Cloud

Fix PCs remotely and start them up again


Client crashes, software incompatibilities and a mix of different operating system versions create sleepless nights for system administrator – and the sudden shift towards home working has bought these problems sharply into focus. The root cause is that employees working from their home office generally use their own systems, and these are mostly consumer devices.  Not only are they potentially less powerful than the business’s own PCs, but they very rarely meet the same security requirements. To make things worse, they are more likely to be unstable and more prone to compatibility and upgrade issues. The result is an immense administrative effort, because where IT can go hands-on with the PCs in the office, that’s not an option with employee PCs in the home.

The new home offices: stable and powerful

For companies that, after the experience of the lockdown, want to continue to rely on intensive remote working in the future, this means that they have to replace the PC clients in the home offices as quickly as possible . But that alone is not enough. Only when the new business PCs can also fall back on a corresponding platform, via which the clients can be remotely fixed and started up again after a system crash, and the remote system admin knows exactly what is installed on the systems and how, can both the Employees as well as admins and IT managers can take full advantage of all the advantages of remote working.

Intel vPro platform: productivity gains right from the start

A tried and tested solution to this problem is Intel’s vPro® platform. The functions of the vPro platform are based on four pillars : performance, stability, security and manageability. These four areas are coordinated, complementing each other in their functionality in order to meet the requirements of users and administrators in the best possible way, and so reduce the overall operating costs of the client systems. “The moment you have installed Intel’s vPro platform, the ROI of the entire infrastructure skyrockets,” confirms Ron Tolido CTO, Continental Europe & Asia Pacific at Capgemini.

vpro platform value hub graphic rwd intel

28,160 hours of increased employee efficiency can be saved through better protection and management of devices with the Intel vPro platform. This translates into cost savings of $ 1.3 million over three years for a mixed organization.
Photo: Forrester Consulting

While Intel’s vPro platform can support the many new employees working from home and make them more productive, it also plays a crucial role in supporting the client PCs in large, national or multinational companies. Without the technology embedded in the vPro platform, it’s very challenging to resolve system crashes efficiently and at speed.

For example, the Japanese Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group operates over 300,000 clients worldwide. Administration is the responsibility of the Mitsubishi Research Institute DCS, working as a system integrator. The team can manage this number of clients only by using the built-in remote management features of the Intel vPro platform.

In particular, this kind of highly-scalable, remote administration relies on two functional areas of Intel® vPro technology: Intel® Active Management Technology (Intel®  AMT) and Intel® Endpoint Management Assistant (Intel® EMA )Together, they enable the IT operations specialists not only to solve common application problems, but also to remotely manage network issues, BIOS updates, operating system errors and security patches. They can do so even if the device is switched off or cannot be booted, and it all works without any problems while the device is outside the company network.

Intel Stable IT Platform Program – the basis for crash-free clients

The high system stability of the vPro platform is achieved through The Intel® Stable IT Platform Program (Intel® SIPP). Generating and managing a stable image is a complex matter; a single image requires extensive system testing and validation, and this is the only way to guarantee driver compatibility and ensure that any applications will function properly.

This qualification process can take up to 90 days. Only then can the images be made available to the entire company. Any driver and software updates will, in turn, result in retests to validate the updated configuration. For IT teams, this could mean planning and executing a new rollout, which in turn can be very disruptive for employees. All of this can only be mastered with a platform where the stability has been tested extensively.

Intel SIPP also supports the system admins in managing the software lifecycles. What’s more, Intel validates multiple versions of Windows 10 for any generation of the platform and, last but not least, ensures that all relevant system components remain stable for 15 months, or until the next platform release.

Hardware-based security

Security is another key requirement and here the Intel® vPro Platform offers various powerful hardware-based features: Intel® Hardware Shield monitors communication between the operating system and BIOS, protects against firmware attacks and ensures that the operating system runs on legitimate hardware. Systems with an Intel vPro processor also support the advanced security features of Windows 10 Pro and Windows 10 Enterprise.

Learn more about the Intel vPro platform and what it can do for your business

Copyright © 2021 IDG Communications, Inc.



READ SOURCE

This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you accept our use of cookies.