You’re a small businessperson, and the office computer guy (who actually knows nothing about computers, but was selected because he successfully hooked up a game console to his TV last Christmas) tells you that two of your 10 office PCs are down with viruses or “something,” bringing a halt to a customer proposal that’s on deadline. Two others in accounting keep pausing long enough for workers to take coffee breaks while the systems mull over their keystrokes, pushing the billing process into overtime. Revenue is at a standstill.

“What are my options?” you ask. “We could maybe buy some stuff to upgrade them, and call in a computer repair service,” the computer guy shrugs. Buying new computers in the economic downturn seems a questionable call. The computers are only three or four years old and likely you could get another year or two out of them.

Nonetheless, while you’re small, these decisions aren’t just about survival and cutting back spending. They’re about remaining competitive and having an edge when the Dow Jones climbs for real. And the business doesn’t run without computers. So, what do you tell your computer guy?

OK, I’m an Intel PR guy, so you know where this is going. Nonetheless, bare with me for a bit and there might be some ROI. Rob Crooke, VP for Intel’s Business Client Group, recently tackled some of the key questions around this dilemma in conjunction with a press briefing on a new study by Techaisle. The study looks at the financial aspects of maintaining computers for SMBs.

Here’s what the Techaisle study says: The average maintenance cost for a small business on a computer that’s more than three years old is $545. On the average, that includes $326 for maintenance, $99 for those upgrades you’re considering and $120 for out-of-warranty service costs. If you bought the extended warranty, reduce the latter. If you buy a new computer, the maintenance cost drops to $126, the first-year maintenance cost from a study by Jack Gold (Techaisle doesn’t provide a first-year cost.) So, the difference is $419.

“Yeah, sure,” you say, “but I have to buy a new computer!” Yes, but let’s see how that $419 might cut the pain. PDS has Intel Core2 Duo-based desktop PCs starting at $540 and CDW offers notebooks beginning at $700. If you add Intel vPro for additional manageability and security, you could move up for $699 and $830, respectively. So, you can buy the new desktop system for as low as $121, a 15-month payback. Now, if you’re larger than small, say 50-100 employees, you can see from the chart below that the payback is less than a year, and will actually make you a $40 profit. OK, OK, I’m a PR guy, but cut me some slack. I’m not making up the numbers.

Now that’s just the hard dollars that Techaisle captured. A new PC can have other benefits – reduced downtime from viruses, improved energy efficiency and enhanced productivity to name a few. So, maybe investing a few dollars could save you money in the slightly longer run and possibly help you keep your revenue flowing.

For more information, you might want to look at the Techaisle study. For a quicker overview check out the fact sheet and white paper, or better see the media briefing with Rob Crooke, ASUSTeK and Gigabyte.

Losing a laptop costs your company a lot more than just the lost hardware...think of the data that is on that PC. Now think about how many laptops you have in your enterprise and potential that there is for data breaches. Yeah, it is staggering - isn't it?!

Join us for the Securing Your Environment with Intel Anti-Theft Technology webinar on Tuesday, June 23 2009 to learn more about the impact of data breaches and how Intel Anti-Theft Technology can help you strengthen your PC hardware and security solutions.

Our panelists include Dr. Larry Ponemon, Mike Schulien, and Geoff Glave:

• Dr. Larry Ponemon, Chairman and Founder of the Ponemon Institute, will share information from his annual study on the cost of data breaches; the associated financial impacts to business, the threat of customer turnover as well as preventative solutions. The Ponemon institutue is a research “think tank” dedicated to advancing privacy and data protection practices. Click here to read the study.

• Intel Solution Architect, Mike Schulien, will discuss how Intel’s latest security innovation, Intel® Anti-Theft Technology, can combat security breaches by strengthening PC hardware and security solutions.  This new hardware-level technology will shut down a PC and/or its data if it is lost or stolen with the ability to reactivate it if it is recovered.

• Geoff Glave, Absolute Software Product Manager, will talk about how IT administrators can use Computrace, Absolute’s leading IT asset-management and security solution, to secure their assets remotely, automatically locking down a system quickly in case of theft or suspicious circumstances. Computrace technology is the leading security service now using Intel® Anti-Theft Technology. Computrace with Intel® Anti-Theft Technology Whitepaper

Logistics

Date: June 23, 2009

Time: 9:00 am PDT

Registration: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/217766930

And of course, what's an Intel Anti Theft announcement without Josh's stellar surfing video?

Importance of protecting company data has led to the advent of various types of encryption solutions being deployed in the companies IT environments. One interesting question that comes to mind is if all of the company data that could potentially reside in different types of devices e.g. Desktops/Laptops/Smartphones etc. need to be encrypted? The answer to this question may need to take into account numerous considerations including security risk analysis, cost, management overhead etc.

Considering only laptops and desktops – we have observed that laptop encryption is more prevalent as compared to desktops. The two major questions then are 1) what reasons prevent enterprises from encrypting desktops?; 2) what reasons would motivate encryption of data in desktops?

Disadvantages of encrypting desktops

1)      Lack of security need due to low risk of theft – It may be less likely, given the physical and other security measures deployed in a company, that the physical desktops are stolen from the company premises

2)      Manageability costs and maintenance – Admins have to manage additional user credentials, increased helpdesk calls and also recovery of encrypted data is hard.

