Remote management and security speedup on the way
Intel has been showing off some of the capabilities of its vPro platform ahead of the official launch on February 4th.
Security has been given a big boost with software that is hardwired into the system and remote management tools have been added to allow IT support to both deal with, and predict, trouble.
“vPro was spawned in 2004 with a view to what Intel can do to help IT administrators redeem costs,” said Brian Tucker, director of marketing for Intel’s business client platforms.
“But the improvements are not just about IT. It’s also about improving employee productivity.”
He said that after four desktop iterations and three generations of laptop vPro the platform would be getting significant new improvements when the full specs were released next month.
The 2010 vPro platform will have the first update to Intel’s Anti-Theft technology, which allows IT administrators to shut down an internet-connected PC automatically, precluding an ability to wipe the drive. Hard drive encryption keys can also be remotely disabled.
Intel demoed the system using WinMagic’s SecureDoc software but the vPro platform is also compatible with other vendors, such as Absolute Software’s LoJack system previewed at CES this year.
On the encryption front the platform will have full support for its Advanced Encryption Standard New Instruction (AES-NI) and Intel showed how this gave a 3.5 times performance boost for a Corei5 system over an original vPro platform
From a remote control basis the vPro 2010 would allow managers to access a hard drive remotely regardless of power state. The administrator asks the user for a code and this allows remote access and diagnostics.
The company also demonstrated its Aternity remote monitoring software which uses vPro to dynamically monitor applications and detect where heavy flow areas on the network are and allow IT managers to take remedial action.
