NewsGator, SimpleFeed, Six Apart and Socialtext. These are small software companies that provide applications for blogs, RSS feeds, wikis and social networking.

All of these so-called web 2.0 applications are more commonly associated with and used by consumers. But corporations are increasingly using blogs, wikis and social networking applications.

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To accelerate their use, Intel decided to assemble the apps into a single suite and to contract SpikeSource to integrate and support the offerings, said Lisa Lambert, the managing director of Intel Capital's software and solutions group.

She said: "We tried to figure out a way… that small and medium businesses could get a solution already integrated and have support attached to it. It chose these applications because they were 'best of breed'."

Later this month, Intel will launch Channel Marketplace, an extension to an existing hardware-oriented reseller programme that will allow Intel partners to resell software as well, Lambert said.

The Channel Marketplace will be available worldwide by the middle of next year, according to Intel.

The addition will give resellers more products to sell to small and medium-sized businesses, she said. Initial participants are Dell, Ingram Micro, NEC and Tech Data. The software will be run on Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise Server, Red Hat Enterprise Server and Microsoft Windows operating systems.

The benefit to Intel is that it creates a greater inventory of applications optimised for the chipmaker's hardware, Lambert said.

She added: "The issue Intel has had in the past is, because of the time it takes to get silicon to production, it's been difficult to get ISVs [independent software vendors] to get product to market [at the same time as chip releases]."

By partnering with these software providers, Intel hopes to have Intel-optimised programs in this emerging web 2.0 area, she added. Intel envisions other software bundles in the future.

The components of SuiteTwo will be optimised for Intel's client and server chips, including its 32-bit and 64-bit Xeon processors and future products, the company said.

Martin LaMonica writes for CNET News.com