Can Tech Collaboration Make the "New Normal"​ Better Than Before COVID?

We recently hosted our Fall Intel Partner Connect virtual event. While it provides a great opportunity to reconnect with our partners, the event also highlighted the duality of our world – how much remains the same since the Spring when we turned to virtual events in the face of the pandemic, and how much has changed with the adoption of digital solutions to help people return to work safely.

For me, events like Intel Partner Connect underscore the importance of collaboration to accelerate innovation. We are connecting and collaborating with a broad cross section of partners to deliver on the creative solutions needed to get people back to work safely, reduce the burden on health care systems, advance research to improve treatment, and keep our students engaged and learning from anywhere.

Return to Work Made Possible

Investment in technology during the pandemic has been critical to helping people get back to work without compromising safety. We’ve been able to pivot use cases to leverage IoT, AI, cloud, and advanced communication networks in truly amazing ways.

• Wearables are helping people maintain social distancing, while mobile apps are helping with contact tracing.


• ShopTrak is using AI to help retailers monitor customer levels and compliance with mask rules while letting their employees keep a safe distance


• An AI Avatar, coupled with a smart display and touchless temperature sensing, is tracking the health of people coming into a facility, like they’re doing at the History Museum


• With the help of federated learning, researchers can share patient data to accelerate collaboration to develop a vaccine or treatment program without breaching privacy.


• WaterLens, an Intel-based startup at the Ion Smart and Resilient Cities Accelerator, can detect coronavirus levels in wastewater systems to help to pinpoint potential outbreaks faster.

And what’s cool is we’re not just talking about what’s possible, all these solutions are being actively used today. When you look at the broad range of solutions and the creativity to deploy technology to meet demands, we couldn’t imagine before the pandemic, you see the real power of innovation.

The City of Houston is a great example of the transformative potential of technology. The city was already working on a digital transformation program when the pandemic hit. The city accelerated efforts and redirected funding to rapidly build out the smart city technologies needed to not only address pandemic issues but accelerate its evolution into the smart city of tomorrow. Continuing the theme of collaboration, the city depends on a wide range of technologies, solutions, services, and partners to make its transformation possible.

“In the midst of storm, it is still a great time to look for creative ways to be resilient and engage with all your partners to help to provide solutions.” Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner.

What’s the takeaway? It’s not just one solution that will save the day. Like the city of Houston demonstrated, it takes a range of technologies, and partners working together to deliver a comprehensive solution that keeps people safe while businesses return to work.

Behind the Scenes: Making Solutions Possible

While it is always exciting to see ideas translate into real-world solutions, you can’t ignore the importance of a relentless pursuit of innovation that goes hand in hand with our pillars of technology innovation focused on advances in hardware architecture, software, security, communication, memory and process.

During Intel Partner Connect, we had a chance to showcase some of the technologies and products unveiled recently to will help our partners continue to build out the innovative solutions and services needed so we can return to work, be more productive and stay safe.

• The 3rd Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable platform include a range of technologies to help secure sensitive workloads.


• 11th Gen Intel® Core™ processors, Intel Atom x6000E series, and Intel Pentium and Celeron N and J series processors respond to IoT challenge, not to mention enhanced performance and security. These new processors break the boundaries of performance with unmatched capabilities in productivity, collaboration, creation, gaming and entertainment, and power the first class of Intel Evo platforms.

These technologies also showcase how we are delivering on our pillars of innovation. As I told you all during IPC, Intel makes the best mobile platform on the planet! I’m proud of it and what we’ve accomplished this year as we continue to roll out advances that let us return to work safely and productively.

I have no doubt we will continue to see new use cases for technology to facilitate a return to work and I am looking forward to seeing how far we can go, together.