As the present year comes to a close, some assessment is occurring of what has been accomplished and what should be accomplished for the coming year. In regards to Intel vPro processor technology, a key target I am pursuing is helping more customers utilize the technology. Throughout 2007, much of the emphasis was on demand creation and getting the technology "activated" within an Altiris environment. This has led to a number of resources, a few of which are listed below:

• Online activation workshop
• Best practices for configuring Altiris and Intel vPro
• Return on investment study, resources, and podcast for Intel Centrino Pro
• Activation "getting easier" podcast
• Community request to hear on ROI experiences and with resources available

The online community sites of Altiris Juice and Intel vPro Expert Center have a number of articles, resources, discussions beyond what is listed above. A majority of these postings focused helped to educate on what the technology is capable of doing, key learnings on how to enable or troubleshoot, and so forth. However – getting the technology to work is an early step. The next main step is getting the combined solution integrated into deployment and support processes in order to realize the expected benefits. This requires understand the combined technologies, associated usage models, customization to environment specific processes, training support and operational teams accordingly, and so forth.

If the task seems overwhelming – then we are on a similar mindset. Please keep reading.

Operational Usage Focus in 2008

Per the previously listed resources and studies, the return on investment benefit has a range of $50-$230 per unit per year. The lower end of the ROI applies mainly to mobile solutions (e.g. Intel Centrino Pro), while the higher end applies mainly to desktop units (e.g. Intel vPro). The focus of the benefits is on reduced deskside visits, ability to remotely diagnose and troubleshoot, proactive notification and response, power savings, and so forth.

A question to this community – have you realized or targeted that level of financial benefit? If so – would you be willing to comment on the Altiris Juice community or directly to Altiris or Intel representative?

To be fair – the question has to be balanced with the one-time and ongoing effort against the ROI benefits of the environment. Even further – if the understanding of the integrated solution is not complete, an increased difficulty may be present in the realization of the targeted benefits.

Thus my intended focus for 2008 – helping others to utilize the technology to realize the financial, operational, and associated benefits of Intel vPro processor technology in an Altiris environment. Definitely a collaborative task that no single individual could address – and I definitely have no plans to pursue alone. Community, partner, training, and other resources are being organized – and more information will be coming.

Some articles and materials have already been posted demonstrating how use the combined solution:

• A series on Intel vPro and Altiris TaskServer, the latest of which is http://juice.altiris.com/node/2960
• Does Intel vPro IDE-Redirection replace Altiris Deployment Server? (quick answer – no) http://juice.altiris.com/node/1904
• Streaming video content showing 1:1, 1:many, and IDE-Redirect example - http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=vproexp...

To help accelerate or refine the focus – a few questions to the community:

• If you have purchased and introduced Intel vPro into your Altiris environment, yet have not "activated" the functionality – what are the key inhibitors preventing this first step?
• If you have enabled or activated the technology – what key usage models and benefits are you using?
• If using the technology – what type of positive ROI have you experienced?