Making IT admin easier
The Interview
Making IT admin easier
Jen Larson, Intel
Intel’s GM for Commercial Client Segments reveals a host of new vPro features
Intel’s vPro platform for business PCs was first launched 20 years ago, debuting alongside the company’s long-departed Core 2 Duo chips.
Even back then, vPro was focused on similar features to those it offers today: out-of-band management, enterprise-grade security and standardised business platforms. But, of course, the IT world has changed enormously in the past couple of decades, which is why Intel has recently revamped vPro to make it easier to recover from incidents such as the CrowdStrike outage and to work with AI agents.
We met Intel’s general manager for commercial client segments, Jen Larson, at the company’s Pro Day in New York to find out what the changes to vPro will mean for IT admins.
PC Pro:
We’ve had quite a few Intel vPro developments in the past year in terms of making things easier for people with Microsoft Intune integration and a one-click install…
Jen Larson: I will say that it’s drastically easier. You can activate minutes versus days, few steps versus multiple steps as we had before.
PC Pro:
And so have you seen user numbers increase because of this?
Jen Larson: Absolutely. With the Intune integration that happened just about a quarter ago, we saw our activations skyrocket. So actually we said 1,300 [new activations] when I recorded the briefing [for the Intel Pro Day]. Three or four days later, we have over 1,400 activations. So you can see the interest in vPro, because it’s simple. And those are customers that are global, those are customers that are across big, massive enterprises – government, education and SMB – so really interesting to see and lots of really positive responses.