PLATFORM SOLUTIONS

The server market's growth remains strong overall, but one of the hottest bands within the server spectrum is the "value server," the affordable yet high-performance design best suited to SMBs. There are many hardware options available for resellers targeting this segment. We believe the best value proposition (never mind the highest availability) rests with Intel's newest wave of Xeon processors, chipsets, and motherboards. Whether you're targeting single pedestals or rack clusters, the innovations here will help you win business and boost your clients' growth.

If 2006 was the year of the platform (vPro, Centrino, Viiv, etc.), then 2007 has been the year of the component. Core 2 processor marketing is everywhere. And this is good. It"s often beneficial for an organization to have a "mono-message" that's simple, concise, and paramount. In contrast, platforms can be cumbersome and convoluted to explain. Can you explain vPro in a sentence? Maybe. You would say something like: "Intel's business desktop platform is designed to enhance performance, security, and manageability." But now you have three ideas on the table and not really a clue as to what any of them means.

That's not to say that platforms are worthless`quite the opposite. Platforms are "value multipliers." With multiple components, you have CPUs, chipsets, memory modules, storage chips, LAN controllers, and similar elements all lending their cooperative abilities to a common set of goals and functions. Their sum is greater than the value of their individual parts.

Of course, with more complexity in the platform comes more complexity in a platform discussion. This has been one of the greatest challenges surrounding Intel's branded platform campaigns. How do you get tens of thousands of resellers and untold millions of consumers and businesses to grasp a platform at one glance? You don't. It takes time and education, and unless a reseller invests the effort to learn what needs to be learned about platforms, then the potential for higher profits offered by each of them will count for nothing.

But there's more to succeeding with platforms than just digesting everything in the white papers. The platform is exactly what the word implies: a foundation, something on which you build. Sure, you can stick it in a case, add a drive, and shove it out the door on sale. Obviously, the market has plenty of that floating around, and the big OEMs can do it at lower price points than most resellers could hope to approach. The question builders should be asking is: How can I build on this platform in a way that nobody else is addressing? How can I tweak this to target the specific needs of my clientele?

There is no magical blue print, of course, no one-size-fits-all design. If there were, the OEMs would already be mass producing it. You have to explore, imagine, and invest. Exploring means getting on the phone and shaking a lot of hands. Talk to your clients. Get in their environments, see how they're using their systems, and start compiling their wish lists. Before long, you'll start noticing the several points at which these wish lists overlap. Next, imagine how you could address these points in part by taking advantage of a platform's capabilities, then by adding complementary pieces on top of that platform also able to target those overlap points. Sometimes, you may need to create new elements entirely from scratch. Finally, you need to invest in research and development in order to bring those imaginings to reality.

This is not an easy process, but, as you know, success rarely if ever comes easily. Other resellers have done it, though, and to help provide inspiration and a few pointers in the right direction, we interviewed several groups able to offer real-life stories on how they turned platforms into profits.

CHIPS FOR A CHAMP. You've seen the CPU, chipset, and wireless NIC of the Santa Rosa Centrino platform before. Now ask: What could you do with these chips that would be better than a notebook?

Centrino On Wheels
The Centrino platform hardly needs an introduction. The mobile processor, chipset, and wireless NIC combo transformed the mobile computing market in the first part of this decade by leveraging hardware enhancements and a simple, standards-oriented wireless stack. The end result was a significant jump in battery runtimes, thinner notebook designs, and an explosion in wireless infrastructure and ease of connectivity. But if you'd walked up to someone in 2002 and said, "You want Centrino because it has a Pentium M process or, this cool new chipset, and an internal Wi-Fi adapter," you probably would have received a blank stare. The hardware foundation is meaningless until a builder does something valuable with it. One of the tricks in maximizing value from a platform is to imagine it taking on a wholly different form than the one for which it's popular. When you hear the word "Centrino," the first thing that comes to mind is a notebook: probably one with a 15" display that's fairly thin, sturdily built, and so on. Those are all shell elements that have been built on top of the platform. They're not the platform itself. So how could one do something with Centrino that would take advantage of its capabilities and not be a notebook? You could use it as an in-dash car computer, perhaps, or a highly integrated system built into a big-screen TV. You could go a thousand different directions by concentrating on the platform's attributes and capabilities rather than the form they conventionally take.

