The Total Economic Impact™ Of The Intel vPro® Platform As An Endpoint Standard: Spotlight On Education

Intel commissioned Forrester Consulting to interview seven representatives from five organizations and survey 500 respondents and conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study to better understand the benefits, costs, and risks associated with using Intel vPro platform as an endpoint standard.¹

This abstract will focus on educational institutions’ use of Intel vPro and its value to their organizations as an endpoint standard. The interviewees and survey respondents from these educational organizations include:

• The chief information officer of a North American school district with 27,500 employees. The school district was two years into a four-year transition of its Windows laptops and desktops to Intel vPro-based devices, and it measured the impact moving to Intel vPro had on their organization.
• Seven surveyed IT decision-makers from educational and/or nonprofit organizations. Each of their organizations uses Intel vPro as its endpoint standard for Windows devices.²

Educational leaders are adapting to a new post-pandemic world in which the way students learn and the expectations of their parents and guardians have drastically shifted, especially regarding the use of technology in the classroom and which tools are available and integrated across environments.

This transition has added significant burden to IT groups that are often tasked with rapid expansion of devices and networks, all while maintaining user support, device security, and platform stability. These expectations often come with a limited budget and, in some cases, inadequate staffing.

Educational faculty and employees also often struggle with lower-powered devices that can make their work more difficult. Another pain point is limited remote management capabilities that delays resolution of device issues and further impedes work, especially for remote and hybrid staff.

The Intel vPro platform solves for these issues through a set of technologies in laptops and desktops that provide fast processors, advanced basic input/out system (BIOS)-level remote management capabilities, hardware validation and support, and built-in endpoint hardware-enabled security.

When applied to a composite organization, these attributes drive benefits of $4.32 million over three years versus costs of $1.38 million, adding up to a net present value (NPV) of $2.94 million and an ROI of 213%.

Return on investment (ROI)

213%

Net present value

$2.94M

INVESTMENT DRIVERS For Educational Organizations

The interviewee and survey respondents said their educational organizations struggled with common challenges that led them to adopt the Intel vPro platform as their endpoint standard. Key priorities for these organizations included empowering end-user productivity, lessening the burden on their IT groups, and meeting security and compliance requirements.

• Lessening burden on IT groups. IT management and staff are tasked with deploying, maintaining, and securing employee devices across user types and environments. Limited budgets and staff in educational organizations make this even more challenging as IT staff have a wide variety of responsibilities and new initiatives often are added to (rather than replace) existing workloads. As a result, IT groups are stretched thin and are in need of easier management technologies to lessen the burden.
  
  The interviewee and survey respondents said they knew their organizations needed to take advantage of new technologies enabled by Intel® Active Management Technology (Intel® AMT), Intel® Endpoint Management Assistant (Intel® EMA), and other Intel vPro platform tools and features to meet the requirements of remote device management.

The chief technology officer mentioned that a major goal in transitioning all of their school district’s Windows devices to Intel vPro was to reduce the management burden on IT staff, many of whom spent large amounts of time supporting the organization’s 27,500 employees and end users.

Five out of the seven survey respondents from education and/or nonprofits listed “maintain consistent software support and updates during a deployment cycle” as a goal for their organization in selecting Intel vPro as its standard platform. Three listed “reduce IT and endpoint management costs.”

• Empowering end-user productivity. Employees struggled to complete tasks with older devices, and IT departments struggled to support those devices. The Intel vPro platform provides guaranteed firmware updates and support, which contributes to ongoing device stability. Devices built on the Intel vPro platform are part of the Intel® Stable IT Platform Program (Intel® SIPP), meaning that extra validation is performed to ensure these PCs are built for business in the long run. This validation extends beyond the CPU and includes the chipset, network interface card (NIC), graphics, and other hardware components. This allows IT teams not to worry about their organization’s corporate image breaking from one purchase to the next.
  
  In addition, the interviewee and surveyed IT decision-makers from educational organizations shared that supporting a remote workforce made it even more challenging to enable end-user productivity. This was especially true for large schools where employees live far from campus or often work from home. In these cases, employee effectiveness was even further reduced without the proper technologies to support them remotely.
  
  IT leaders saw the opportunity to use Intel vPro technologies, such as Intel EMA and Intel AMT to better support remote and hybrid workforces. They also recognized that Intel® Core™ processors provide users with additional task and graphics processing power, which further improves worker productivity.

