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, as well as 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 a variety of environments from ever-evolving cyberthreats
- 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 be able to adequately handle these requirements or those 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.1
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. In fact, mature organizations are 20 percent more likely to experience improved employee retention as a benefit of investing in high-performance, stable PCs.1
There are several key factors to look for in business PCs that can meet 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 should respond not only to the data-intensive workload and workflow needs of business users of all types 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 a variety of environments to maximize employee productivity and customer and coworker interactions at the pace business demands.
- Form Factor: Employees need devices that deliver the performance they require in a form factor that supports the type of work they do. A mobile employee may need a lightweight, durable laptop with a long battery life and Wi-Fi connectivity, while an engineer or creator may need a workhorse desktop or robust workstation to handle their compute-intensive workloads and applications.
- Security: Enterprise cyberthreats are becoming more advanced, especially because of the nature of a distributed workforce working beyond the firewall. Software-based security alone typically cannot address the sophistication of today’s attacks, and a comprehensive endpoint security solution is required. Business PCs that offer hardware-based security working in tandem with software-based security solutions can help to limit the impact of attacks and protect data and computing infrastructure.Additionally, hardware-based security capabilities are now becoming a system requirement to support modern operating systems. For example, Windows 11 requires TPM 2.0 capabilities as well as 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.
Reasons to Consider 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 must be supported by performant technologies.
Additionally, computing technology continues to evolve, and any future technology systems will take these collaborative productivity and complex workloads into their designs to ensure performance.
As a result, older PCs will simply not be able 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 IT teams with the tools they need to keep your business running.
Intel vPro®: Built for Business
Intel vPro® is the unrivaled business computing foundation for organizations of all sizes.2
Intel vPro® systems are designed and tested for the demands of the modern workplace. Specifically tuned for peak business performance,2 each PC is equipped with hardware-based security and remote management capabilities that help protect businesses while providing them with a professional-grade interoperable experience.
Professional-Grade Performance
Intel vPro® Enterprise for Windows delivers professional-grade performance out of the box with an integrated suite of transformative technologies for the demanding business workloads and applications business professional use the most.
For example, devices on the Intel vPro® platform powered by 13th Gen Intel® Core™ processors benefit from Intel’s innovative processor design that dynamically balances performance and efficiency, enabling a better user experience for employees,3 such as better business productivity with up to 30 percent faster mainstream application performance compared to the current competitive offerings.4
Variety of Form Factors and Optimized Connectivity
Intel vPro® platform-based PCs are available in a variety of form factors and designed specifically to help provide optimal performance for users of all types. Integrated Wi-Fi 6E (Gig+) and future Wi-Fi 7 capabilities offer employees fast connections to not only work from anywhere, but also enjoy a premium business experience with a connection strong enough to support the most bandwidth-demanding apps. Laptops built with integrated Wi-Fi 6E (Gig+) provide nearly 3x faster speeds than standard Wi-Fi 5 products.5 They also deliver next-generation WPA3 Wi-Fi security features6 and up to 4x greater capacity for more-stable connections even in dense environments.7
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.8
Security and Complete Manageability
Developed for the IT professionals of today and tomorrow, Intel vPro® Enterprise for Windows also equips IT to secure and manage a hybrid workforce, without having to touch the PC9 while helping to boost user productivity—all in a single solution designed for business. Many features are enabled right out of the box, 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. 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®.10
Built-In Sustainability Benefits
As sustainability becomes a greater mainstream priority, PCs built on the Intel vPro® platform deliver built-in sustainability benefits for business throughout the device life cycle, from build to retire. Additionally, 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.11 This means you can equip your workforce with a performant device that meets their needs while also helping to 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 today’s complex workloads and business-centric applications. Having a holistic platform such as the Intel vPro® platform ensures employees have the power they need for real-world use while simultaneously ensuring your IT staff can support them.
Dive deeper into the capabilities of the Intel vPro® platform