Rioux Vision was started 10 years ago by Shawn Rioux as a two-man garage company in Sumter, SC. The founders' mission was to design products that would meet the increasing IT needs of healthcare companies. Today, Rioux Vision has 60 employees, a 32,000-square-foot production facility, and designs hot enough to win industry awards. Back in 2001, the typical idea of a mobile medical workstation was a computer on a wheeled cart wired to a rolling battery pack. Rioux Vision took this idea and firmly twisted it. That year's Independence rolling workstation featured a computer built into the monitor enclosure and an intelligent battery system custom-designed for the cart. This created a product that was more streamlined, convenient, and serviceable.

Since then, Rioux Vision's mobile workstation line has undergone several generations of improvement, and the rise of the Centrino platform has played a significant role in the reseller's ability to innovate its product portfolio, even lately in 2007."The Centrino platform and specifically the 945 chipset offered low-power management tools for the LCD in our designs," says Ray Reckelhoff, vice president of engineering at Rioux Vision. "That allowed us to use a full-size 17" LCD panel and Intel's power-management tools to manipulate power savings. We're a mobile product, so power is everything."

THAT'S NO NOTEBOOK. Rioux Vision's Rio mobile medical workstation leverages the Centrino platform to create a product that is compact, dependable, power-efficient, and able to wheel easily around a building.

That's no overstatement. Rioux's latest power packs use a 36 amp-hour sealed lead acid battery with an LCD readout for charge and maintenance status. The packs can be easily swapped and independently charged. Even more importantly, Rioux Vision is one of the very few competitors in its field to have compliance with FCC, CSA, and Underwriters Laboratory (UL). According to the reseller, customers want all of these certifications because it lets them feel more comfortable about getting equipment close to patients. The last thing you want is for a critical post-op to reach out and get shocked because of a design flaw in the mobile workstation. Rioux's current flagship product is the Rio, which is not only a workstation on wheels but now also includes the option for a removable medication distribution system. This is a compact drawer system managed by independent lock/double-lock devices allowing for service to multiple patients from multiple dispensing staff members, all controlled through the cart's onboard software. The Rio stands on a 16" non-tip base, which is an extremely small footprint in this category, and uses an enclosed actuator arm for adjusting keyboard/monitor height. This is controlled by a switch next to the monitor base rather than a clunky hydraulic arm. The 17" monitor is double-sealed for quick cleaning, and the monitor on its sliding tray under the writing surface is likewise encased in a washable, non-latex skin. External wires are curly rather than retracting for better hygiene.

From top to bottom, Rioux has done a sterling job of tailoring the Rio for its target market. But don't think the process was easy. The original Rio was the result of nearly two years of interviewing healthcare professionals pooling their feedback, doing R&D, and field testing prototypes. In every instance of moving a platform into a niche solution, there are bound to be hurdles. With the Rio, one of the most critical hurdles turned out to be getting the vendors behind the CPU/chipset, motheboard, and display to all cooperate productively. According to Rioux Vision's Reckelhoff, this alone required 14 months of effort.

PHALANX IN FINAL STAGE. This cohort of Centrino-based Rio carts stands charging and undergoing final testing before shipping to buyers. Not so long ago, such work was done in the company owner's garage.

"The timing of when things come out; the chipset and everything else was the hardest part of development," he says. "Just getting all of the right players in the same room was huge. To get the LCD companies talking with Intel and Intel talking with the motherboard developer; fto get those three people in the same place and all agreeing with each other about what we can do. We can run this chipset to drive that 17" panel at full screen or widescreen; they're a little different; and then the motherboard company saying it can make the needed modifications if Intel will give them the codes they need. Having those three cooperating was vital to our success. But yeah, it was worth the effort."

