Organizations struggling to manage their PCs have been limited to solutions that work within the operating system (OS). Intel has positioned vPro as an offering that can assist with out-of-band management, making it possible to do remote support of PCs without a working OS environment.

Intel introduced the first version of its vPro platform in 2006 with the release of the Q965 Desktop chipset and the first Core 2 Duo processors. At the time, we presented a less than glowing recommendation of the technology. Although we applauded the goals of the platform (enhanced management, improved security and reliability), we expressed reservations with the implementation. Specifically, it lacked support for notebooks, used a proprietary architecture and had only limited third-party support. Furthermore, its use of virtualization to support third-party management appliances created conflicts with other virtualization techniques because of the lack of client virtualization management standards. Uptake from the corporate customers was slow, with initially less than 10% of corporate buyers adopting vPro systems, and fewer still implementing the features.

During the middle of 2007, Intel released the next wave of vPro platforms for desktops and finally extended the capabilities to the mobile platform. With these latest iterations, Intel has addressed many of vPro's major shortcomings (support for notebooks and industry standards, and improved tools) and is now worth considering for management-oriented organizations. As a result, we have seen a significant increase in corporate adoption of vPro, with more than 40% of corporate desktop purchases now including vPro capability and even higher uptake on notebooks.

Our improved opinion on vPro is the result of five key changes made during the past year:

In May 2007, Intel released the fifth generation of its Centrino Mobile Technology platform, Centrino with vPro. This iteration consists of incremental improvements (support for newer processors and minor enhancements to component support), better integrated graphics and some new technologies (Turbo Memory and 802.11n support).

Centrino with vPro also delivers much of the same vPro desktop capabilities to the corporate notebook. Centrino with vPro builds on the features of the original Centrino platform and adds AMT 2.5, which provides:

Although the inclusion of AMT on the notebook platform is a step forward, it is not without trade-offs. One shortcoming of Centrino with vPro involves support for wireless connections. When the notebook is connected via a wired connection, all the vPro remote management capabilities are available — in particular, out-of-band management (the ability to manage the PC prior to the OS loading). In a wireless state, however, AMT management capabilities are limited due to the dependence of wireless network drivers and virtual private network utilities on the OS.

This means that assisting a traveling worker with a nonfunctioning and disconnected machine is not easily accomplished, which must be considered when evaluating the return on investment. Even with these limitations, the AMT capability still provides a benefit for notebooks when hardwired to the network.

In August 2007, Intel released the latest incarnation of the vPro desktop platform. It is built on three versions of the Core 2 Duo processor (E6550, E6750 and E6850). These 65nm processors are in the middle of the Core 2 Duo family and comfortably span the needs of mainstream business through power users. Coupled with the processors is the new Q35 Express chipset with the digital office (DO) version of the I/O Controller Hub (ICH9-DO) and the 82566DM gigabit networking adapter. Specific to management, vPro includes AMT 3.0, which includes:

We believe that with this version of vPro, there will be expanded third-party support from management vendors such as Symantec, Microsoft and LANDesk.

In early 2006, Intel's first iteration of vPro was a proprietary offering with limited vendor support. Gartner alerted clients to the proprietary nature of Intel’s offering and cautioned organizations to that end (see "Examining Intel's vPro Platform").

Then in March 2007, the DMTF released DASH, which is a broad management framework for notebooks and desktops. According to the DMTF, the DASH Initiative is developing a set of specifications that provides architectural semantics, industry standard protocols, and a set of profiles to standardize the secure management of desktop and mobile systems independent of machine state, operating platform or vendor.

DASH is a framework for manageability. The framework establishes management elements such as hardware reporting, behavior of applications and out-of-band management controls. As a framework, rather than a standard, the actual tool implementation and management interfaces may vary from vendor to vendor (such as those provided by Intel's vPro). In this light, vPro is effectively Intel's implementation of DASH. Over time, we anticipate that DASH will be further embellished and will eventually include a standard that Intel and others will embrace.

Companies looking to implement DASH-based management facilities will find vPro to be the most common implementation for Intel-based machines. Organizations that are concerned about the potential of being locked in to an Intel-only solution should examine their vPro usage models on a case-by-case basis and limit use to ones outlined in DASH.

vPro adds other management elements that are not included in DASH (see Table 1).

For many organizations, these additional benefits found in vPro are valuable. Other organizations may not find them beneficial. With this in mind, organizations need to weigh the value of these non-DASH elements vs. the proprietary nature of them. Organizations that leverage vPro are locking in their PC platform choice to Intel-only offerings, which are broadly available from all the major PC hardware OEMs.

One area where vPro can provide an unexpected payback is to lower desktop power consumption. New vPro systems will consume less power than similar systems from 2006 due to improvements in processor idle power (8 watts vs. 22 watts) and chipset (consumes less than 50% of the power of the Q965). More importantly, vPro enables a secure and reliable remote-wakeup capability without the network issues that have plagued Wake-on-LAN technologies for most of the past decade. This capability enables organizations to place their PCs in a low-power state after hours but still have them reliably available for installing security fixes or other maintenance. Although this requires the addition of a third-party tool (such as those from Verdiem or 1E Software), the power savings generated will typically pay for the tool and the vPro price delta in less than a year.

The current versions of vPro for desktops and notebooks are out of sync, with the notebook version running a "half step" behind the desktop version. Organizations must account for this when planning implementations, given that some more-advanced features may only be available to desktop systems. We expect that most organizations will be implementing the basic AMT functionality as they begin working with vPro and will be unaffected by the different versions.

A more serious side effect for corporate buyers is that notebook and desktop platforms will continue to be out of sync (different graphics and chipset features). This means that the goal of a single image across all classes of systems will remain elusive unless third-party "super image" tools are used.