Check out our AMA with Intel vPro Platform Experts

Last week, Intel vPro® platform experts joined us on the forums for an Ask Me Anything about tech’s effect on the modern workspace. We’ve collected the best questions and answers in one handy place for you below and you can check out the AMA in full here.

Before you check out the digest, be sure to enter our sweepstakes for a chance to win a Dell Latitude 3270 laptop. Head to our giveaway widget and follow the instructions here. Entries are open through to midnight on November 17th, 2020, so enter now for a chance to win!

We want to give a huge thank you to the Intel vPro® platform team for taking the time out of their day to answer all your questions. We're deeply appreciative of Stuart, Grant, Emily, Jimmy and Dan for their in-depth responses to each question posted by the Community.

Dan Brunton: Here's a link to a white paper with some additional details: 

Q. I'm curious about whether this technology will trickle down into consumer products too?

DB: I don't know of any plans to add this technology to consumer devices. I think there are some business challenges to enabling this kind of solution to ensure personal and work data is properly compartmentalized and complying with various privacy laws. If that can be figured out, I think there are some interesting opportunities with this use case.

SD: Don't disagree with you,  however the challenge for any business is to ensure the business data, infrastructure etc is fully secured. That employees also have productive and stable devices that are suitable to support the apps and data that is required to be productive. The best way of doing that today is by having a known PC, built and secured from the hardware up. It builds that level of trust, predictability and allows IT to manage the environment securely. A couple of other points to consider. Would you be happy to have IT land apps on your devices, secure it and if you decided to leave or it was lost, they could delete everything on the device, as this is part of some organisation’s security model. Another point to consider is social equality and diversity, not everyone can afford a better device or would want that level of device / apps management.

Q. Product development is an area I've had a lot of involvement over the years and siloed teams were always an issue. Have you found that with remote working becoming a necessity over the past year that we've gotten more efficient at linking teams together and are there any successful ways that your team has handled projects that would not have happened otherwise?

DB: We've made a couple of changes to help insure success here at Intel on the Intel Endpoint Management Assistant team that are good examples. First, we moved to an Agile development process. Part of this change is to address problems right away. If anyone has a problem, you get it out there and address it, no matter how big or little it is. This has helped to remove frustrations that may otherwise go unmentioned when you are working remote. We've also embraced video calls. While being on camera all the time can be exhausting at times, it has helped us to maintain a high quality of communication.

Q. What would you say is the biggest innovation or change you've seen since you started your career?

Jimmy Wai: For me, it's the whole of cloud computing. It breaks the boundary of corporate intranet and allows the elastic provision of resources and services for employees, customers and consumers. It enabled a lot of the other innovations and usage models which we take for granted today. It has also accelerated the development of other key technologies like big data and AI.

Grant Kelly: We have a number of tools that we've released to help with that. Intel Endpoint Management Assistant (Intel EMA) is the management tool that allows administrators to manage vPro endpoint devices both in-band (OS up and running) and out-of-band. We've also released tools to make the deployment of Intel EMA even easier for customers to start testing. Here are a couple of links that describe the tools and deployment options:

Alder Lake has personally gotten me very enthusiastic about PC building. I pre-ordered an i9-12900K (it came early but I have nothing to do with it) as well as an ASUS ROG STRIX Z690-I motherboard. I won't be building it until late November (as I am waiting for G.Skill to release their flagship DDR5 RAM kits), but I'm going all out on this build! I will be doing my first ever custom loop with triple radiators in a Lian Li O11D Mini (it is a challenge I am looking forward to). Oh, and my storage... My first ever PCIe 4.0 SSD! I got the Corsair MP600 Pro XT with 4TB.

Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that I'm very excited, and I was just wondering if you share the same sentiment.

DB: I am excited about Alder Lake, glad to see you are too! It's been a few years since I've built a new gaming system so it's definitely time. The real question is if I will be patient enough to wait to get it at a discount or buy it as soon as I am ready to. While gaming isn't a direct part of my job, it's been a passion of mine for as long as I've used computers. It's a good time to be a PC gamer.

Emily Ryan: Yes, educating the workforce is definitely a challenge. Cyber/Security Awareness should always be an integral part of a company’s security program. End-User security awareness is even more important with the increase in remote workforce as their behaviors can create an unintended breach or allow unauthorized access to corporate data. A security-first culture in a company will provide another layer of protection along with the secure systems.

SD: Nothing springs to mind specifically... but one key area where I think we all in IT can think about is changing from KPI's to KEI's, or Key Experience Indicators, so instead of measuring uptime for example, look at measuring the experience for the individual. So, how long does it take to get things done, what is the impact of connectivity, saving and reading information, what is the overall experience that a user has with a device? This could then be compared across the devices in the fleet and be used to measure how effective devices are over time and the potential drop off.

Q. How has the pandemic shaped the way you develop products – and what are the future threats you are preparing for?

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