Fluid dialogue
The last few years have been a period of considerable upheaval for AMD. It has failed to post a profit since it bought ATI in the middle of 2006 and, in its bid to do so, has sold-off some parts of the business, spun-off others and laid-off a lot of people.
As a result, AMD's communication with the channel has been somewhat fragmented, something it moved to remedy when it appointed David Kenyon (pictured talking to HEXUS.channel editor Scott Bicheno) as VP of worldwide channel marketing at the end of last year.
Kenyon rejoins AMD chief marketing officer Nigel Dessau, who he also worked under when he was VP of worldwide storage marketing at Sun Microsystems. He spent a rather incongruous eight months heading up sales and marketing for toilet repair company Fluidmaster before taking the plunge back into high-tech with AMD.
Kenyon has kept his head down since his appointment, but recently visited the UK where he spoke to HEXUS.channel to share his vision for the future of AMD. We started by asking him why AMD hasn't performed better since the AMD acquisition, and he wasted no time in referring to Intel.
"I think you have to consider two issues, one of which came up with the EU decision - we've not been granted good access to market over time," said Kenyon. "Part of that is that the other guy has been a little better at competing and some of it is unfair competitive practice. But the other piece of it is partly of our own doing - really not coordinating our go-to-market efforts."
