No more confusion?
Future additions to Fusion for partners include a web portal with lots of resources and access to help from AMD as well as some kind of social networking facility so AMD partners can keep track of what each other had for breakfast.
AMD has apparently learnt from its blue rival that rebates can be quite handy in persuading channel partners to make an effort with your products, and it will be ramping up that side of things. It is also going to try to get more demo systems out to the front line, which seems to be vital if it's going to effectively demonstrate its platform message to the end user.
All in all, as with any initiative, the proof is in the eating. And while we're in proverbial mood we should observe that there's many a slip twixt cup and lip. In other words, putting a concept into practice is often very difficult.
However, we also have to observe that there is a reassuring coherence to the way AMD seems to be going about things these days. We, together with the rest of the technology industry, feared that AMD had blown it with the acquisition of ATI and all the corporate angst that followed. But there finally seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel concerning all this talk of Fusion.
For AMD's platform strategy to work, it needs to have a lot of product on the shelves. This means strong relationships with both OEMs and the channel and, on paper at least, AMD is setting the foundations for just that.
