Interviewing Intel's president and chief executive officer, Mr Craig Barrett, could be likened in some ways to interrogating a crime suspect "helping" police with their enquiries. After a while, there is no question he hasn't already been asked in some form or another.
Mr Barrett was speaking to The Irish Times in advance of a visit to Dublin Castle on June 19th, when he will talk to an invited audience on the theme "Strategies for e-Business".
Unfortunately, so jaded is Mr Barrett with delivering the same message when he visits 30 different countries annually, he seems barely able to muster the enthusiasm for a primer in advance of the real thing.
Maybe it's the strain of having dramatically to re-engineer the world's largest semiconductor manufacturer to compete at the same fever-pitch level in the emerging Internet-driven economy. Intel is currently valued at around $425 billion (€456 million), and is expected to record a profit this year of at least $11 billion after tax.
For years Intel has essentially been a one-product player. Its microprocessor business - which includes the Pentium, Celeron and Xeon chip families - accounts for about 80 per cent of its sales.
Since last year, Intel has been working hard to make the switch from focusing all of its business on primarily manufacturing semiconductor chips for the desktop, laptop and PC server markets. In a $7 billion spending spree, Intel has been buying up companies that will help boost its presence in the fast-growing networking and data communications industries. It is also spending more than $1 billion to build Internet hosting centres.
"I think we are making the switch at the right time. Obviously, when you are as impatient and paranoid as we are, we would like it to move a lot faster, but we're happy enough that our networking communications business is growing at 50 per cent annually," Mr Barrett says.
Meanwhile, demand continues to grow for Intel's core microprocessor product. Mr Barrett recently announced company plans to expand its global manufacturing capability this year. This has led to a review of all Intel's major sites with wafer fabrication capability, including Intel Ireland, where 4,600 people are employed in Leixlip, Co Kildare.
Mr Barrett couldn't be drawn on specific plans for the Irish operation except to say: "We've bought a new facility in Colorado, and are expanding our operations in Arizona and New Mexico. We intend to continue reviewing our other operations on a routine basis."
When technology industry legend and Intel co-founder, Mr Andy Grove, stepped up from executive operations to become chairman in 1998, Mr Barrett, took over. Widely regarded as a foil to Mr Grove's fiery personality, Mr Barrett's approach is best described as pragmatic and methodical. Mr Barrett decided Intel should be a supplier of semiconductors for hardware, such as the servers and routers which comprised the infrastructure of the Web. This has involved pitting Intel against younger and seemingly more agile companies such as Nortel Networks and Lucent Technologies, both of which are already entrenched in the business of telephony hardware. After 10 years telling the world it was the "building-block supplier for the computer industry", this mantra has been changed to "building-block supplier for the Internet economy".
Last year, the company spent $2.4 billion on Level One Technologies; $1.6 billion on DSP Communications; and $780 million on Dialogic. This year it bought six smaller companies.
Most analysts agree it is taking the right steps by aggressively pursuing the data networking business, since it appears to be one of the few emerging technologies that stands to be nearly as lucrative as microchips have been for the company.
Mr Barrett says we are now moving into a new phase of ecommerce which will bring us beyond the current focus on advertising, marketing and selling to two new stages of interactive engagement. The first will be marketplaces or auction areas for traders to conduct transactions with each other. The other will be fully integrated supply chains based on collaborative engineering.
"If I'm going to build a PC for example, I want to ensure all the supplier components are timed to arrive on time in a predetermined sequence, with no glitches. Today 80 per cent of ecommerce is business-to-business based, and it is revolutionising how companies interact in the world," Mr Barrett says.
Intel's venture-capital arm, which was established five years ago to support content-creation businesses for personal computers, became very active in the past year following a $1 billion investment. It now has minority stakes in around 400 companies, with the combined market capitalisation of the 100 or so public companies, estimated at around $9 billion.
He describes the recent shakeout in the technology market as a "consolidation" process, where initial euphoria has run up against basic market requirements for business plans and profit figures.
"Not everyone with a business plan with the word Internet in it is going to be successful. Valuations will begin to be dictated by some of the more valuable metrics," he says.
As to Mr Barrett's upcoming visit to Dublin, he made no bones about deflating the possibly over-exaggerated perception of Ireland as a pioneer in embracing e-business.
"What's happening in Ireland is mirrored by the rest of the world. I visit a city in India, it looks just like Silicon Valley - Ireland shouldn't be surprised by what's happening there, because it's happening everywhere else too."