But there was more to matters than that. Intel came in to work with Rioux Vision and a third-party motherboard vendor to craft a motherboard that would meet the Rio's needs and applications in the cramped confines of an LCD monitor. With the current version of the Rio, the company had to cope with the several thermal issues entailed in moving from a Pentium M (1.6 GHz) platform up to the Core 2 Duo (1.83 GHz) and GM945 chipset. System memory doubled from 256MB to 512MB, and the embedded flash memory that supplants what in older days would have been a hard drive has stepped up from 8GB to 16GB. Wireless connectivity grew from 802.11b to 802.11a/b/g. Designers did have to trim at a couple of points. The system dropped one USB port to only allow for the current seven, and there is no more support for a PC Card slot. The upshot is that Rioux Vision now sells over 5,000 Rio carts alone every year. While Intel's platform is not the core concept behind Rioux's devices, it is one of the key enablers that can bring that concept to life and make it very profitable for its reseller.

Powerful Under Fire
The phrase "luggable" isn't very favored at Max Vision. No doubt it carries too many connotations of archaic, underpowered dinosaurs from the likes of Compaq and Amstrad. This maker of extremely rugged portable systems prefers the term "mobile" or our preferred term "transportable" for its line of portable computers, the vast majority of which go to government groups. These are workstation machines optimized for CAD and content management tasks under the harshest conditions, including behind-the-lines battle zones.

Obviously, there are a fair number of "workstation" notebooks on the market from Dell, Fujitsu Siemens, Lenovo, and others. Nearly all of these are based on mobile components, such as the Mobile Core 2 Duo and NVIDIA's Quadro FX Mobile. A workstation notebook might weigh in at eight to 10 pounds, and you'll have made some concessions along the way that will separate it from a true, industrial-grade, tower-style workstation. Most of MaxVision's transportables weigh in between 50 and 70 pounds, use a bona fide Xeon 5000-series platform, and make no performance concessions whatsoever.

PLATFORM TRIPLE-PLAY. With three screens and all the power of Intel's Bensley workstation platform, MaxVision's MaxPac X Class can take on the world from virtually any environment on its surface.

"To meet some of our clients' needs, we designed a workstation with a handle on it, something we call the portable workstation," says Tim Kavanagh, vice president of sales and business development at MaxVision. "Notebooks just weren't meeting the needs of people with demanding applications. The government sector looked at our portable and said, "This is something we'd really like to have because we know there are demanding applications out there. But we need mobile because the armed services of the future are going to be a lot less stationary. We worked with the DoD, with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, three-letter agencies, and so on. We work with the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force. We also work with other types of OEM customers. So we've really expanded our footprint."Not bad for a private outfit founded by two brothers in 1993 that released its first transportable MaxPac in 1999. That unit featured a 17" LCD display. Today, MaxPac X Class models feature up to three 20.1" LCDs shielding a dual-processor, dual-core, Xeon 5100-driven powerhouse.

The X Class uses Supermicro's X7DAL-E motherboard, in part because of the order of its six slots: PCI Express, PCI, PCI Express, two PCI-X, and one last PCI. After extensive design and testing, MaxVision figured out that this was the exact layout needed for optimal thermal performance in its chassis. "We wanted Intel multi-core Xeons because no competing product had the right form, fit, and function around our solution," adds Kavanagh. "It was about thermals and using the right heatsink and cooling fan arrangement and how the processor responds to excess heat;throttling back instead of shutting down." Heat handling is critical here. The workstation adheres to Military Standard 810F HOT, meaning it can run under a sustained, full load at 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit). Just the sort of temperature you'd expect in a Middle Eastern summer.

BRILLIANCE BEYOND THE PLATFORM. Hardly a square inch of the formidable MaxPac X Class, both inside and out, doesn't bear some value-add enhancement from MaxVision, from the tilt base to the handled case.

