How fast can a PC pay for itself?

With Intel® vPro™ technology, employees can do more, and in the process deliver a positive ROI on your PC and notebook refresh.

It’s a familiar story to IT pros: Users complain that their PCs and notebooks are too slow, unable to keep up as they multitask through the day.

“If I had a new machine, I could get more done!” they say.

But with IT budgets tight, those three-year-old machines have to last another year or more, so your admins tweak this and tune that in hopes of getting a bit better performance. It all takes time and, ultimately, the user isn’t any happier.

Guess what? Your users are right.

Replacing their three-year-old machines can quickly deliver a positive return on investment (ROI) for the company by both increasing user productivity and lowering IT support costs—in some cases dramatically.

Better management, improved performance and security, and power savings add up to a rapid ROI for PC refresh projects, benefits that are optimized by Intel® vPro™ technology.

Typical business users are putting a far greater burden on their desktop and notebook machines than just a few years ago.

They’re processing more e-mail—25 percent to 40 percent more per year through 2012, according to The Radicati Group often with large attachments. Many employ multiple applications at once and process video for videoconferencing, training, webcasts, and the like.

At the same time, older PCs tend to have more problems that require IT attention, including security issues.

A March 2009 study by Wipro Consulting Services titled “Using Total Cost of Ownership to Determine Optimal PC Refresh Life Cycles” found that in years four, five, and six plus, PCs experience a 53 percent, 87 percent, and 120 percent increase, respectively, in the number of security incidents per year compared to year one.

Overall, the study found that in year four, average PC support costs increase 59 percent as compared to year one.

The case adds up. Users know new PCs equal better productivity—just ask them.

Support costs drop, and newer PCs are far more energy efficient than older models, thanks to better power management and faster, cooler chips.

And consider this: PCs and notebooks outfitted with Intel vPro technology amplify ROI by improving manageability, in many cases recouping the cost in less than a year. vPro technology boosts performance and security, including hardware mechanisms to ensure appropriate security software is running and keeping applications and data more secure.

Support Costs

One benefit of vPro technology that will be immediately obvious to IT is reduced support costs.

In its study, Wipro Consulting Services found dramatic support costs increases in older PCs from factors including the need for updates, diagnosis and repair, hard disk failures, and security issues that require isolation and recovery.

By year four, support costs exceed USD 600 for desktops and USD 1,100 annually for mobile PCs, making it less expensive to replace them.

That’s what the State of Indiana has decided. It is converting 20,000 desktop systems to PCs with Intel vPro technology within four years and expects an ROI of 502 percent over that time.

In year one alone, the state will save more than USD 120,000 by taking advantage of remote management tools to reduce the number of deskside visits required by IT. Ultimately, the state expects to reduce deskside visits by 80 percent, resulting in a savings of more than USD 1.3 million over four years.

Similarly, the Cleveland Clinic is migrating to PCs with Intel® Core™ 2 processors with vPro™ technology over a four-year period as part of its refresh cycle.

The clinic was spending an inordinate amount of time trying to recover and patch “lost” systems that were powered down for long periods or moved to another location.

Now its systems management platform can

• locate,
• power on,
• inventory,
• and update machines

outfitted with vPro technology as long as they are connected to the network, saving approximately 671 IT support man-hours by year four.

The clinic expects to save another 4,900 IT support man-hours, largely through reduced travel time, from the ability to remotely re-image vPro technology-capable machines.

Patching and Productivity Savings

A large publicly owned utility likewise garnered significant savings from remote patching.

It has more than 400 notebooks used by workers in the field at substations, customer sites, or at home, making it difficult to keep them properly patched.

Since deploying notebooks outfitted with Intel vPro technology, the utility can now remotely patch and remediate virtually all notebooks at any time.

Eliminating site visits to resolve these issues has lowered the utility’s cost of patching notebooks by approximately 98 percent while speeding software resolution times by 82 percent.

Cumulative three-year savings from patching and software problem resolution combined total more than USD 61,000. Ultimately, the utility reached the breakeven point on its notebooks in just nine months and expects an ROI of at least 82 percent over three years.

A portion of the utility’s savings—about USD 15,000, conservatively—comes from an improvement in employee productivity, the result of faster PC problem resolution and improved uptime.

But PCs and notebooks with vPro technology also improve productivity simply by enabling workers to do more work faster.

In general, workers with PCs outfitted with vPro technology get a performance improvement ranging from three to six times when performing day-to-day functions such as:

• multitasking with office productivity applications;
• running complex spreadsheets while running a virus scan;
• and encoding video.

The ROI of PC Refresh

When you consider those productivity numbers, it’s easy to see the rapid ROI that comes from refreshing PCs and notebooks every three years.

But vPro technology can also result in significant savings in energy costs through the ability to remotely power machines down each night.

Cleveland Clinic expects power savings of 66 percent while the State of Indiana expects to save USD 1.4 million over the four years of their respective implementations.

Indeed, the model company created by Wipro Consulting Services, based on all 100 companies it surveyed for its 2009 study, showed that the 17-month ROI goes as low as 10 months when vPro technology is added to the mix.

Notebooks provide an even greater productivity and ROI boost, since mobility adds 51 minutes of work per day on average, Wipro Consulting Services found.

Employees are constantly being asked to do more each day. With Intel vPro technology, they can do just that, in the process delivering a positive ROI on your PC and notebook refresh.

ⁱIntel® Active Management Technology requires the computer system to have an Intel® AMT-enabled chipset, network hardware and software, as well as connection with a power source and a corporate network connection. Setup requires configuration by the purchaser and may require scripting with the management console or further integration into existing security frameworks to enable certain functionality. It may also require modifications of implementation of new business processes. With regard to notebooks, Intel AMT may not be available or certain capabilities may be limited over a host OS-based VPN or when connecting wirelessly, on battery power, sleeping, hibernating or powered off. For more information, see http://www.intel.com/technology/platform-technology/intel-amt/.