Custom IT Configurations for Remote Manageability

Connection

You need turnkey technology that just works out of the box. It needs to integrate into your existing infrastructure, workflows, and processes. Connection delivers custom integration services on your schedule through its Technology Integration and Distribution Center (TIDC), a world-class configuration and distribution facility. 

The state-of-the-art integration lab covers more than 50,000 square feet, with over 2,000 live connections and 50 GB fiber-optic lines. Over the course of a year, the TIDC’s ISO 9001:2015–certified configuration lab delivers more than 550,000 custom configurations. Equipped with the latest technologies and powered by industry-leading methodologies, the TIDC completes even the largest custom configuration orders to exact specifications.

Technicians maintain extensive certifications and authorizations from all major manufacturers, with more than 90 percent of the team holding one or more CompTIA certifications. The team is current on industry developments and on advances in partner technologies and best practices. 

Custom Integrations that Simplify Your Technology Lifecycle

This combination of high tech with high touch means you can easily optimize your end-user experience with custom configuration services, convenient deployment options, and advanced inventory planning and rollout management.

Connection’s configuration, inventory, and asset management services include:

Provisioning and imagingVPN-based provisioningDeployment hosting
Mobile provisioningConcierge configuration services for Google and Microsoft (Autopilot and ZTE)Jamf services
Location-in-a-BoxAsset tagging and data captureKitting/reverse kit solutions
Laser engravingInventory planning and rolloutInstructions document/printing insertion service

A significant IT configuration service that many enterprises are now taking advantage of is remote management.

Why IT Staff Need Remote Management 

Today’s employees are increasingly mobile in both geographic location and working environment. And yet, IT teams need to be able to support those employees and their compute devices no matter where the device is located, including outside the corporate firewall and in the cloud. In today’s chaotic economic environment, it is not feasible in time or fuel costs to deploy an IT technician to be on-site, or even to ship devices to and from the IT team. Potentially more significant is the residual carbon footprint generated from such actions.

Beyond troubleshooting passwords and systems access, other IT challenges can include a nonresponsive operating system (OS); critical firmware, software, or security updates; or system patches for remote devices. For business continuity, IT staff need flexibility to schedule such updates outside of productive business hours. It’s just as important to have an efficient, integrated solution as well as a centralized view of organizational devices, including hardware components and technical documentation.

Meet Intel® Active Management Technology (Intel® AMT)

Intel vPro® Enterprise1 for Windows OS gives PCs the power business requires to help improve productivity through enhanced performance and strengthen data security, as well as give greater fleet management control. Research suggests a potential benefit of Intel vPro® is that employees work more effectively with less downtime. Because of the benefits of quicker IT response times, easier issue resolution, and other productivity improvements, employees can save up to two hours per month when using Intel vPro platform-based devices.2

Intel vPro features the modern manageability tools of Intel Active Management Technology (Intel AMT)3 built into the system. The modern manageability tools that come with Intel vPro Enterprise provide remote access to intelligent devices, such as smart vending machines, remote/digital billboards, or software hubs in conference rooms.

Within Intel vPro, Intel AMT enables IT teams to remotely power devices or multiple systems across every worksite, powered on or off, as well as troubleshoot endpoints with keyboard, video, mouse (KVM) functions. IT staff can set wake-up times and schedule updates to ensure maintenance happens as well as conserve resource consumption when devices are unattended or not in use.

Intel AMT streamlines device administration. Intel AMT is, essentially, a direct-connect to the end user and their device. With Intel AMT, you can connect remotely to a PC even when it is off or the OS2 is down. Intel AMT is the only commercial remote remediation solution to return a PC to a known good state, no matter where employees are working. And it’s the only commercial solution for remote out-of-band manageability over Wi-Fi.2

Hardware-based Intel AMT provides persistent out-of-band connectivity that operates independently of the OS, allowing fixes to a wider range of system issues. Repair corrupted drivers, application software, or the OS on nonresponsive systems that won’t run or boot.

Intel AMT also gives tools to help onboard and problem-shoot new users as well as customized software and applications. The TIDC can get a device user-ready, packaged, and shipped quickly to meet organizational IT goals. Altogether, Intel AMT is the built-in solution that empowers comprehensive remote manageability for IT organizations to help keep business running smoothly. And the TIDC is the only authorized provider that can configure and activate Intel AMT on devices ready for deployment. Learn more about TIDC or contact the team to explore custom configuration services for your next deployment.

Download this short paper to learn more about Intel® Active Management Technology


[Footnotes]
1. All versions of the Intel vPro® platform require an eligible Intel® Core™ processor, a supported operating system, Intel® LAN and/or WLAN silicon, firmware enhancements, and other hardware and software necessary to deliver the manageability use cases, security features, system performance, and stability that define the platform. See intel.com/performance-vpro for details.
2. Forrester, “The Total Economic Impact™ Of The Intel vPro® Platform,” January 2021, https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/business/enterprise-computers/resources/vpro-platform-tei-case-study-2021.html.
3. Requires activation and a system with a corporate network connection, an Intel® AMT-enabled chipset, network hardware, and software. For notebooks, Intel® AMT may be unavailable or limited over a host OS-based VPN when connecting wirelessly, on battery power, sleeping, hibernating, or powered off. Results dependent upon hardware, setup, and configuration. For more information, visit intel.com/technology/vpro/index.html.
Intel® technologies may require enabled hardware, software, or service activation.
No product or component can be absolutely secure.
Your costs and results may vary.
© Intel Corporation. Intel, the Intel logo, and other Intel marks are trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries. Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.

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