Paul Stevens Otellini (October 12, 1950 – October 2, 2017) was an American businessman who served as president and CEO of

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...

. He was also on the board of directors of

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

Early life and education

Otellini was born and raised in

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

, United States. His family is of Italian origin. Otellini graduated from St. Ignatius College Preparatory and held a bachelor's degree in

economics Economics () is a behavioral science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interac ...

from the

University of San Francisco The University of San Francisco (USF) is a Private university, private Society of Jesus, Jesuit university in San Francisco, California, United States. Founded in 1855, it has nearly 9,000 students pursuing undergraduate and graduate degrees ...

earned in 1972. He received an

MBA A Master of Business Administration (MBA) is a professional degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration; elective courses may allow further study in a particular a ...

from the

Haas School of Business The Walter A. Haas School of Business (branded as Berkeley Haas) is the business school of the University of California, Berkeley, a Public university, public research university in Berkeley, California. It was the first business school at a pub ...

at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

in 1974.

Employment at Intel

Otellini joined Intel in 1974, doing job-position computer-programmer, marketer, financial-analyst. Otellini was appointed an operating group vice president in 1988, elected as an Intel corporate officer in 1991, and made senior vice president in 1993. He served as general manager of the Microprocessor Products Group, leading the introduction of the

Pentium Pentium is a series of x86 architecture-compatible microprocessors produced by Intel from 1993 to 2023. The Pentium (original), original Pentium was Intel's fifth generation processor, succeeding the i486; Pentium was Intel's flagship proce ...

microprocessor that followed in 1993. He also managed Intel's business with

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

, served as general manager of both the Peripheral Components Operation and the Folsom Microcomputer Division, where he was responsible for the company's chipset operations, and served as a technical assistant to then-Intel president

Andrew Grove Andrew "Andy" Stephen Grove (born Gróf András István; 2 September 1936 – 21 March 2016) was a Hungarian-American businessman and engineer who served as the third CEO of Intel Corporation. He escaped from the Hungarian People's Republic dur ...

. He was promoted to executive vice president in 1996. From 1998 to 2002, he was executive

vice president A vice president or vice-president, also director in British English, is an officer in government or business who is below the president (chief executive officer) in rank. It can also refer to executive vice presidents, signifying that the vi ...

and

general manager A general manager (GM) is an executive who has overall responsibility for managing both the revenue and cost elements of a company's income statement, known as profit & loss (P&L) responsibility. A general manager usually oversees most or all of ...

of the Intel Architecture Group, responsible for the company's

microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor (computing), processor for which the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit (IC), or a small number of ICs. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, a ...

and

chipset In a computer system, a chipset is a set of electronic components on one or more integrated circuits that manages the data flow between the processor, memory and peripherals. The chipset is usually found on the motherboard of computers. Chips ...

businesses and strategies for desktop, mobile and enterprise computing. From 1996 to 1998, Otellini served as executive vice president of sales and marketing and from 1994 to 1996 as senior vice president and general manager of sales and marketing. In 2002, he was elected to the

board of directors A board of directors is a governing body that supervises the activities of a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government agency. The powers, duties, and responsibilities of a board of directors are determined by government regulatio ...

and became president and

Chief Operating Officer A chief operating officer (COO), also called chief operations officer, is an executive in charge of the daily operations of an organization (i.e. personnel, resources, and logistics). COOs are usually second-in-command immediately after the C ...

at the company. On May 18, 2005, he succeeded Craig Barrett as the new CEO of Intel. Otellini was considered a departure from the norm as he was the first Intel CEO who was not an engineer. Otellini is reported to have been a major force in convincing

Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Comput ...

in the Apple-to-Intel transition, and being very fond of

Mac OS X macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

, saying

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...

is "closer to the Mac than we've been on the Windows side for a long time". In 2006, he oversaw the then-largest round of layoffs in Intel history when 10,500 (or 10% of the corporate workforce) employees were laid-off. Job cuts in manufacturing, product design, and other redundancies, were made in an effort to save $3 billion/year in cost by 2008. Of the 10,500 jobs, 1,000 layoffs were at the management level. In 2007, Otellini announced plans to build a $3 billion semiconductor manufacturing plant in the port city of

Dalian Dalian ( ) is a major sub-provincial port city in Liaoning province, People's Republic of China, and is Liaoning's second largest city (after the provincial capital Shenyang) and the third-most populous city of Northeast China (after Shenyang ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

. In 2006, Otellini was named Haas Business Leader of the Year. Nevertheless, in hindsight, Otellini has made the strategic mistake of ignoring the mobile processor market, and also did not develop credible technology to counter ARM-based architecture. These missteps, combined with missed product cycles under Otellini's successors, would come back to haunt Intel over a decade later. On November 19, 2012, Otellini announced his intention to retire in May 2013.

Personal life

Otellini died in his sleep on October 2, 2017, at his home in Sonoma County, California. He was survived by his second wife, of 30 years, Sandy Otellini; his son, Patrick; and his daughter, Alexis.

References

External links

Intel website biographyOtellini talking about innovation.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Otellini, Paul 1950 births 2017 deaths American technology chief executives American computer businesspeople American corporate directors American people of Italian descent Businesspeople from San Francisco Businesspeople in software Directors of Google Haas School of Business alumni Intel people University of San Francisco alumni American chief operating officers American chief executives of manufacturing companies 20th-century American businesspeople St. Ignatius College Preparatory alumni