3)      Trend towards using stateless devices and virtual desktops

Advantages of encrypting desktops

1)      Insider Threat – Disgruntled employees stealing data from within the enterprise premises. Most desktops have bigger storage capabilities than laptops

2)      Regulatory Compliances require encryption of all devices

3)      Multi-User Machine- If there are multiple users that are using a common desktop and one of them happens to be malicious then encryption helps protect the data from such users.

Please take this quick survey and let us know what you think? Click Here to take survey

Hello vPro Experts,

In case you've worked with any of the Powershell code samples I've previously posted, you've probably noticed that the AmtSystem.Connect() method executes asynchronously, and returns immediately. In this case, you'd have to develop some sort of loop in order to determine whether or not the connection was successful. Typically, I would just use this code to prevent a script from continuing before the connection was established:

while ($amtdevice.State -eq "Connecting") { Start-Sleep 1 }

But that's ugly, because, what happens if it never connects? Although it's nice to have the ability to asychronously connect to AMT devices, writing code and understanding the logic, to handle async processes is significantly more difficult than writing code that is synchronous. For this reason, we will look at how to modify and recompile the ManageabilityStack .NET assembly in the Intel AMT Developer Toolkit (DTK) to allow synchronous connections to AMT from PowerShell code.

In order to perform the next steps, you'll need the following:

• The Intel AMT DTK source code
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 (the Express edition is fully functional and free!)
• Microsoft Windows PowerShell 1.0 or 2.0 CTP3

Once you've installed these components, continue on:

1. Download the Intel AMT DTK source code and extract to a folder
2. Navigate to <Source>\Manageability Stack and open the Manageability Stack.csproj file in Visual Studio 2008
3. Open the AmtSystem.cs file in the Visual Studio Solution Explorer
4. Rename the Connect() method to ConnectAsync()
5. Copy the following code above the ConnectAsync() method:
   public void Connect()
   {
      if (State != AmtSystemObjState.Disconnected) return;
      ChangeState(AmtSystemObjState.Connecting);
      ConnectEx(this);
   }
6. In the Visual Studio Solution Explorer, right-click the Manageability Stack project, and click Build
7. Go to your <Source>\Manageability Stack\obj\Debug folder, and grab your new ManageabilityStack.dll .NET assembly

Now that you have a recompiled ManageabilityStack assembly, you can load this into PowerShell, and connect synchronously using the Connect() method!

Update: I attached the AmtSystem.cs file to this blog post, if you're not comfortable modifying source code yourself! You'll still need to replace the file, open the project, and recompile the library though

Trevor Sullivan

Systems Engineer

OfficeMax Corporation

Matt Semenza, The Expert Center's Sponsor For Tomorrow

Last week, Josh had the opportunity to catch up with Matt Semenza, Marketing Manager at Intel. Matt talks about his role as a megaphone to the community about what's going on with software solutions and their availability.

Because of Matt's help, we are able to recognize our top three contributors on the Intel vPro Expert Center!  Listen to Matt, as he talks about how these guys are able to save our customers time by sharing their best known methods, failures, and successes.

Our Top 3 Contributors

Congratulations to Trevor, Javed, and Joel!!! Thank you so much for your contributions to the Intel vPro Expert Center. And a big thank you to Matt, who provided the vPro jackets to show our appreciation. Trevor, Javed, and Joel are shown wearing their vPro jackets, below.

	Trevor Sullivan     Trevor is a Systems Engineer with OfficeMax Corporation. He has worked in IT since mid-2004 and has experience implementing and supporting mostly Microsoft products - including Active Directory, SMS and ConfigMgr, Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, software virtualization, VBscript, and more.
	Javed Lodhi   Javed is a Technical Marketing Engineer with Expert Systems. He has worked on numerous large-scale public, private, and military projects, including data warehousing solutions using SAS, network switching, routing, design, monitoring, and security, and storage and virtualization solutions on Intel platforms.
	Joel Smith   Joel is a Principal Support Engineer with Symantec Altiris. Joel started with Altiris Corporation when they were 192 strong and watched the business and company grow into 1000+ employees before merging with the greater Symantec Corporation. Joel works with the Altiris products that leverage Intel's vPro technology.

The Intel Software Network launched a really cool site today - the Idea Zone. It's like a comment box, but better. You can visit the Idea Zone and submit your ideas in four different categories: Intel Graphics Performance Analyzers, Intel Parallel Studio, Visual Adrenaline Developer Program, and my personal favorite -- Intel vPro Technology .

The really awesome thing about this site is that you can follow an idea from start to finish. Visit the site to submit your own idea or discuss ideas that others have submitted. Vote on the ones you like. And you can make watchlists for notifications when an idea comes to life.

From Ajay & Gunjan, our partners over at the Intel Software Network Manageability Community:

The objective of the Idea Zone is to harness the wealth of community knowledge for product innovation. I am hoping that Idea Zone will establish an ongoing conversation where you have an opportunity to share your new ideas on existing products (new features, improvements), provide product suggestions as well as provide feedback on Intel Software Network. You now have the ability to influence the products/tools features.

You can also learn more by checking out the frequently asked questions: http://ideazone.software.intel.com/faq

I'm looking forward to seeing what kinds of ideas are posted over there! Go check it out!

Michele

A hobby of many IT professionals is playing video games ... so we asked the question: "What Video Game Would Intel vPro Technology Be?" while at Symantec ManageFusion 2009 from March 10th to 12th. Check out the responses below from IT executives and managers, Intel partners and industry analysts.

To learn more about Intel's presence at Symantec ManageFusion 2009, go to: http://www.intel.com/go/managefusion/