vPro and Altiris Update

by James Gaskin

December 12, 2007 —

Every time you touch a user's PC you lose money. If there's one big benefit
from the update of Intel's vPro hardware technology with Altiris software, it's
the way you remotely manage more PC problems than before, even when the PC is
frozen or turned off.

During the Altiris ManageFusion conference in October, I had the chance to
interview Fred Jentgen (Intel) and Kevin Unbedacht (Altiris/Symantec) about
the advances in recent PC management abilities. Watch the interview here.

The official party line? Save money two ways: manage PCs turned off to save
energy, and cut down even further on physical visits to PCs and even laptops
running on Centrino Mobile chips.

Let's say it's a few days after Patch Tuesday, and you've vetted your downloads.
So you send the e-mail to everyone saying "leave your computer on tonight
for updates."

How many of your users listen? Half? If so, count yourself lucky. And you know
who doesn't listen (hello, executives) because they call the next morning when
the update runs on boot. "My computer's doing something weird." (I
hope that wasn't your CIO).

The new version of the vPro chips allows management takeover of a PC even if
the operating system's frozen or the machine is off. Using these new tools,
your update script can wake up a PC, push the update, and shut down the PC automatically.
You don't have to go and touch the machine, and best of all, no phone calls
in the morning. Well, every patch update breaks something, but at least you'll
have fewer calls.

Although vPro chip systems still carry a small price bump, you can jump on
the green bandwagon and recoup the few dollars spent on the vPro model. Simply
sweep the network each night, ID the systems still powered on and not in hibernation,
and turn them off or force them into sleep mode. Since you've already asked
users to turn off or suspend their PCs, they won't come complaining about you
doing it for them.

OK, a few will complain. Just start asking those executives questions about
your budget cuts, sliding company stock price, or compliance with new federal
regulations. They'll suddenly remember a meeting and will get out of your hair
faster than they can backdate stock options.

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