Google, Dell, Intel, Slack, Zoom, and others form The Modern Computing Alliance to tackle security, remote work, and other enterprise issues
Context & Ripple Effects
This is at least the third time this cast has convened under a shared banner: Intel, Microsoft, HP, Dell and Lenovo ran a joint PC advertising push back in 2015, and Google and Intel were among the founders of the Confidential Computing Consortium in 2019. The Modern Computing Alliance extends that playbook from marketing and data-in-use security to the broader remote-work stack.
What makes the December 2020 lineup notable is who is in it: Google supplies cloud and productivity software, Dell and Intel supply the endpoint hardware, and Slack and Zoom supply the collaboration layer that exploded during the pandemic — a full-stack coalition aimed squarely at enterprise buyers rethinking their work-from-anywhere setups.
First-order effects
- Slack and Zoom gain hardware- and cloud-maker endorsement for their enterprise pitches, while Dell and Intel get a say in how the software layer that runs on their machines is secured and specified.
Second-order effects
- Microsoft — the dominant player in both enterprise productivity and remote-work tooling via Teams — is conspicuously outside the group, giving its rivals a venue to set 'modern computing' defaults that Microsoft does not control.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — from the 2015 PC ad push through the Confidential Computing Consortium to this alliance and later efforts like Catalyze Tech and the Coalition for Secure AI — cross-vendor coalitions become the standing mechanism through which big tech firms pre-shape enterprise standards before regulators or procurement cycles do.
The trend: Cross-vendor coalitions are becoming the default instrument for setting enterprise technology standards, with each new alliance adding a policy or security dimension to the last.