The Endpoint Imperative: In a Software World, Hardware Does Matter

Hardware matters. From productivity to security to innovation, make sure your machines can keep up. Intel’s Sarah Wieskus joins The End Point Imperative: A Podcast series from Intel to discuss the importance of stable, optimized hardware in today’s digital world.

Kevin L. Jackson: Hello everyone and welcome to this episode of The Endpoint Imperative, a podcast series from Intel. My name is Kevin L. Jackson, and I will be your host for this series. The topic for this episode is “In A Software World Hardware Does Matter.” From security to productivity. With me again is Sarah Wieskus with Intel, Sarah, welcome back.

Sarah: Thank you, Kevin.

Kevin: You know since our last talk, I’ve been dying to ask you about this migration to Windows 10. Everyone is doing it. And this move to as-a-service models where releases of new features occur two or three times a year is putting everyone in a tizzy. What does this mean for the hardware?

Sarah: Sure, great question. We spend a lot of time with customers helping them with this exact question. Intel is constantly innovating on the hardware side with our business brand of vPro. Again, vPro is our optimized for the business brand of hardware for the environment and enterprise. We are innovating on this platform every year, future proofing it for these new features and new releases, as an example with Windows 10 and Microsoft. Microsoft and Intel have a very collaborative strong relationship. We make sure that everything they would like to enable is supported on the hardware side as well. So that a customer can trust that from end to end, the hardware to the software, that everything is validated, verified and works out of a shoot.

Kevin: With this accelerated pace of updates and feature releases, enterprises need to think about the hardware, about how to support this new steady cadence of continued innovation. Is that about the size of it?

Sarah: Absolutely. We work hand in hand, again, to make sure the features that they are enabling every six months, so when these releases come out, run best in the enterprise, on top of our hardware. It is an end-to-end story. For example, from a security perspective, because security is one of the many reasons customers are migrating to Windows 10. We have enabled specific hardware attributes that Windows 10 can take advantage of, as an example. And security is so important for the enterprise, and again, is one of those reasons people are refreshing to Windows 10. We’re making sure that if a customer is going down that path, that if they chose to run that technology on top of the Intel vPro business brand, that those hardware security elements are complementary with the software.

Kevin: This evolution, though, is accelerating. How is the Intel vPro platform keeping up? What’s next?

Sarah: Great question, and as I said earlier, we are innovating on top of this technology every year. And this vPro brand really means four things to the customer. It means that it’s going to have the best performance to enable productivity. That it’s going to be the most stable solution we have for business. Meaning a unified driver stack. Meaning a more stable firmware. Also, as I mentioned before, that hardware security piece. There are specific hardware security features enabled on the vPro BIOS, as an example. And then finally manageability. With vPro brand we enabled something called “lights out management”, or out of band management, so that regardless of the state of the system, you’re able to manage that hardware and ensure the platform runs as optimally as possible.

Kevin: You know, unfortunately we’re at the end of our time for this episode. But it’s really good to know that Intel is making it easy for business, with vPro platform, now and for the future. Thank you, Sarah, for your insights and expertise.

Sarah: Thank you, Kevin.

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