As it prepares for its developer forum this week, Intel faces an audience of bankers who have not lost faith in it, but who don't understand what it means by "platform."

Credit Suisse First Boston, for instance, looks at the word "platform" and sees only desktop or server. It figures Intel is waiting for Microsoft's Longhorn to demand more processing power of computers and bail it out.

If that's the strategy Intel describes, then it is Clueless. But that's not the strategy Intel is pursuing under new CEO Paul Otellini (right).

Intel is in the business of creating platforms, on which new business models can be built.

It's in the process of doing that with communications. Its WiMax initiatives are an example of this. I believe they need to announce a similar step, tomorrow, in wireless networking.

Make the wireless network a platform, with an expandable box and a robust operating system. Show off real applications -- medical, media, inventory, automation -- there are products in all these areas.

Demonstrate integration between this new platform and cellular platforms. Focus on benefits of Always On for customers, for manufacturers, and for re-sellers.

Only by turning its communications chips into platforms can Intel keep them relevant long enough for them to become profitable. It's been getting hammered by rivals like Broadcom, who develop different chips for each product, and can give OEMs four unique solutions a year.

The fact that those solutions don't work together isn't relevant to Intel's rival chip-makers. Each product solves a unique problem and is sold as a solution. The fact that it then causes a new problem merely means the customer needs another product, and then another one.

This is what a platform strategy eliminates. A platform offers interoperability with the other platforms a customer buys.

That's how we get to Always On. We don't get it through point solutions. We get it through platforms.

And that's how Intel gets its groove back.