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Hello, and welcome to Advantech InnoTalks.
I'm your host, Matt Dentino.
And today's topic, remote management of edge computers
is a very timely topic and one that we wanted to address today
for a number of reasons, which we'll
dive into in just a moment.
I recently read that by the end of 2018,
there were an estimated 22 billion
internet of things connected devices in use
around the world.
It got me to thinking that as the sophistication
of both hardware and software in the consumer electronics
industry skyrockets, there's an increasing
share of electronic devices being produced around the world
today that are going to be manufactured
with internet connectivity.
That forecast said that by 2030, there'd be around 50 billion
of these IoT devices online somewhere, which
is going to create this web of interconnected devices spanning
everything from your cell phone to the washing machine.
And with that explosion of tech savvy consumers,
is going to come the dawning of this new age of manufacturing
in order to keep up with that new tech growth.
The notion of the traditional manufacturing plant
being a dark and gloomy factory may soon
be a thing of the past.
We're currently-- we're undergoing
this fourth Industrial revolution,
if you want to call it that.
We call it industrial-- industry 4.0.
And we're overhauling manufacturing processes
through innovation, digitization, and automation
to create what we call the smart factory.
And in the heart of those smart factories
is that the physical network of connected smart devices,
and collaborative and industrial robots, and autonomous
vehicles, and just other objects out there collecting data
they use in collaboration.
And that's the part that's going to create this huge internet
of things explosion.
Now, these IoT devices are equipped
in our plans and our manufacturing facilities,
and our water treatment, all across the globe
are equipped with this remote sensors, remote controlling
devices across all industrial infrastructures.
And they're going to allow for the integration of information,
and then the exchange of that information
with the physical world via these computer-based system.
As a result of all of that innovation,
manufacturers can use this vast amount of data
to more completely monitor and oversee
the physical manufacturing activities
or processes to improve on their efficiencies
all along that supply chain.
But what happens when the unexpected or the unheard of
situation occurs and a remote site goes down, or worse yet is
taken down?
Who drives out there to reboot the system,
or to start on-site recovery process?
Well, maybe no one.
And that's what we're here to talk about in today's is
InnoTalk on managing edge computers remotely.
Joining me today in our discussion
is my guest, Brook Berhane.
He's Global Segment Marketing Manager of Intel Corporation.
Brook, welcome to InnoTalk.
Thank you, Matt.
That was a great opening.
Well, thank you.
Now we're going to dive in.
But before we dive in, I gave our audience your title.
But to paraphrase an old saying, no man is a title.
So why don't you give us--
take a moment and give us a little bit
about your background and what you do at Intel.
All right, thank you for having me today, Matt.
I'm very excited to be here to talk to you
about this new technology.
I started early 2000 at Intel, but almost 20 years ago.
With a computer engineering degree,
I began my career as a component design engineer
doing architecture, design, and validation on SOCs,
our system on chip designs.
After doing that for about 10 years,
I went for my master's in global business administration.
And so I started working closely with the embedded customers
at Intel in solving their technical problems
with their designs as they launch new platforms
with our latest CPUs.
After a couple of years of that, I
went into a more technical marketing and business
development role in the industrial space, which
includes manufacturing, energy and oil
and gas markets in IoTG, which is Intel's Internet of Things
Group.
And for the last several years as the global segment
marketing, I've been leading strategic engagements.
And as part of industrial PC campaign initiative,
I've been working closely with our vPro/AMT
team, central team, to drive the strategy specifically
for our industrial customers.
That is the technology that allows our users to manage
their edge computers remotely.
And that will be the main topic today
that I'm looking forward to discussing with you, Matt.
Excellent, excellent.
Thank you for that work.
With your background, today's topic is just a natural fit.
So let's dive right in.
We want to talk today about remote system management
capabilities and what is driving their adoption
in the industrial market space today.
During our discussion, we're going
to toss out a ton of acronyms to the crowd here.
Things like OOB, KVM, AMT, we just heard, iBMC.
We're going to introduce people to the Intel
and Advantech technologies that enable.
Things like vPro and DeviceOn respectively.
All in an effort to kind of paint this picture
of how and why companies are quickly
implementing these new technologies across the globe.
So how about if we start right there.
Let's-- before we jump into the specific technology discussion,
how about if we paint the picture for the audience
of the process as it had been done for decades with a simple
illustration.
