"The facts are that Intel makes several different lines of SSDs. Of the total, some are the Pro 1500 series referenced in the PR. Of those, only a subset having a certain firmware version support OPAL. Of those that support OPAL, ALL are ALREADY provided with the management capability software, developed by Intel."
Without researching the Intel Opal drives I will tell you that all Opal drives ship with OEM-based ability for basic functions including being able to authenticate to the drive so that the machine boots up and the drive encryption works. Where Wave and other third party vendors come in is for the enterprise management capabilities the OEM (in this case Intel) doesn't provide.
"Once again, Wave has only succeeded in getting their bloatware into the box."
There is no indication Wave is in the box. They may have provided fee-based engineering to Intel in designing the Opal firmware, but there is no indication in the PR that Wave is in the box and receiving royalties.
"This deal likely cost Wave a few million dollars"
I doubt that. As I indicated Wave may have been a paid consultant in the design of the Intel firmware but any cost to Wave would be in building their own support for the firmware and I doubt that would be significant.
AI
