Buyers' Guide
Time to future-proof desktop management
Published: 01 Sep 2008, 03:22pm
As business demands and user requirements shift, any IT management scheme has to hit a moving target. But now developments in processor technology can help cope with those constant changes.
Today's leading edge is tomorrow's legacy, so desktop management, like any other part of a company's IT provision, must be able to develop.
User demands will change, along with the equipment employees have on their desks and in their briefcases. The threats attacking the PC fleet will also alter.
On top of all that, business models and roles will change regularly, creating shifts in the tasks people perform. Of course, the technology available to control PC systems will also change.
Given all that, it is vital any desktop and laptop management system should operate essentially unchanged, whatever alterations are made to the underlying building blocks of the networked system.
Desktop management systems based on hardware clients independent of the operating system will be the most likely to be able to continue to operate - and continue feeding data into management applications as the network, and the fleet of devices attached to it, evolves.
Mobile management must be able to work over whatever network connection medium the PCs use. At present, most laptops connect over Ethernet, over a wi-fi link or using a 3G dongle.
Often a leg of the journey goes over the internet, and the traffic is encrypted using a VPN. In future, wi-fi links will move to the faster 802.11n specification, and 3G may evolve towards LTE or WiMax, or some other short-range communications involving other sorts of hotspot.
Wireless developments
"The wireless ecosystem has taken off," says Stuart Dommett, enterprise client product manager at Intel, "and wireless technologies will be changing rapidly."
Network technology is a minor change, and he is confident that handling these different connections is relatively easy for Intel's vPro - although it remains a minor issue that remote laptops cannot usually be woken up when management tasks are required.
Also, if a connection such as wi-fi needs to run from the operating system itself, then Intel’s Active Management Technology (AMT) agent cannot operate in a truly out-of-band manner.
Other developments include new operating systems, multiple operating systems and virtualisation. Because vPro's AMT is a hardware-based agent, outside the operating system, it can operate independently and can monitor all operating systems running on a virtualised system.
However, whatever operating system a user has settled on, there must be management applications and consoles available for it.
For widely used operating systems, this is usually the case. For example, Red Hat and Intel have been working to make sure that Red Hat Enterprise Linux and management platforms that run on it can receive and understand data provided by vPro.
"Linux and other operating systems have adopted vPro, and a developers' kit is available for any others," says Dommett.
"IT organisations can download the kit, to work with in-house software." Some IT organisations are working on secret high-value applications, so they prefer to do their own scripting to allow AMT to help manage their environment.
Rapid changes
An IT department where things change rapidly will in fact gain a lot of benefit from vPro, as it will help in distributing, installing and troubleshooting new operating systems and applications.
New applications such as unified messaging and VoIP-enabled call centres are ideally suited to the technology. Users in these environments rely on their desktop systems more heavily as they must provide real-time communications.
A real-time agent on the PC is a boon, in making it more reliable and enabling fast diagnostics on any problems with the voice applications.
Another major trend in today's IT world makes it more necessary to have desktops and PCs that can be controlled remotely. Users are increasingly outsourcing their needs to managed services providers.
Located offsite, these businesses are not able to visit users easily, even if they are in the office. Remote management makes it much more possible for this sort of business to operate effectively and profitably.
A final trend is towards "rightsizing". Companies have to rapidly manage changes in size and staffing, sometimes taking on large numbers of people and sometimes reducing employment, or transferring staff to other companies.
Managed desktops contribute a lot to this process. Staff can start working more quickly if their machines can be provisioned remotely, and their log-in details made ready to use right away.
It's also a major boost when dealing with this sort of change if the inventory of machines and the applications installed on them is up to date.
A new cohort of staff can be given machines that meet their performance needs and hold the applications they require right away, instead of requiring a lot of reconfiguration and other work by the IT department.
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