And then-- and how it can and now
is being done by those early adopters
of the new technologies.
And then after we kind of paint that little simple picture.
We can talk about the what and the
why that's kind of driving this adoption.
So I know, Brook, you had a slide that kind of gave us
just a quick overview of where we were and where we are going.
Let's talk through that.
That's right.
Thank you, Matt.
We do have a nice, fun animation slide that shows how
with non-vPro platforms whenever the system crashes, the system
administrators normally send out a truckload
to have that fixed, which can be time consuming.
You deal with traffic and travel time.
And it's also very costly for the company.
But with Intel vPro enabled platforms,
system administrators and users are
able to remotely log in and repair any systems that
have crashed and do other maintenance type work,
like power on, power down, reboots, and other things.
And I'll get into more details of that later.
Excellent, excellent.
So one more slide just move that into that industrial space.
When we look at that central control room,
we're talking about technologies that
will allow not only on-site but that remote management.
And so even third party type remote management, I guess,
is what I was getting ready to indicate.
We'll talk more specifically about that here in a minute.
But the technology is where I want to go to next.
And that is, what's enabling these capabilities
from Intel and Advantech?
I know that on the Intel side, Brooke,
it all starts with vPro.
And you kind of mentioned that.
Give us a deep dive on this.
What is it, where is it, and what enables it?
How does it work for us?
That's right.
Thank you, Matt.
Great question.
So the Intel vPro Platform is a brand name
for a set of hardware technologies and solutions
that are bundled together and utilized to build optimized IoT
edge and business computers.
It has broad market support with over 100 new systems being
produced from our top manufacturers
around the world every year.
It has strict verification program with formal brand
requirements and other testing and verification
for functionality to make sure that every system that's
released is in compliance.
And the vPro platform has four major components to it.
It has performance, security, stability, and manageability.
And AMT which stands for Active Management Technology
is the manageability piece of vPro
that allows for the remote management for edge computers
and business computers that we're
going to be talking deeply into today.
All right, so you kind of went into it a little bit.
But I think there was another slide we didn't looked at.
One of the parts that make up that AMT,
that Active Management Technology,
can you take us through that?
Yes.
Before that, let me get into the history of vPro
if you don't mind.
So vPro/AMT this is nothing new for Intel.
It's been around for 15 plus years in our platforms.
It started around 2006 with our Centrino platform.
And almost every year or every other year
since then, it's been getting updated and getting improved.
So with the most recent updates between 2017 and now,
have been some features like support for KVM headless
devices, which stands for keyboard, video, and mouse.
So that users are able to get into a PC
and be able to have command line and fixed and run processes.
VPro is in various of our platforms from desktops,
and laptops, 2 in 1's, all-in-one's,
point of sale devices in the retail space,
digital signage workstations, vending machines,
and even industrial systems, which
is what my group focuses on.
Now you asked about what makes up the vPro/AMT?
There are three main ingredients in order
to have the vPro capability enabled.
There's the hardware piece, which is really the CPU,
the central processing unit.
Those are the core i5, i7, i9, and the Xeon processors.
Those need to be paired with a specific type of chipset.
The chipset is the companion chip to a CPU.
And the last, the third part is the networking
in the Intel LAN network or the Intel Wi-Fi controller
networking.
So what those three pieces--
and from the chipset, there are specific models.
And we've listed them in the slide.
We can get a closer look into them.
But with those three pieces is how
a user will be able to enable vPro and AMT
and have remote accessibility to their PCs.
Excellent, excellent.
Well, I promised the audience that we were going
to toss out some acronyms.
And we just picked up a couple.
AMT, you and talked about earlier, KVM.
Let's talk also about and expand on that the OOB.
We touched on it and implants through a little bit earlier.
But tell us more about what it is,
how it's related to our topic.
So what does OOB stand for?
That's right.
So Intel management packet routing
uses OOB or out-of-band.
And what that basically means is the ATM receive network traffic
before the operating system.
And it's isolated.
So if you look at this picture, whether it's
in the wired method or the wireless method,
the AMT lives on the Intel management engine, which
is a separate piece or it's on the companion chip
I mentioned earlier, which is different than where
the operating system lives on, which is the CPU.
What that enables is--
and I'll get into that more, Is when your operating
system crashes, you're still able to remotely access your PC
and do those services, and also do recovery for your machine.