Tied to this is the fact that MaxVision opted to base its flagship series on Intel's "Bensley" server platform. Again, you see Bensley boxes everywhere in designs from 1U rackmount pizza boxes to monolithic pedestals, but that's conventional thinking. MaxVision didn't want to take a usual box and shoehorn it into harsh environments. Instead, the company wanted to take the high-performance, low-power envelope, and impeccable stability of the Bensley platform and build a shell for it tailored from scratch for such locales. You see this in elements like the "Baghdad filter," an oil-impregnated filter that attaches over the air intakes to keep out sand and other minute particles. Or check out how the X Class chassis is actually part clamshell, able to separate on a hinge for quick and easy access to the interior for maintenance. Similarly, the HDPac4's externally removable magazine can fit up to 3TB of data across four SATA drives. These hot-swappable drives in turn can be configured into RAID 0, 5, or JBOD arrays courtesy of the installed 3ware controller. And every MaxPac X Class unit ships in a water-tight Pelican roller case that can protect the system from damage due to being dropped from up to 18 inches.

"People who are using these machines are pulling satellite imagery off of databases so they can go in and do their missions or rehearsals," says Kavanagh. "Or they're looking at data points of what's changing in a certain vector of location in Iran or whatever. Or they're used in unmanned recon flights. Some are used in applications I'm not even privy to know about. But they like these 1600x1200 20.1" displays. They love that power."

Careful readers will note that the 5000X chipset not only supports the Xeon 5100 series but also the quad-core Xeon 5300s, as well as the just-released line of 45nm Penryn processors. One of the benefits of settling on the Bensley platform was being able to leverage this forward path to minimize development time. Moreover, Tim Kavanagh tells us that his company is already preparing for next year's native quad-core Xeons based on the Nehalem architecture, and that an increasing percentage of MaxVision's products are shifting to Intel platforms. All told, MaxVision has invested over $1 million and five and a half years of R&D to make the X Class what it is today. However, the X Class is not MaxVision's only rugged line of computers, although 65% of MaxVision's business goes to Department of Defense-type clients, and over 75% of its sales use Intel components.

"Why do we prefer Intel?" muses Kavanagh. "We like the longevity. Some other guys will have quicker end-of-life. It's just a more robust platform for us. We know that Intel's quality is going to be there, and that's something you don't always get with other brands. That's one of the biggest things our engineers look at."

STUDIO IN A SHOE BOX. We all know Intel's 3 Series chipsets and Shuttle's famed XPC systems. But NewTek had the imagination to take these building blocks and craft a compact broadcast studio out of them.

Lights...Platform...Action!
Getting back to the idea of exploration as a first step in creating novel, platform-based solutions, this stage depends on one well-known truth: Necessity is the mother of invention. In 1985, Tim Jenison was a frustrated film producer, one of many such guys trying to eke out a living from his garage. What set him apart was that Jenison saw the problems of his field, took the time to understand one of the most popular computing platforms of that time (the Commodore Amiga), and imagined a solution. He founded a company called NewTek and ultimately created a product called the Amiga Video Toaster, which went on to win an Emmy Award for Technical Achievement in 1993. (For some intriguing history on this product, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Toaster.)

Fast forward to modern times. As anyone in the video production business knows, production trucks are the norm for creating multi-channel video on the road, especially in live streaming situations. But production trucks are expensive enough for businesses and absolutely beyond the realm of high-end consumers. So NewTek asked the question: Is it possible to reduce the concept of a production truck into a single, portable device;a "truck-in-a-box" that's ready to use instantly? NewTek felt the answer could be yes and started doing its homework.

"A lot of people really aren't prepared or equipped to buy a computer, put the card inside of it, program it, do all that," says Pat Grogan, NewTek's vice president of operations. "So we were looking for a turnkey-type solution, and the small form factor seemed to fit. We looked at Shuttle and AOpen and others that make these smaller boxes, so we got a Shuttle unit to our development and testing team. They came back and said, 'We think we can make our stuff work in this box on this with some modifications.' Sure enough, they could, and that's what we're selling now. We wanted a turnkey deal that people could buy off a Web site or from a dealer, plug it in, and boom;it's ready to go with the bare minimum of setup time."

