AI Technology Makes Self-Healing PCs a Reality

When was the last time your day got totally derailed by a seemingly minor issue—a car that wouldn’t start, a stumble on the stairs, a PC running slow? Those things you never give a second thought can wreak havoc when there’s an unexpected problem. Suddenly, you’re scrambling for a rideshare, hobbling around on a sprained ankle and missing a proposal deadline.

This blog post isn’t about how to cope with life’s unexpected daily life challenges though. It’s about how to avoid ever having to deal with them in the first place. Because what if the thing that fails—your car, your weak ankle, your PC—could just instantly fix itself, without you having to lift a finger? I can’t speak for the first two, but I can tell you that right now, the PC that heals itself is a reality that’s coming this spring to users of ProSupport Suite for PCs.

But I’m getting ahead of the story.

Present State: PC Triage, Treatment, Healing

The way the world keeps its PCs up and running has always been much like the way we keep the human body working right. Take that sprained ankle I mentioned earlier. If it’s bad enough to keep you from getting around, and your usual ice and compression aren’t doing the trick, you’re going to seek help from an expert. You’ll call your doctor’s office, or maybe head over to a minor emergency clinic. If you’re lucky, they won’t be too busy, and they’ll quickly assess and treat your injury so you can be on your way.

That’s pretty much the current model for PCs, too. If your machine is running painfully slow, and the usual restarts aren’t helping, you go to IT with your issue so you can get the problem fixed and get back to work. And just as with our sprained-ankle analogy, you hope they’re not too busy and can resolve the issue quickly. Of course, they’re hoping the same thing, because the sooner users can get back up and running, the more productive everyone—IT admins and PC users—will be.

Enter AI: Self-healing Automation for PCs

With the help of AI, the traditional triage-and-treatment model for healing PCs gives way to a more proactive approach, in which telemetry data from networked PCs can activate processes to automatically detect and resolve PC problems—before the end user even realizes anything is wrong.

Going a step further, this AI-powered self-healing can detect issues that are likely to cause problems in the future and address them across the networked environment before the problems arise. To continue with our healthcare metaphor, think of that as a vaccine against certain conditions—like a flu shot that keeps a patient from ever getting sick in the first place.

This emerging approach, made possible by AI, is all about creating an environment for PC health where persistent issues across a fleet of machines can be automatically resolved in less time and with minimal human intervention—or even no human intervention. That, in turn, leaves IT free to focus on more critical and more strategic priorities.

Coming this Spring: Self-healing Automation from Dell ProSupport Plus

I’ve been talking in metaphors and hypotheticals so far, but I’m excited to now introduce the revolutionary new real-world implementation of PC self-healing that will be a part of the Dell ProSupport Plus offering beginning this spring. That’s when ProSupport Plus customers who are connected to Dell SupportAssist AI technology can take advantage of self-healing automation to optimize PC performance and resolve a variety of PC issues—without requiring active intervention from IT and without disrupting users.

Initially, a library of IT-driven scripts will be available that AI can launch across fleets to resolve issues like blue screen errors and thermal issues. Over time, we’ll continue to refine scripts, and we can develop more scripts to further broaden the scope of these capabilities.

I’m thrilled to be part of realizing the vision of AI-powered, self-healing automation and delivering an unprecedented and ever-expanding set of capabilities for IT support. It’s going to change how IT delivers support and how users experience it—forever, and for the better.

Source: dell.com

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Self-Service Eases PC Deployment

Do any of you remember when self-service was reserved for all-you-can-eat buffets? Some of you aren’t old enough to remember when there was no such thing as a self-service gas station. Every gas station used to be entirely full-service, which meant a nice person would come to your car and ask you which grade of gas you wanted and you wouldn’t have to lift a finger.  While the pump was going, they would clean your windows and you drove away with a full tank and truly perfect windows.

In the 1980s, self-service really took hold when people started paying for everything under the sun with credit cards and when credit card processing got so good that you could build it right into the pump it became the norm. Since then, self-service seems to be everywhere and rightly so because it allows buyers to make quick decisions at point-of-sale, and reduces time spent on menial tasks freeing up resources for more strategic efforts.

These great self-service characteristics can even be applied by IT organizations today. For example, Dell IT is now leveraging a newly-launched capability called Shared Connected Configuration to bring the efficiency of self-service to enterprise PC deployments. This new service allows Dell PC customers to connect directly to Dell factories to manage their own custom Windows image—including applications and configuration—and ultimately have their PCs shipped to end users ready for first time login.

Dell IT technicians, who service some 140,000 employees around the world, are putting Connected Configuration to the test and driving efficiencies in our own PC deployment practice.

Taking PC deployment to the next level

In the world of hardware infrastructure, self-service has always meant online support portals where you can search the knowledge base, submit a ticket or post to a community forum.  Connected Configuration, part of Dell’s ProDeploy for PCs, goes beyond the simple online portal by allowing customers to upload PC images, pick their configuration options and keep those selections up-to-date using existing tools.

With Connected Configuration customers connect their Microsoft System Center Configuration Management (SCCM) environment to Dell’s supply chain. That means customers can use the SCCM toolset for image creation to customize and maintain their organization’s Windows image and burn that image on new device orders as part of the factory process. When they order PCs, they can ensure the latest image is installed on the systems in the Dell factory and that they are ready for first time login.

In the past, customers worked with their services program manager to update their PC configurations, shipping the image to Dell’s Customer Factory Integration (CFI) team via a thumb drive or a hard drive. Dell Services would then make sure all of the systems ordered had the specified images.

Besides being able to maintain their PC images themselves, the new self-service option offers another big advantage for users. Before Connected Configuration, an IT technician at the organization receiving the PC would have to perform the second-touch action of adding the new system to that organization’s Active Directory domain before delivering the PC to the user for first login. With Connected Configuration, that step is performed at the factory before the system is shipped.

Using our own technology

Based on our current pilot, Dell IT is very excited about the value that Connected Configuration can deliver to our organization by eliminating the need for our IT techs to prepare new PCs for login across the company. This new self-service capability will also expedite employee PC orders because it will allow Dell to ship the systems directly to the end users.

In fact, pilot results indicate that the self-service process could cut shipping time for a newly ordered PC in half, from 6 to 10 days to 3 to 5 days and totally eliminate the need for IT to do 10 to 15 minutes of onsite preparation per system.

Considering that Dell IT is on track to refresh some 29,000 systems a year for both legacy companies in the U.S. and EMEA, the potential value of this self-service innovation is significant.

Some lessons learned

Enterprise integration with the Dell factory requires anticipating and addressing networking, firewall and other technical challenges, but the rewards can be considerable. Be proactive and consider the following lessons we learned.

1. There’s a huge opportunity to enhance the way PCs are distributed. If you are doing it the old way, there’s definitely a better way to do it.

2. Engage your security teams early and have them be a part of the process in this security-centric integration. You’ve got to have those guys on board and they’ve got to be part of the conversation.

3. This capability has the potential to free up substantial IT resources that can be used to address other value-added IT challenges.

We think this solution is great now and its capabilities are only going to get better for both end users and for IT.

Check out Jim Roth, SVP, Services IT, Dell, at Dell EMC World 2017 in the Services Booth to discuss how Dell IT is consuming services for predictive and proactive support.

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