Talking vPro Part 2: Transcript

Michael Pastore: We are here for part two of our talking vPro conversation. I am Mike Pastore, the Executive Editor of Special Projects at Internet.com, and I'm joined by Intel's Josh Hilliker.

We are going today to talk about power management with Intel vPro technology. Energy costs are a popular topic. They're right up there with gas prices.

It seems like for the last decade or two we've been plugging things in and now we have to pay for all of it. It didn't seem like it was a big deal for a time, but now the bill is here.

So Josh is going to tell us a little bit about vPro's power management technology. I've read that it costs about $80 a year to run a PC. It's almost $7 a month. I'm a person who's always turned my PCs off, but apparently a lot of people don't, and when you have a business or an organization with a lot of PCs, that really, really, really starts to add up.

So, Josh, Intel's vPro technology's power management features, first off, off the bat, there's a difference between the power management in vPro and the advantages that you get from that, and the power features that are built into the Centrino 2 and the Core 2 chips, so just to clarify, what kind of advantages are we talking about that you gain from vPro as opposed to just the way the chips are designed?

Josh Hilliker: Well, great question, Mike, and thanks for having me back.

So you know there's two things. There's managed power and there's power consumption, right? So there's – when you look at the Core 2 and the Centrino 2 platforms, we're constantly making those platforms better energy, to use less and to have better power. Right? So the ability to continue to you know get faster processors, better NICs and better motherboards, better chipsets, we're pushing that and constantly driving that power consumption equation to be better for the end user.

But on the other side, there's this whole conversation around managed power, which is where Intel vPro technology comes into the mix. And that is about how do you reliably take the machines you have and be able to talk to them, turn them off, turn them back on and patch them.

So back to your comment about people leave PCs on. That is just the reality. Most customers leave their PCs on 24 x seven to make sure they get all of the software and patching updates to make sure that they're ready in case there's a virus in the middle of the night, in case there's a new operating system download or what have you that the end user will get it during the middle of the night, it won't impact work during the day.

But what we're seeing, though, is that with vPro technology, you can take the machine reliably turn it off, right, so say it's 5:30, 6:00 p.m. or 7:00 p.m. and take those machines and turn them off and then in the middle of the night if you do have that critical patch, like hey there's a new virus out, we need to really get on you know update the virus signature files or we need to patch these machines, you can turn them on and put them right back to that power state so you can start saving money per PC every night.

Michael Pastore: Now, how does that work from an administrator's point of view? Does somebody have to be there to turn everything off at 5:30, turn it back on if it's a download that has to be done? How much of that is automated?

Josh Hilliker: Great question. Automation is the key. You know being in IT many years and learning about automation principles, you got to have it automated, and with vPro it is absolutely automated. So you can set up, and actually as the administrator you can set up during the day that hey, tonight at midnight, I want you to wake up every single machine, I want you to put this application patch down, and then I want you to bring them back to their power state, and then if there's any problems, then alert me there's a problem, but I want you to retry a couple of times then let me know.

So as an admin, you can schedule that, and as an end user, you start to kind of step away from your PC. You don't have to worry about "hey, is IT going to help me during the night? Am I going to come in in the morning also and it's blue screened because I didn't have the critical patch?" That you know you kind of remove yourself from that potential problem in the morning.

Michael Pastore: Right. There is on the Intel vPro Web site a case study about the state of Indiana, which I'm sure you're familiar with, and I'll put a link to this in the transcript when we post it on the Web site so people can read it if they're interested in it.

But they looked at what they were going to save by implementing vPro, extrapolate the numbers out over four years, they were going to save something like $1.5 million dollars just by turning PCs off. Is that the kind of savings that people really expect to see from a large-scale customer?

Josh Hilliker: Oh, absolutely. Well, if you're talking about enterprise …

Michael Pastore: Yes.

Josh Hilliker: … absolutely, right? You're looking at you know a million dollar figure based on the number of machines you have, right? A bunch of vPro machines you have.

But so I agree, good on the enterprise end, but also what's intriguing is even in the small medium business enterprise level, it's still a high value because 10 machines running all night versus 10 machines off is still saving you a lot of kilowatts on your bill.

Michael Pastore: The other thing that stood out for me from that Indiana case study, the desk-side visits were reduced and for people who are very into the green environmentally friendly computing, that was going to save them over four years something like 860,000 pounds of CO2 that would have been needed to get out and make all those desk-side visits.

We talked about that a little bit the last time we spoke, but can you kind of go over what can be done with vPro installed that can't be done traditionally. We've talked about turning the computers off, but as far as security goes, there's a lot of savings there, too.

Josh Hilliker: Absolutely. And we talk about the carbon footprint of people traveling site to site you know. In some enterprises you're spread out over multiple campuses or multiple cities, and sometimes your IT guy may not be in the same building and they've got to travel, right? So there's a question of one of you know them getting in their vehicle, moving from point to point, making that fix, so there's the downtime of the user.

