AMT? ...Vegetal, mineral or animal? (Intel AMT from an ISV's perspective)

By Maria Camila Gomez-Silva (1 posts) on June 30, 2008 at 6:07 am

Did you know how difficult is to start writing "the first post" … Let's see where to begin? ...I have been a user of the ISN community for 18-+ months now, and it is great to be able to share my experience with Intel AMT at the ISN manageability blog!

Aranda Software (the company I work for as a Project Manager) is an ISV. We develop enterprise management solutions that enable the support of best practices in IT management. Some of Aranda's products are related to manageability, so we got to know that a hardware based manageability technology existed named "Intel AMT" and voilá!!! I was assigned to evaluate whether or not AMT was an option for us.

Step#1: Let's find out what AMT is, how it works and how our manageability products can use/integrate with this technology.
After a couple of weeks of preliminary research we realized that AMT could definitely improve our software and its manageability features. AMT could give us the ability to enhance our asset management and service desk products with remote control and agentless functionality!!

Step#2: Start developing AMT capable software. But how!!!!!
I won't lie… at the beginning I was afraid, I was petrified (sounds like a song), AMT seems to be difficult. So…ok let's turn it in to a challenge, but not personal! In this point in time I arrived at the Intel Software Network, I downloaded the Intel AMT SDK, Intel AMT DTK.. Ran the samples, saw the source code. Lesson: It is not as difficult as I thought it would be!!

Step#3: get an Intel AMT (VPro) Computer
This proved to be harder! I am talking about 2007/Q2…. Getting a VPro or at least an Intel Mother board with Intel AMT support was quite a…. Let's say nearly impossible. Finally we could get our hands on a board through a local hardware provider so we could build our own AMT Computer.  We were able to complete our SDK understanding and test all the DTK components until we were ready to go!

FYI: If you read my profile you can remember that I am located in Bogotá- Colombia and when we were getting our first AMT Computer Intel had not yet started to promote VPro in Latin America. This year things are different regarding VPro in Latin America.. I will talk about this in my next post!

Step#4: the development
We officially started a project to build our own AMT capable software on 2007 Q3! Technology chosen: .Net(C#) …why?
1: Our software development team uses .net  (C#)  and feels quite at ease with it.
2: The ISN gave us an excellent baseline: Intel AMT DTK
3: Aranda's solution was meant to be integrated with other products already built in .net

AMT features Implemented:

Step#5 What came out of the tunnel
A couple of months later (2007/Q4) with a good AMT lab (thanks to the ISPP) we were able to test our solution and release our first version ready to go for AMT 3.0 and backward!

The hardest part: building the SOL Terminal
The easiest part: hardware inventory
Easier than it seemed to be: IDE-R

Step#6: The prestige, Our AMT Capable solution "Aranda LOM"
We have now Aranda LOM. Lights-Out Management: an other way to say Out Of Band Management.

The best part: the next version of Aranda LOM development will start first of July 2008 , so I am back 100% with AMT and looking forward to it.

As I mentioned before I hope to write more about, how, from my own perspective and what I have been able to see, VPro has come into the Latin American market, which makes me very happy  and we will be able to keep having Aranda LOM in action!.

Categories: Manageability

Comments (9)

June 30, 2008 7:13 AM PDT

Ajay Mungara (Intel)
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Community Manager
 Maria,
Welcome to Intel Software Blogs. Thanks for a very insightful first post. Congratulations on being our first external blog author for the manageability developer community. I am really exited to hear directly from a user of our community -- all the good, bad and the ugly of our community and the technology.

I am really looking forward to reading your future posts. Thanks.

If any of you is interested to have your blog on this community then please feel free to send me an email (ajay.mungara (@) intel.com).
June 30, 2008 8:08 AM PDT


Gael Holmes		 Welcome to our Blogs, Maria. I enjoyed reading your first post!
June 30, 2008 8:19 AM PDT


Ajith Illendula		 Wow this is really Koooooool to hear directly from the ISV's. Welcome to the manageability blogs. You have laid out the exact concerns most of the other ISVs and IT folks are facing. Your blog will sure encourage lot of newbies to Intel AMT and they wont be so afraid of it :-P. Keep up the good work!
June 30, 2008 8:20 AM PDT

Gunjan Rawal (Intel)
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 Welcome Maria! A great post. I am looking forward to hearing your thoughts, feedback, experiences with Intel AMT...
June 30, 2008 11:34 AM PDT

Bill Pearson (Intel)
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Brown Belt
 Thanks for sharing your perspective Maria. I'm looking forward to your next post.
June 30, 2008 11:58 AM PDT

Joshua Hilliker (Intel)
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Green Belt
 Great first post ..
July 1, 2008 8:22 AM PDT

Maria Camila Gomez-Silva
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Brown Belt
 Thanks to everyone for this nice comments and this warm welcome to the manageability blog!
July 21, 2008 10:51 AM PDT

Shmuel Gershon (Intel)
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Brown Belt
 Excelent post --
This close contact with the "real world" and the ISVs is very important, and we surely need more of it.

Now you got me curious about the promotion (and reception) of vPro in Latin America.
Being from South America myself (but far away for many years), I wonder to what extent all this technologies and brands spread over there. I'll wait to leanr about it in your next post.

Bienvenida, Maria! :)
August 27, 2008 7:39 AM PDT

Gunjan Rawal (Intel)
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Community Manager
 Maria, it was great to meet you at IDF!!! I am looking forward to your future posts on our communities :-)

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