• Providing investment justification to a variety of stakeholders. IT decision-makers at educational organizations receive high levels of scrutiny and review for their investment decisions, especially at public educational organizations where budgets and expenditures are available to the public.
  
  The wide variety of stakeholders requires that educational leaders clearly and confidently communicate the justification and return on investment (ROI) for implementing and retaining technologies.
  
  IT decision-makers found that the technologies included with the Intel vPro platform provided this strong justification and allowed for a clear business case to show that the organizations’ limited funds were being responsibly invested.

• Meeting security and compliance requirements. Educational organizations are entrusted with sensitive personally identifiable information (PII) for students, parents, guardians, and employees in their districts and groups. It’s crucial to ensure that endpoint devices are secure from external threats, such as malware and hacking attempts. With the increasing sophistication of cyberattacks, IT decision-makers at educational organizations must implement robust security measures to safeguard endpoints.
  
  In addition, educational organizations are subject to many regulatory requirements to monitor and control employee endpoint devices to an even greater degree than other organizations. This is made more challenging with smaller IT groups whose members have a wide range of responsibilities and support a large number of devices.
  
  The interviewee and survey respondents said their organizations saw an opportunity to leverage Intel vPro to take advantage of its hardware-enabled security and to improve their overall security positions.

Intel vPro Platform Features

The Intel vPro platform includes both high-performance Intel® Core processors and several added enterprise-grade tools and features for users and IT managers. With Intel AMT and Intel EMA, IT managers and help desk representatives can use advanced management tools, such as enhanced remote access for managing devices and resolving issues, even if the device is powered off or out-of-band.

In addition, Intel® Stable IT Platform Program (Intel SIPP) ensures application and hardware driver compatibility. This provides assurance that a new update will not lead to driver issues, which improves the rate of success for patch deployment. Intel® Hardware Shield mitigates the risk of firmware-level attacks to endpoint machines and provides advanced threat detection and application with data security.

Key Results For Educational Organizations

Benefits enabled by the Intel vPro platform for educational organizations include a robust security baseline at the hardware level, easier IT support, improved employee effectiveness, and direct cost savings. Key financial metrics are based on a composite organization with 10,000 employees and 10,000 Intel vPro-based laptops and desktops, in addition to 1,000 Intel vPro-based kiosk devices. Financial results measure ongoing benefits of maintaining an Intel vPro environment for the composite organization and are based on three-year, risk-adjusted present value (PV) totals:

• Robust security baseline. The composite organization benefits from Intel vPro’s hardware-enhanced security, including features like Intel Hardware Shield, which adds an extra layer of defense against firmware attacks to ensure uninterrupted educational workflows and protect sensitive student and institutional data. The remote management features enable administrators to efficiently oversee and maintain a large fleet of devices across multiple campuses or locations. This streamlined management process ensures that devices remain up to date with the latest security patches and software updates, which reduces the risk of security breaches and enhances overall system reliability.
• Easier IT support. Study participants from educational organizations that use Intel vPro as their endpoint standard reported reduced cost and effort for their IT groups. This was enabled by technologies including Intel EMA, Intel SIPP, and Intel Hardware Shield.
• Easier endpoint device setup and ongoing management. The composite organization’s IT staff deploys Intel vPro-based devices 30% faster than non-Intel devices. In addition, they save 65% of their time spent on ongoing endpoint device management because Intel vPro-based devices have fewer hardware issues and technology that accelerates resolution. This saved IT labor provides $1.7 million in value to the composite organization over three years.
  • The interviewed chief information officer said their education organization reduced its time to resolution of escalated calls by 40% because Intel vPro allows it to address issues at the hardware level rather than the software level.
  • Each surveyed IT decision-maker in education and/or nonprofits  listed the following as benefits of their organization using Intel vPro as its endpoint standard:
    • Robust hardware-level security.
    • Easier IT management and support.
    • Assurance of device image compatibility through Intel Stable IT Platform Program (SIPP).
    • Faster device qualification and deployment.
    • Easier access for MSP support.

• Fewer help desk support tickets. Like the composite’s IT staff, its help desk employees also save time with 40% fewer tickets related to endpoint hardware. This saves the composite organization $776,000 over three years.
  • The interviewed chief information officer said that after their education organization moved to Intel vPro as its endpoint standard, the institution reduced the number of devices that require support each month from 3% to 5% to just 1%. This is the equivalent of a 67% to 80% reduction in the number of hardware-related support tickets.
  • Each surveyed IT decision-maker in education and/or nonprofits said their organization receives fewer support tickets by using Intel vPro as its endpoint standard.

