Thin-client desktop vendor NComputing has landed another top executive from a big-name competitor in emerging markets, tapping Mark Bedford of Intel"s Classmate netbook initiative to lead its worldwide marketing efforts.
Beckford, an 11-year employee of Intel who most recently spearheaded the Santa Clara, Calif.-based chip giant"s "World Ahead" program that spawned the Classmate PC, was on Thursday named vice president of global business development at Redwood City, Calif.-based NComputing. He joins former One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) international affairs liaison Lindsay Petrillose at NComputing, as well as Will Poole, formerly a top marketing executive at Microsoft.
"Obviously, I wouldn"t have left [Intel] if I didn"t think that this was a better solution," Beckford told ChannelWeb, arguing that the Classmate PC and OLPC initiatives were not as capable of providing affordable computing to underserved markets as NComputing"s thin-client model.