This picture shows that in all the things
you can do with out-of-band.
So I'm mentioning BSOD here, that's blue screen of death
as we know it.
In Windows, when your system crashes,
you get this blue screen with some data on it.
But it's very difficult to get out of that mode.
With out-of-band remote management,
you're able to recover from that mode
remotely because of what I just mentioned
how it's isolated from the OS.
So you can do remote power on and off on systems and monitor.
You can do a restoration of the OS
from a remote disk image that has crashed.
You can do schedule systems power down and up
for maintenance, for example.
And you can also quarantine devices
that you think might be affected by virus during investigation
through this remote management system.
So these are very useful features
of what out-of-band is able to give our users.
On the Advantech side, we're leveraging this AMT technology
and adding specific capabilities to our Advantech equipment
with the combination of DeviceOn plus iBMC solution
that's built on that hence generation Intel platform.
So DeviceOn is the software platform
and iBMC is the Intelligent Board Management Controller.
So I have a summary slide here that just basically shows you
that we're using the Intel and Advantech
technologies to enhance both the in-band and out-of-band
capabilities of our system.
On the in-band management, we support a unified user
interface across multiple operating systems
so that you have that constant look and feel.
We have things like batch control and task planners,
watch list for software and peripherals,
as well as that privilege access control using
McAfee's whitelisting.
And then a promise for backup and recovery functions.
On the out-of-band side, we support simply
remote reboot and that our on power up currently.
In the future, we're building on some new functionality
that we'll be adding device failure checking.
So downstream failure checking to report 80.
And then a one-click system recovery.
With that DeviceOn, we're helping
manage devices, software, data, and access, as well
as operational management.
So it's a very comprehensive software solution, again,
leveraging the Intel AMT capabilities.
That's how Advantech is leveraging
the capability that's been given to us by the technology
that you guys at Intel have been building into these chips
back for a number of years.
And we're just starting to really see
that adoption and the people needing to take advantage
or wanting to take advantage of those capabilities.
So that leads me into another topic.
And we could probably spend all day on this one alone,
because it opens up a lot of doors.
But let's talk.
And why don't you tell me from Intel's point of view,
what is one of the trends--
what trend we're moving towards?
And why is this remote management
it's kind of no touch approach to managing its systems remotely?
Why is it such a hot topic?
That's right.
Thank you, Matt, for that.
Before I go there, though, I do want to say iBMC--
Advantech iBMC is a great complimentary feature
to vPro/AMT.
We're very happy with the work that you guys have done.
So thank you for that.
Excellent.
Thank you.
So, yes, in light of the COVID-19 global pandemic,
demand for Intel vPro and AMT solutions are on the rise,
Matt.
Many system administrators have taken
advantage of the AMT remote management
features to monitor and update their edge
devices during the pandemic.
In energy, for example, at substation's
wind farms and other remote areas.
In oil and gas at their oil rigs.
And these can be offshore sometimes, a very remote.
Exploration sites and pipelines.
There's been increased use of vPro
because of their remote nature and hazardous as well.
With many stores, businesses, and even manufacturing
facilities closed, they've had a chance
to maintain their machines to do OS patches and updates.
So they've been leveraging AMT to assist with these tasks.
We even saw this from our sister group in retail,
banks have been--
engineers in banks have been using
AMT to support some systems that were not responsive
or shut down, ATMs, for example.
So the team helped out to turn them on remotely using AMT.
And in general, customers who activated in the past
are now asking us to help them enable more systems with AMT
because they see the value.
They want to enable more in other departments, for example.
Customers who have put AMT aside in the past have now
seen the value of this AMT and they've reached out,
come back to get our help to enable remote management.
And new customers also are really
realizing the need and the usage of AMT.
And they're asking for activations with our teams.
So to summarize it all, we do see this trend.
We saw this huge increase in demand and popularity
in many different industries in markets across the globe.
And there's a couple of reasons for that.
This feature brings a lot of benefits to the users.
Employee safety is one of them.
Obviously during the pandemic, most businesses shut down.
And people have to work from home in order
to prevent from the virus spreading.
And using AMT, a lot of businesses
were able to continue doing business.
But also having the remote access.
Companies can avoid their employees
from being exposed to some of the harsh environments
and hazardous environments, like I mentioned in oil and gas,
for example, or energy.
Yeah, I see that in the--
we do a lot of work down in the oil fields down
in Texas and even offshore.
