vPro, Intel’s built-into-the-hardware security and manageability system for its commercial-grade processors, has been around for almost two decades, including its roots as Intel Active Management technology. 

Despite that long runway and the technology’s embedding in so much of the company’s processor lineup, the company has seen slow pickup. Jen Larson, general manager for commercial client segments at Intel, reports vPro activation in the low single digits.

However, the company believes that is about to change dramatically, as it’s introducing a new model for registering, activating, and managing vPro devices. In the past, this would have required each customer to set up a dedicated hardware server to manage their vPro fleet. Now, the company is offering vPro management via a free SaaS service at vprofleet.intel.com.

Currently in Private Preview ahead of general availability, the new system will reduce the costs of registering and managing vPro on corporate devices by eliminating the need for on-prem hardware and making it much easier to onboard machines. Larson said that the previous process required 24 steps, but the new hosted solution does the same thing in six steps. Because of the server, setting up vPro in an enterprise could take weeks.

“Anybody can go and sign up if you have a vPro device, and you can manage one by one device or hundreds of thousands of devices,” Larson said. “We expect the number of activations to really skyrocket in a very short period of time. We want to make this accessible.”

The new vPro Fleet Services site will reach general avaiability “in coming weeks,” Larson said.

The technology is generally well-embraced within the MSP community. Still, Larson said that as more machines have their vPro capabilities being brought online and managed, more opportunities will open up for resellers and solution providers to build services and solutions on top of the baseline of vPro capabilities.

“We think it’s a win-win for all of us,” she said.

The new model allows Intel to put some marketing muscle and statistics behind what vPro can do for clients. The company is releasing a slew of research on how vPro performs in the wild. One data point that gives Intel great pride is that when the CrowdStrike outage happened last year, one airline customer that embraced vPro on its systems recovered with less than one percent of its overall flights cancelled. Other airlines weren’t quite so lucky.

“They were able to remediate in hours rather than days [with vPro],” Larson said. “Others were in the news because they had a bit more difficult time without vPro.”

For companies that want to use other management tools, Intel also announced that vPro will soon be integrated with Microsoft Intune and that it will add new cloud-native integrations for CrowdStrike and HP Workforce Solutions.

Rounding out vPro announcements from last week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the company announced it will partner with some of its top OEMs to offer select PCs under the Intel Assured Supply Chain Commercial Products program. Under that program, debuting later this year or early next year, Intel will guarantee a “predetermined silicon manufacturing flow” and provide digital supply chain verification for those devices, essentially ensuring that a PC’s production only ever touches a choice “path” of nations on its way to market.

“We have a corridor that’s already defined starting the second half of this year, including the U.S., Ireland, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Taiwan,” Larson said. “Our customers will be able to digitally attest to that manufacturing flow if they request it and purchase it.”

The company has announced that Dell, HP, and Lenovo have signed on to offer PCs based on the manufacturing flow. More OEMs are expected to sign on to offer machines based on the company’s new Core Ultra 200 series processors. Larson said the program was designed to meet the documentation needs of government and other highly regulated industries.