So if you look back at you know the carbon footprint energy, absolutely, savings there with not firing that vehicle on and getting point to point, right, number one.

Two is when we talk about remote, like what can I do remotely so I don't have to go to the user site and you know spend gas, again, carbon. Sky's the limit. So you know whether it's a critical boot file, whether it's you know like NT loader, whether it's a driver file.

Just recently I had the pleasure of having a blue screen on my machine, and I was able to, through vPro, be able to look at OK, "How could – would this have helped me and model it?" And of course I fit my own PC, so there was a little bit skewed, but I was how could vPro help me on not having me walk to a technician's cube or me calling in for you know support in getting transition to go walk somewhere, and they could have fixed the problem. It was a network driver, and they said, “You know what? We could have fixed that and this is the model,” so you look at drivers, you look at software, you look at boot files. Basically the sky is the limit.

Michael Pastore: Let's talk about laptops for a second. It's kind of easy to imagine being able to power off a bunch of PCs that are in a building or on a network, but we talked about the Centrino 2 chip before as one of the chips that has vPro technology available.

So what can you do for your laptops?

Josh Hilliker: Great question. So Centrino 2, which is the newest. I think that's what you're asking about, right?

Michael Pastore: Yes.

Josh Hilliker: For anyone is that we start to now see a lot of the functionality in the desktop move to the laptop. So for example, you know a desktop mostly is in enterprise it's in the building, it's easy to talk to; it's always on the corporate network.

With Centrino 2, with specifically a capability called CIRA, code name, which is Client Initiated Remote Access, it starts to bridge the gap of "Hey, I'm at home, I got a blue screen, now what do I do?" And it starts to close that gap so that end user at home can basically phone home back to their IT infrastructure, and it's as if they're on their corporate network getting fixed. And that is truly part of the beauty of Centrino 2, is to have that last mile of I'm at a hot spot that doesn't require authentication but something that's open network and I get on that network, I have the ability to phone home back to my enterprise and get fixed.

Michael Pastore: That sounds like that would be a big help. We see a lot in security circles, people talk about the machines are being brought home, they're being hooked up to networks, but you can't ensure their security, whether it's at home or it's at Starbuck's or wherever it is.

So it's kind of extending the corporate security and functionality out to the computers, wherever they are.

Josh Hilliker: It is, and it's making a secure connection between the console and the PC, and having that relationship in a secure way so you can fix it, not by opening up your problem and saying, “Hey, I have this problem,” and then blast the Internet with "Hey, I'm trying to find my home versus having a secure home connection."

Michael Pastore: Right.

Josh Hilliker: And to do it at a level that you know in the past could never have happened. You know think about to me it's the dream of "Can I be in my boot up and be able to phone home to my enterprise and they immediately can see my BIOS and look at my errors and be able to fix me down the wire."

Michael Pastore: OK. So we talked about the power savings simply being able to turn off computers, being able to turn them on in the middle of the night only when they're needed as opposed to leaving them going all night long.

And we talked about the reduced desk-side visits because the remote management capabilities of vPro.

Anything else that contributes to the bottom line as far as saving power that you're going to get from investing in vPro technology?

Josh Hilliker: The only last element is how does the IT manager… how much money do you want to save? I guess I'll position that: What does the IT manager really want to do from a power policy standpoint? How do you push enterprise policy down to those machines, and then how do you make sure they're followed through on?

I think that's part of the beauty of vPro is that you can make sure that you know policies are set, policies are complied with, and that you know if a end user tries to say, “Hey, I don't want my machine on all night,” you still have the ability to override that and talk to that machine and put it into the right power state.

And so there's still that control for the IT guy, it's really trying to save money for that company that they can still do their job and still impact their bottom line.

Michael Pastore: And of course you, as a former IT guy, probably always wished for a way that you could push your policies out and make sure that they were enforced besides the regular e-mail reminders and PowerPoint presentations and all the stuff that a lot of us get these days.

Josh Hilliker: Absolutely. I mean, this is a – to me, vPro is the IT admin's dream come true, and this is just one big favor for me personally that the energy realm and how do I save and how do I not have people travel to continue to get their job and their fixes in place.

Michael Pastore: There we have it. We've got ways to save on energy, ways to save on travel, ways to save on CO2, all very popular topics, and things that people in enterprises all over the world are thinking about these days, and vPro has a chance to help you save money with all of them.

So thank you very much, Josh. I think we're going to be taking a look at another topic in the future, and I will make that state of Indiana case study available on the transcript.

And there's also the first, we did a broad overview of vPro the first talking vPro pod cast, and I'd encourage people who haven't looked at that one to take a listen or read the transcript.

Thanks again, Josh.

Josh Hilliker: Thanks, Mike. Have a great day.

Michael Pastore: You, too.

Listen to the Podcast Here.

Read part 1 of the Talking vPro interview.