Dell Technologies recently announced new enhancements to ProSupport Suite for PCs, providing greater IT visibility, remote remediation, actionable recommendations, and the industry’s first automated custom update catalogue management and deployment capabilities.
Today’s modern working environment underwent massive changes and disruptions in the past two years due to the ongoing global pandemic. The modern employee of today can “do anything from anywhere”, whether it’s working from home or remote working, comes a new hybrid form of working environment of the future, this is the Future of Work. Technology, along with their range of work devices such as the PC has become more than just a tool, it’s now a key connection point for work and communication. The PC is a gateway for collaboration and productivity – any downtime is disruptive especially to the bottom line.
Dell Technologies (NYSE: DELL) has new support services and security solutions that enhance the way IT leaders provide a modern, intelligent, and secure PC experience for employees. There are added capabilities in the ProSupport Suite for PCs that build on the foundation of artificial intelligence and an always-on approach to make IT support easier and more customisable. New endpoint security offerings enhance the industry’s most secure commercial PCs(1) with new security verification capabilities and additional protections below the operating system.
“If your PCs aren’t productive, your employees aren’t either,” said Patrick Moorhead, founder and chief analyst, Moor Insights & Strategy. “Support services and security offerings must evolve with changing employee experiences and stay ahead of the threats that exist at every corner. I believe Dell Technologies is stepping up to the plate with some unique offerings that are designed with the future in mind.”
ProSupport Suite for PCs maximises productivity and uptime with new features that customise and tailor IT support
According to a recent survey from Forrester Consulting, 70% of companies globally plan to increase their investment in remote workforce in the next year (2). With ProSupport Suite for PCs, IT managers can now customise and automate the way they support employees and optimise PCs. New features include:
- Customisable IT management tools: ProSupport Suite for PC is the first support service to provide IT managers with automated custom update catalogue management and deployment capabilities.(3) Now they have the ability to update Dell BIOS, drivers, firmware and applications automatically and remotely, and customise how those updates are grouped and managed.
- Tailored, actionable information for PC fleet in one place: For the first time, IT managers can see the health, application experience and security scores for their entire Dell PC fleet in one glance. (4) They can use those scores over time to uncover performance trends and also take immediate action when needed, remotely, leveraging tailored recommendations and utilisation metrics provided by Dell Technologies AI-powered services support software.
- Customised, remote workflows: Using a customised rules engine to define and orchestrate remote remediation workflows at scale, IT managers are also able to predetermine who receives updates automatically and how they are administered.
- ProSupport Suite for PCs features available to channel partners and their customers: Channel partners can leverage the entire scope of our AI-driven support, tools, and portal within the ProSupport Suite for PCs. Partners can view and manage the support experience for multiple organisations using SupportAssist in TechDirect and have the option to leverage Dell Technologies’ expertise to overcome customer challenges on a case-by-case or fleet wide basis.
“Our recent study conducted by Forrester Consulting found that since the pandemic and the rise of remote work, 59% of Singapore businesses had to put emergency steps in place to keep data safe outside of their company network. This suggests that as we generate more data at the edge, the management, protection and recovery of it has become a lot more complicated,” said Andy Sim, vice president and managing director, Singapore, Dell Technologies. “Our new enhancements to ProSupport Suite for PCs were designed with security, customisation and automation in mind – to help IT leaders better manage their hybrid workforce from wherever they are, while keeping seamless productivity and cybersecurity front and centre.”
Doubling down with innovations for the industry’s most secure and intelligent commercial PC portfolio with built-in AI (5)
The rapid shift to remote work, increased use of cloud applications and new ways of addressing employee productivity needs have created new threat vectors at the endpoint. Every business is a target regardless of location, industry or size as threats have grown increasingly sophisticated and are sometimes challenging to detect. Recent data suggests 44% of organisations experienced at least one hardware-level or BIOS attack over the past 12 months.(6) In Singapore, 28% of employees reported using personal productivity equipment and tools for remote work, which poses increased cybersecurity risks to corporate networks.(7) For an endpoint security strategy to be effective, it must take the entire attack surface into consideration, including supply chain hardware and firmware.
Dell Trusted Devices security portfolio helps protect Dell commercial PCs throughout the supply chain and device lifecycle. This comprehensive suite of above- and below- the operating system (OS) security solutions leverage intelligence and help empower businesses to prevent, detect and respond to threats with improved mean-time-to-detect (MTTD) and mean-time-to-resolution (MTTR) of issues.
Dell Technologies builds upon its leadership position with new security capabilities that include:
- Intel Management Engine (ME) Verification verifies critical system firmware and detects tampering. The initial release of Intel ME Verification targets boot processes critical to system security and provides additional layers of below the OS security.
- Dell Trusted Device Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Integration brings customers full visibility of critical below the OS security events through select SIEM dashboards.(8) It allows for a comprehensive analysis of the organisation’s security status while enabling them to extract more value out of existing security investments.
Availability
- New ProSupport Suite for PCs capabilities will be available to new and existing customers directly and through channel partners globally starting Oct. 19.
- Intel ME Verification and Dell Trusted Device SIEM Integration are available today on Dell commercial PCs.
Notes:
(1) Applies to Dell Precision, Latitude and OptiPlex. Based on Dell analysis, January 2020. Learn more at https://www.dellemc.com/endpointsecurity [dellemc.com].
(2) IT Leaders Outside Experience to Achieve Business Outcomes: A Spotlight on IT Service Providers – A Forrester Consulting Thought Leadership Spotlight Commissioned by Dell Technologies, May 2021
(3) Dell ProSupport Plus is the only / first support service to provide automated custom update catalog management and deployment, based on Dell analysis, August 2021
(4) Dell ProSupport Plus is the only / first support service to provide all three actionable scores on one dashboard: fleet health, security and application experience scores, based on Dell analysis, August 2021
(5) Based on Dell analysis, November 2019.
(6) Futurum Research, Four Keys to Navigating the Hardware Security Journey, Oct. 2020
(7) Dell Technologies, Remote Work Readiness Index Singapore, Dec. 2020
(8) Based on Dell Analysis, September 2021.
* Information courtesy of Dell Technologies and burson cohn & wolfe *