Emergence of the AI PC
Taking a holistic approach to performance, Intel® Core™ Ultra processors feature three compute engines that tackle emerging AI workloads such as content creation and complex data visualization. AI-powered features like smart framing and noise suppression enable advanced collaboration, while AI workflows enable better productivity, battery life, and security for everyday office usage. 1
Powering a Hybrid Workforce
The hybrid work model, now a common preference and strategic workforce policy to attract and retain talent, has transformed how work gets done and the requirements for supporting employee productivity needs.
For IT, enabling a successful, efficient, distributed workforce necessitates business technology that delivers a user experience built to meet real-world needs.
- Reliable and fast connectivity from anywhere.
- Professional-grade performance to support multitasking, content creation, video streaming, and virtual collaboration.
- The ability to secure devices and protect users in various environments from ever-evolving cyber threats.
- The ability to remotely maintain a fleet of devices efficiently without negatively impacting PC performance.
Older technology that wasn’t built for today’s use cases or to scale for tomorrow’s needs may not adequately handle these requirements or the requirements of newer systems. This is top of mind for IT professionals supporting businesses of all sizes.
In a 2022 Forrester survey of industry decision-makers, 69 percent of ITDM respondents indicated that enabling hybrid work for their employees is a top priority; however, 61 percent of ITDMs reported that their ability to support hybrid work was inhibited by poorly performing PCs, and 58 percent anticipated a struggle to support future hybrid work with the PCs they have.2
Business PCs for Enhanced Productivity
Setting your employees up for success with business technology designed for how they work helps to drive productivity and contributes to employee satisfaction overall. Mature organizations are 20 percent more likely to experience improved employee retention as a benefit of investing in high-performance, stable PCs.3
There are several key factors regarding business PCs and the demands of today’s dynamic workplaces.
- Professional-Grade Performance: PCs built for business should provide sufficient performance capacity to reduce interruptions and support a better end-user experience. Devices need to adequately address not just the data-intensive workload and workflow needs of business users but also provide additional compute headroom to support IT security, manageability, and telemetry tasks without impacting productivity.
- Connectivity: Business devices should be equipped to deliver reliable and fast connectivity in various environments to maximize employee productivity and customer and coworker interactions at the pace that business demands.
- Form Factor: Employees need devices that deliver performance in a form factor that supports their work. A mobile employee may need a lightweight, durable laptop with long battery life and Wi-Fi connectivity. In contrast, an engineer or creator may need a workhorse desktop or robust workstation to handle their compute-intensive workloads and applications.
- Security: Enterprise cyber threats are becoming more advanced, especially because of the nature of a distributed workforce working beyond a firewall, and a comprehensive endpoint security solution may be required where software-based security alone is insufficient. Business PCs that offer hardware-based security alongside software-based security can help limit the impact of attacks and protect data and computing infrastructure. Additionally, hardware-based security capabilities are now becoming a system requirement. For example, Windows 11 requires TPM 2.0 capabilities and a certain level of CPU performance, which older systems cannot support.
- PC Fleet Management Tools: Efficiently and effectively supporting today’s distributed workforce presents added challenges for IT teams who must remotely manage and maintain a fleet of devices. To better support employees and the companies they work for, minimize downtime, and reduce support tickets, IT needs business PCs built on a reliable and stable platform and a complete suite of remote management tools that can enable proactive maintenance and troubleshooting, even on devices outside the corporate firewall or with nonresponsive operating systems.
The Perfect Opportunity for a Refresh
The modern business environment has been dramatically transformed, and the impact of new use cases on older devices will be substantial. What has occurred is not just digital transformation but an entirely new way of working that performant technologies must support.
Additionally, computing technology continues to evolve, and future technology will consider the need for collaborative productivity and complex workloads in their designs to ensure performance.
As a result, older PCs will simply be unable to keep up with the technologies that power productivity going forward. Investments made to modernize business PC fleets will contribute positively to the bottom line by providing employees with the performance they need today and tomorrow for optimal productivity and providing IT teams with the tools they need to keep the business running.
Intel vPro®: Built for Business
Intel vPro® is the business computing foundation that makes PCs professional-grade.
Systems built on the Intel vPro® platform4 are designed and tested for the demands of the modern workplace. Specifically tuned for peak business performance, each PC has hardware-based security and remote management capabilities that help protect businesses while providing a professional, interoperable experience.
Professional-Grade Performance
All PCs built on Intel vPro® Enterprise for Windows OS come with exceptional performance and an integrated suite of transformative technologies for the demanding business workloads and applications that professionals use the most.
For example, PCs powered by Intel® Core™ Ultra processor and Intel vPro® provide optimal user experiences and unleashed productivity thanks to a new architecture that balances power efficiency and performance for complex business workloads. Compared to a 3-year-old PC, Intel® Core™ Ultra 7 processors offer up to 59% better application performance.5
Variety of Form Factors and Optimized Connectivity
PCs built on Intel vPro® are available in various form factors and designed specifically to help provide optimal performance for users of all types. Integrated Wi-Fi 6E (Gig+) or new Wi-Fi 7 capabilities offer employees fast connections to work from anywhere with a premium business experience backed by a strong connection that supports the most bandwidth-demanding apps.
Laptops with integrated Wi-Fi 6E (Gig+) provide nearly 3x faster speeds than standard Wi-Fi 5 products.6 They also deliver next-generation WPA3 Wi-Fi security features7 and up to 4x greater capacity for more stable connections even in dense environments.8
Thunderbolt™ technology, a feature of the Intel vPro® platform for many generations, delivers the fastest, simplest, and most reliable cable solution to any dock, display, or data device, supporting 4K video on multiple displays or moving massive files at amazing speed.9
Security and Complete Manageability
Developed for the IT professionals of today and tomorrow, Intel vPro® also equips IT to secure and manage a hybrid workforce without physically touching the PC10 while helping to boost user productivity—all in a single solution designed for business.
Many features are built right into the hardware, so IT can be confident with interoperable tools to enhance user productivity, help secure business data, manage critical devices remotely, and scale their fleet with confidence on a reliable foundation. When distant or hard-to-reach assets must be retired, IT can securely wipe the entire device, including the SSD, with Intel® Remote Platform Erase.
In a 2021 study by Forrester Consulting on the total economic impact of the Intel vPro® platform, 92 percent of IT professionals surveyed found that their laptops and desktops were more secure than before after standardizing on Intel vPro®, and 74 percent of ITDMs surveyed found that laptop and desktop management costs had been reduced with Intel vPro®.11
Built-In Sustainability Benefits
As green practices becomes a greater priority, PCs built on the Intel vPro® platform deliver built-in sustainability benefits for businesses throughout the device life cycle, from build to retirement.
More than 90 percent of the devices built on the Intel vPro® platform and registered by the Global Electronics Council achieve at least EPEAT silver certification.12 Additionally, large-scale businesses can save up to 28 tons of carbon emissions per year when utilizing a zero-dispatch strategy with the help of Intel® Active Management Technology.13 This means you can equip your workforce with a device that meets their performance needs while helping contribute to your organization’s sustainability goals.
The Bottom Line
Today’s workplace has changed, as have employee technology needs. At the same time, gen-over-gen improvements have advanced compute performance to support complex workloads and business-centric applications. Intel vPro® provides a comprehensive approach to business computing, ensuring that users have the performance they require to succeed, along with integrated tools so IT can better support them.
Dive deeper into the capabilities of the Intel vPro® platform