• Reduced need for onsite support. Employees at the composite have fewer escalated issues with Intel vPro-based devices, and the organization avoids 90% of onsite visits from IT staff related to endpoint hardware. The reduction in travel and IT staff time is worth $1 million over three years to the composite organization.
  • The interviewed chief information officer said their educational organization reduced its overall IT onsite visits by 23% after moving just 50% of its endpoint Windows devices to Intel vPro hardware. The interviewee expects almost all onsite visits will be eliminated over the next two years as the remaining 50% of Windows devices are refreshed with Intel vPro hardware.
  • Each surveyed IT decision-maker from education and/or nonprofits said their organization reduced onsite visits by using Intel vPro as its endpoint standard. In addition, six out of the seven respondents said their organization gained the ability to provide more efficient remote and hybrid work by using Intel vPro as its endpoint standard.
  • The interviewed chief information officer said: “Once we’ve fully refreshed with [Intel] vPro, we won’t need people to make visits unless something drastic happens. But most of those issues are solved remotely now using vPro.”

• Improved employee effectiveness. The interviewee and survey respondents said reducing downtime and outages for employees was a primary concern for their educational organizations and that employees benefited from fewer hardware-related issues with Intel vPro-based devices. In addition, employees now have faster time to resolution because IT can remotely support a distributed workforce more effectively through technologies such as Intel AMT and Intel EMA.
• Improved employee effectiveness from improved hardware stability. The composite organization receives value from its end-user employees having fewer hardware-related issues and being able to resolve remaining issues faster. This provides the composite organization with $189,000 of value over three years.
  • The interviewed chief information officer estimated that employees at their educational organization save more than an hour each time they experience a significant hardware issue with their laptop or desktop because issues could be resolved faster and remotely using Intel vPro.
  • Each surveyed IT decision-maker from education and/or nonprofits strongly agreed that their organization improved its employee performance/productivity by leveraging Intel vPro as its endpoint standard. In addition, they each agreed their organization improved collaboration with Intel vPro.

• Direct cost savings. The composite organization directly reduces many of its costs (e.g., energy usage, costs from security breaches) by leveraging Intel vPro as its endpoint standard.
• Hardware-enabled security. The composite organization has 23% fewer breaches and spends 35% less time on breach investigation, and 10% to 12% of this improvement is attributable to Intel vPro’s hardware-enabled security along with other security practices enabled by Intel vPro technologies. The composite attributes $338,000 of these savings over three years to Intel vPro.
  • Each surveyed IT decision-maker from education and/or nonprofits said their organization experienced fewer security incidents and breaches by using Intel vPro as its endpoint standard. Four out of the seven respondents indicated this led to a reduction between  25% and 50% for security breaches/incidents, which indicates a significant change to their security positions.
  • In addition, each surveyed IT decision-maker from education and/or nonprofits said their organization reduced the risk of personal data being stolen by using Intel vPro as its endpoint standard. Six of the seven said their organization also improved stakeholder confidence due to Intel vPro’s hardware-enabled security.

• Saved cost of third-party software and services. Technologies included with Intel vPro allow the composite organization to avoid buying or expanding third-party software for remote management, telemetry, and hardware security, which saves it $224,000 over three years. Six of the seven surveyed IT decision-makers from education and/or nonprofits said their organization reduced third-party software and services by using Intel vPro as its endpoint standard.

• Reduced energy costs and carbon emissions. At the composite organization, Intel vPro-based devices use 15% less energy than comparable non-Intel vPro-based devices, which saves it $70,000 in energy costs over three years. The composite leverages its Intel vPro-based environment to avoid additional carbon emissions. It accomplishes this with lower energy usage per endpoint device and fewer onsite visits, avoiding 368,000 kg of carbon emissions over a three-year period.
  
  The interviewed chief information officer said their education organization tracked energy usage by site and endpoint device before and after moving to Intel vPro. They said sites with all Intel vPro-based devices used an average of 15% less electricity than sites with non-Intel vPro-based devices. This reduction was also observed in a device-level analysis. They said, “Not only are we hearing that energy consumption is reduced with [Intel] vPro computers, but they don’t get hot, and the hardware lasts longer.”