The result is NewTek's TriCaster and TriCaster PRO. Now, if you're familiar with Shuttle's barebones lineup, you might look at these boxes and say, "Hey! That's a G2 style case with a retooled front!" (Specifically, NewTek uses the G31/ICH7-based SG31G2, normally available for about $265.) Where the external drives used to sit, NewTek plugged in an array of audio and video input/output ports. (The PRO model offers more ports.) The user plugs in one or more video sources, fires up the pre-installed software, and is suddenly running a live switcher. Of course, there's also DVR capability for playing back recorded clips. NewTek adds in a character generator, audio software, editing tools, and more. Throw in a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, and you've essentially got a production studio ready for a range of applications, particularly Webcasting.

You might wonder what distinguishes something like the TriCaster from a standard-issue Shuttle box running consumer software with an I/O breakout box. Clearly, the difference comes down to professional versus amateur quality. The TriCaster is optimized for uncompressed, broadcast-quality, multi-channel video, not one stream of S-Video being encoded to MPEG. The results not only spool to disk but can also output with titling and effects in real-time. When you plug an input source into the TriCaster, its content pops up in the production software immediately. Thanks to NewTek's iVGA Ethernet technology, video streams from other PCs (running NewTek's client app) on the LAN can also function as input sources. No $99 kit from Pinnacle is going to pull off any of these things; you won't find this functionality in consumer-level SKUs. NewTek installs its own VT[4] video production card, built to render common production tasks (2D painting and titles, 3D modeling, etc.) in real-time.

The original TriCaster was built with a Pentium 4 550, 160GB SATA drive, and an NVIDIA GeForce 5700. Needless to say, subsequent updates to the family have used more current components, as mentioned before, the TriCaster and TriCaster PRO are now based on Shuttle's SG31G2 paired with Intel's G31 chipset and E6320 processor. This gives users a quad-core upgrade path, a speedy 1066 MHz front-side bus, memory capacity up to 4GB, Matrix RAID support, Gigabit Ethernet, HD Audio, and much more. The E6320 chip, at 1.86 GHz, is near the bottom of today's Core 2 Duo stack, but other video subsystem components do most of the heavy lifting. The lower clock speed, while still plenty sufficient for NewTek's applications, helps to keep the interior cooler in the face of so many extra components.

LITTLE BOX FOR THE BIG TIME. NewTek's TriCaster delivers the power of a conventional live broadcasting system in an extremely small format, which is why you'll find it in situations like this backstage SuperSuper Bowl scene.

We should point out that Shuttle wasn't a prerequisite for NewTek. The video company knew what it wanted to do, and Shuttle was the best fit at the time. When NewTek wanted an update to the TriCaster family with the "STUDIO" model, none of Shuttle's designs were suited to the layout. So NewTek went to SilverStone for this particular design and outfitted the SG01 small form factor chassis with a new front panel, which included not only more ports but also a pair of carrying handles. Still, one advantage with the Shuttle design is that Shuttle offers a line of complementary products ranging from an LCD monitor with integrated handle to backpacks built for XPC cases. Moreover, the Shuttle-based box is only 10 pounds instead of 16, no doubt reflecting the years of R&D Shuttle has poured into its optimized cooling system, power supplies, and other elements.

The point of the TriCaster line is to make five-digit production facilities possible and portable for only a fraction of the conventional price, and this couldn't have been done without building on top of the capabilities present in the underlying computing platform. The power savings, streamlined performance, large processor cache, dual-core architecture, and other factors inherent to Intel's CPU and chipset combination all add up to a capable, extremely reliable product that can be depended on in live, professional situations.

"This isn't for mom and pop to send video of the kids to the grandparents," says NewTek's Grogan. "This is professional-grade equipment, but it's cheap enough [for] schools, churches;lots of churches. Man, in the last few years, churches are automating like crazy. They're really getting into webcasting so that people who can't make it to church can watch the services online. There are all these areas where you're like, whoa, I never even thought of that! Schools are using these big-time for sporting events. In the Atlanta area, we had this really excited guy buy one and take it to his kid's high school football game. He just set it up and was recording the whole game with two or three cameras, putting some audio commentary on, saved it, put it all up on the Web. The other schools saw it and bam; seven other schools in the district bought it. It's just such an easy way to get the message of their district out to the public. There are webcasting stories like that everywhere, and the TriCaster is made for that."

