Innovating Above and Beyond Standards

By the end of 2008, Intel will have shipped three platform generations of Intel® CoreTM2 processors enabled with Intel® vProTM technology, offering unique energy-efficient performance, built-in manageability, and proactive security features targeted at information technology (IT) organizations for large, as well as smalland medium-sized enterprises. Intel vPro technology solutions, offered in strong collaboration with ecosystem independent software vendors (ISVs), have demonstrated significant return on investment through the reduction of total cost of ownership (TCO), attributed primarily to the unique capabilities in platforms enabled with Intel vPro technology. In this article we describe the open manageability framework offered by platforms enabled with Intel vPro technology. We begin with the history of Intel’s client platform innovations above and beyond standards in the context of Intel vPro technology and provide examples of how standards and innovations are integrated to produce some of Intel's best products and technological advances. We also describe Intel’s role in co-founding and driving the relevant standards existing in the market today, such as Web Services Management (WS-MAN) and Desktop Management Taskforce/Desktop and Mobile Architecture for System Hardware (DMTF/DASH). We then provide an in-depth description of the manageability architecture, including details of the platform capabilities and technology ingredients, as well as the open interfaces that ISV products use for managing and controlling these platform capabilities. Finally, we discuss future ecosystem development opportunities for ISVs, based on the open interfaces run on Intel vPro technology. The target audience for this article is system integrators, IT professionals, and ISVs.