And you're talking about the location, not just
the hazardous location.
But if you've got a rig that's a mile and 1/2 or two miles
offshore, it's not an easy thing to get an expert out there
to go work on something that went bump in the night, right?
That's right, absolutely.
And as another example, there is a semiconductor
and smart production case study where
Intel's vPro/AMT is being used and it's complemented
with different iBMC, right?
Can you talk a little bit about that, Matt?
Yeah, absolutely.
What we're doing in this smart production facility
we're leveraging the AMT technology
from the Intel side with our DeviceOn software suite.
And we're able to monitor a large number of production
process management devices, so those IoT devices,
any time for their health and/or any software
issues has anything hiccups.
Do we have a crash somewhere?
We can provide notification via email, via text message
and be able to do over the air updates and fixes with that.
We also have the remote troubleshooting
that we've just talked about.
Being able to eliminate the cost of time when something fails.
So we can immediately get right back
into the recapture and resolution of whatever caused
that machine to go offline.
And we can remotely-- certainly if it's as simple as an on/off,
just recycle it.
We can remotely power on or off.
So all those different things that we talked about
as being a part of that for AMT and vPro technology.
We're leveraging that through DeviceOn
with our iBMC solutions in our servers
and in our Advantech equipment.
And so that case study just shows
that in a very sophisticated and a very unique environment that
has lots and lots of connected devices,
we have the ability to monitor.
It's like a doctor with a stethoscope always on,
always looking, always checking, always asking
the right questions, always looking at the right stuff,
and always being able to act appropriately
whenever a situation or an anomaly arises.
It's great case study.
We'll have it up online for people
to look at if they'd like to see more about it.
Absolutely.
And then one of the main, probably
number one goal of manufacturers usually is to reduce downtime.
And that comes down to the bottom line, right?
You're saving cost and time.
And those are very, very important things.
And so by using AMT and by being to-- being
able to remotely manage your systems, reducing downtime
really has a big value, value-add to our customers.
And lastly, what I want to mention is security.
Security is a big deal.
And in fact, you might have heard the recent cyber-attacks.
First it was the pipelines.
And then there was another, I think, meat factory.
And now just this week, earlier this week, I
think I heard over 1,000 businesses across the world,
hackers targeted a range of IT management companies
and are requesting a $70 million payment in bitcoin
in exchange for a decrypter tool,
so that victims can go back and recover.
So and security is one of the things
that vPro platform provides.
And that could be another topic for another day.
But as a package, those are the types of values it brings--
vPro and AMT bring to our customers.
Yeah, Brook I agree with all of those things
that you just talk through, the pandemic,
the reduction of cost, the security,
all very, very strong drivers of why remote management is
so critical.
And as the internet of things expand and more and more things
are brought online, that we have to be very aware of where they
are, what they're doing, what their health is, and then
being able to bring them back up online quickly and cost
effectively and securely.
Extremely important.
So those are all goals of what we're
trying to get with the Advantech side of this collaboration.
And we so much appreciate all that Intel
has brought to the table so that we can actually
do some of this.
So I think it's been a fantastic discussion.
I want to thank you Brooke for taking the time
to join me remotely and manage our InnoTalks topic today.
Do you have any final words for the audience?
I do want to thank you, Matt, and Advantech
as a whole for inviting me to come and speak today.
It's been an honor and a pleasure for me.
And thank you for the audience for attending this session.
To get more information on vPro pro and AMT technology used
at Intel, you can go to our landing page.
And I'll put that on the page here.
But you can also simply do a search on Google
and say, Intel vPro and AMT.
And I think it's the first link that comes up.
You can also always reach out to your Intel account manager
or representative.
And we can help you with setting up
your vPro and AMT technology's remote management on your edge
computers.
And with that, I'd like to send it back to you, Matt.
Thank you.
And with that, our time has come to an end.
I want to thank you, Brook, for sharing
your time, your expertise, and most importantly your insights
with us today.
Thank you.
And as always folks if you have any questions,
or you'd like more information on anything that you've
heard today, you can reach out to us at our website.
The address is below.
There's also an email address for InnoTalk
that you can see below.
We look forward to seeing you online and answering
any questions that today's discussion might
have stirred up.
For Advantech, I'm Matt Dentino, and I
hope to see you on our next InnoTalk.
Until then, shalom.
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