In my first post, I mentioned that I'd be developing a management console for Intel AMT. Over the next few weeks, I'll be working on IT Helper 1.0. For help, I can only use the blogs, forums, and other resources available to the community. This will help to identify some of the issues faced by new AMT developers. With my feedback (and yours!), we can make sure that developers are provided with all of the resources that they need to effectively and efficiently develop applications for Intel AMT.

Planning is a very important part of softare development. The Intel Software Partner Program proved to be very useful in the planning of my project. In addition to its many other benefits, the ISPP helped me to see the big picture and determine exactly what I wanted out of my software project. It allowed me to create a Project Plan, which helped me to chose the use cases and features that I wanted to implement.

I will be implementing the following use cases:

• Platform Auditing (UC1)
  • Reduce or eliminate manual inventory audits by being able to locate systems regardless of power state or health. Improve asset management.


• Software Inventory Management (UC2)
  • Improve the software-inventory process; optimize maintenance contracts, licensing, and configurations inventory through firmware (FW) resident SW info.


• Hardware Inventory Management (UC3)
  • Reduce manual audits and better manage hardware inventories, recalls, warranties. Efficiently manage hardware inventories.


• Software Version Compliance (UC6)
  • Ensure up-to-date software versions, virus signatures, etc. Improve accuracy, speed and efficiency of anti-virus software updates regardless of OS or power state.


• Presence Checking of User Partition Agents (UC8)
  • Virtually eliminate the ability of users or malware to circumvent protection. If the user disables agents, that action triggers alerts, quarantines the system, and re-initializes agent.

I will be implementing the following features:

• Access Hardware Inventory Data Structure


• Read Event Logs


• Serial over LAN


• Power Status/ Control/ Monitoring


• Agent Presence

With a Project Plan, I was able to start working on my project immediately. I've already started to implement some of the basic features of my application and I'll be working on something new every week. You can follow my progress by reading my blog. As always, please leave questions and/or comments!