vPro: Plainly Exceptional
Our theme here is crafting value-add uniqueness out of common hardware platforms, but sometimes the platform itself can be novel and full of largely unexplored value. In preparing this article, we went in search of resellers who had taken Intel's vPro platform and built it into something very different from the usual desktop or mini tower. Surprisingly, we came up empty-handed. This was vexing at first. After all, we've studied vPro for over a year. If you're still new to the technology, check out our overview video on vPro at www.techinsight.tv/ram_tv.php?id=6. After seeing only the remote monitoring and rebooting capabilities of vPro as shown in the video, you'll probably grasp immediately how the platform can enhance your business.

Maybe we're biased, but we here at RAM/Tech Insight have a very hard time imagining why anyone would sell a business system today without remote management support. And yet many, if not most, resellers ignore this opportunity. It's like finding a pot of gold by the side of the road and saying, "Man, that looks too heavy to carry." OK, maybe you don't have to carry the whole pot! Maybe you leave features like TPM-based authentication, improved virtualization, and capabilities for a virtualized security appliance in the pot while pocketing the gleaming remote management riches lying in easy reach.

Hardly anybody does this at present. And it's not like Viiv or the blue laser format war. We're not sitting around waiting for the stars and partners to align. There are outstanding console software options from Level Platforms (LPI), SyAM, and others currently monitoring clients by the thousands. In this case, the novel value is not how a reseller twists or adapts Intel's platform. The novelty is in adopting it at all.

This isn't to say that vPro is being wholly ignored. Resellers who are comfortable selling into enterprises are all over the technology. After all, remote management in servers has been common for years. It's only applying the same concepts to desktop and notebook machines that takes some mental adjustment. Enterprise resellers accustomed to working with servers seem to be making this adjustment more quickly. Witness Appro (www.appro.com) and Verari (www.verari.com) as leading examples in the channel. When you're used to performing remote management on dozens of servers, doing the same for hundreds of desktops is a small step.

In the SMB space, though, tumbleweeds drift and window shutters clatter in the deserted streets of Remote Management Town, which makes no sense given the rich veins of ore all through the nearby hills. Kortek Services (www.kortekservices.com) is one welcome exception that has already staked a lucrative claim. You won't find the word "vPro" on Kortek's site, but that's exactly what the company sells. Today, the reseller's main business box uses a Core 2 Duo processor, Intel DQ35JO desktop board, 2GB of DDR2 memory, a Seagate hard drive, DVD drive, Windows XP or Vista, and a tower case. All told, each machine sells for about $800. Like we said, this configuration is about as vanilla as you can get. The art is in the platform, not the components.

MADE EXCEPTIONAL. Just another cubicle quartet, right? The difference is that the towers in these cubes are vPro-driven, so workers can spend more time being productive and less waiting for IT help.

"All of the machines we've manufactured since last year have been vPro," says Lyle Epstein, president of Kortek Services. "However, not all of our clients have adopted the managed services piece. We ship vPro-ready systems hoping to convince them to go with a managed services type of setup. When they do, they'll be ready to go."

Just about every analyst with an opinion on the subject agrees that managed services will be standard across business systems in the near future. The ROI benefits of manageability are simply too plentiful for users, regardless of the size of the operation. As long as a business can profit from having less system downtime and higher productivity, there is a strong manageability story.

In the case of Kortek Services, the company's manageability service hinges on three central features: remotely power cycling the machine, remotely administering patches, and monitoring of logs. Each of these things is enabled through vPro hardware and Level Platforms' Managed Workplace software, an agentless, Web-based console system that can monitor all IP-based devices at a customer's site. If this sounds like an absurdly simple pitch, it is. Managed services can be convoluted and intricate, but they don't have to be. The 80/20 rule applies well. Eighty percent of the market can be served by 20% of the functionality. And that 20% makes for a pretty streamlined pitch.

