Intel has unveiled its digital office showcase in Kontich, Belgium, where visitors get a glimpse of a future in which office IT systems could work flawlessly and securely, users have pervasive connectivity and IT maintenance costs finally drop to below the cost of acquiring new technology.
Working in collaboration with various original equipment manufacturers and software companies, Intel is developing various technologies aimed at enhancing IT security, enabling simpler IT management and improving connectivity and collaboration.
Key solutions on show at the digital office facility are Intel`s Active Management Technology (AMT), which allows IT managers to remotely discover and manage any connected PCs, and Virtualization Technology (VT), which allows for a PC to be partitioned so that multiple operating systems and applications can be run on a machine.
Intel EMEA marketing director David Rogers says market research has found that the main concerns of IT managers today are still security issues and the high cost of maintaining the IT infrastructure. Intel hopes to address these concerns through its AMT and VT.
AMT, already starting to enter the market in new PCs, is described as a "hardware and firmware solution that uses out-of-band communication for platform access, regardless of whether the system is turned on or off".
AMT is intended to ensure better asset management - an area of IT management that appears to need improvement. Speakers at the launch of Intel`s Digital Office showcase last week noted that most IT departments did not know exactly what IT assets they had.
While AMT adds around 23 euros to the price of each of the first PCs to ship with the technology, Rogers says Intel calculates significant savings on maintenance and man hours.
It`s estimated that a company with around 1 500 PCs equipped with AMT will see a saving of around $5 million on maintenance by the third year, he says.
Virtualisation effectively provides a "second channel of access into the PC", allowing the IT department to maintain repair or isolate a PC behind virtual partitions while the user continues working, says Rogers. It also allows personal and business applications to be hosted on the same machine without compromising security.
Brian Gammage, Gartner vice-president, told journalists that while virtualisation "has been around for some time", it was likely to flood into the mainstream during the next year.
Rogers says digital office technology could offer benefits to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the African context. Although AMT could be seen as a solution for large companies with their own IT departments, it could also be used by an SME offering IT services to other SMEs, he points out.
And seamless mobility would benefit any-size company, he adds. "We`re delivering solutions to real business problems," says Rogers. "The IT infrastructure needs to be manageable, secure and affordable. We`re using our expertise and R&D (research and technology) to make that possible."
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