"I tell people that vPro allows us to manage their computer in a different way than just doing managed services," says Epstein. "We're able to turn the computers on and off. At night time, we can turn the computers on to do updates, then turn off to save power. And if the system detects certain virus signatures, it can actually turn off the network adapter to keep the virus from spreading. Plus the system will alert us when there's a problem, whereas a standard computer doesn't have as much technology to do that."

Kortek business customers typically have five to 100 business desktops, and currently the reseller is doing managed services for about 20 sites, averaging 30 vPro machines in each of those sites. That's 600 vPro machines, and Kortek manages them all with only four staff members. In fact, you can tell what an easy sale managed services can be because of Kortek's nine employees, only one is dedicated to sales. And with only one person driving this new business, Kortek's managed services group has transformed the company's daily operations and even physical requirements. Historically, the company's business model relied heavily on customer site break/fix services. Now, those break/fix techs are spending their time performing management in the office rather than out in the field, which is stressing Kortek's office resources. This is why the company will be blowing out several walls right about the time you read this and adding 4,000 square feet for more management services staff.

The numbers aren't in for 2007 yet, but Epstein doesn't expect top-line miracles in services revenue. However, the bottom line impact may be different. Because service staff members aren't spending as much of their time on-site or stuck in traffic, their time in the office is used much more efficiently. They're getting more work done and fulfilling more service contract work in fewer hours. Revenue issues aside, vPro represents an opportunity for resellers to be more productive and effective in fulfilling their traditional roles, and ultimately that means more profit.

We want to dispel the notion that vPro can only succeed as a platform play with customers willing to chuck most of their systems and adopt the new technology. Sure, it may not make sense to perform remote management on five systems out of 100. But those five new boxes are just the first few bricks of the edifice to come. In six months, the company might have 15 machines ready for remote management; in two years, it could be sixty. Past a certain point that will vary from company to company, turning on the vPro lights will make ROI sense. Even if the client isn't ready to flip that switch today, you can pave your way to future managed services by starting to place the proper hardware pieces now.

Another vPro misconception is that there's no real opportunity there because an IT guy inside the company can run console software just as well as a reseller's service tech. And this is entirely true if you're talking about a mid-sized or enterprise company with qualified IT staff on hand and the time resources to perform that management. As you know, many small companies don't fit this profile, and they're perfectly content to outsource many tech services to their computer reseller suppliers. The small, local-touch element that keeps you competitive with the tier-ones on hardware applies just as well in managed services.

"vPro is only as good as the hardware it runs on," says Epstein. "So when a hard drive or something fails, we're able to remedy that. A lot of customers still like that personal touch. We've tried to make some customers remote-only and do everything managed; they don't like it. They like human interaction. And I don't blame them. In the case of a big silverback like Dell, they're not able to have that human touch. We're still able to lead with that. Sometimes customers want us just to come in and make sure all the lights are still on and blinking. Yeah, we could tell most of that remotely, but when we're there, we see other things we're not selling them that we should be. "Oh, you need an improved phone system? Voice over IP, here you go. How else can we help?'"

Epstein comments that one of his largest vPro sales came from a customer that had ordered its machines from a tier-one OEM, which advertised the boxes as being vPro-compliant. However, this turned out not to be the case. A quick spin with Intel's vPro compliance checker revealed that the systems were not compatible. Back went the PCs to the OEM; in came Kortek's fully compliant replacements. Local touch wins again.

And let's not forget the significance of vPro within the larger theme of this article. How can a platform offer unique value? Sometimes, as in the case of vPro, the value is handed to you on a platter. Other times, you have to use some ingenuity to create that value from a foundation, a bit like the frosting on a cake. No matter how moist and delicious the cake, it's the frosting that sells the cake and leaves the biggest impression.

This is a time when most of the messaging in the industry is focused on components. There are good reasons for that, and paying attention to components is important. But there can be just as much importance and even more benefit from assessing technology at a platform level. Learn about how these computing platforms work along with the functionality and benefits they provide. Then add your own twist, whether that's a different form factor or complementary components or just your local touch. Again, most of the industry is focused on speeds and feeds. Concentrate on leveraging platforms from forward-looking companies like Intel and you'll have a significant competitive edge.