Partner content: Counting the business benefits of Windows 11 and AI PCs
“AI changes that have been happening the last couple of years have enabled us to do a lot of productivity work”
Dennis Luo, Senior Director/General Manager, Worldwide Developer Relations & Innovation at Intel Corporation
As Windows 10 approaches its end-of-support, IT decision makers face a strategy juncture that extends far beyond a routine operating system upgrade. The transition to Windows 11 represents an opportunity to embrace a step change in enterprise computing through AI-powered PCs that deliver measurable productivity gains, enhanced security, and streamlined management capabilities.
The Windows 10 sunset: A strategic inflection point
Computing spoke to Dennis Luo – Senior Director, Worldwide Developer Relations & Innovation at Intel Corporation about what the approaching end-of-life for Windows 10 means for IT leaders. To Luo, it presents a chance to, “rethink endpoint strategies, boost productivity and prepare for what's next. Windows 10 end-of-support to Windows 11 is an opportunity to reflect on how computing has evolved.”
The evolution he references centres on AI capabilities that have progressed how organisations interact with technology. “AI changes that have been happening the last couple of years have enabled us to do a lot of productivity work. Running SLMs on the client and true agentic multitasking are all things that weren’t possible before.”
Impacting enterprise workflows
Modern AI PCs, powered by Intel® Core™ Ultra processors with dedicated CPU, GPU, and NPU AI engines, deliver tangible productivity enhancements in everyday workflows. For example:
- In data analysis scenarios, Microsoft Power BI demonstrates up to 16% faster performance generation-over-generation on Intel® Core Ultra 200V series processors[i], while Tableau shows impressive gains of up to 31% faster performance[ii]. These improvements directly translate to faster business insights and reduced time-to-decision for critical organisational workflows.
- Content creation workflows see even more dramatic improvements. CyberLink Promeo, a creative AI solution for digital marketing, delivers up to 81% faster performance generation-over-generation through local AI processing on the Intel GPU & NPU. Similarly, Iterate AI, an LLM-powered assistant that accelerates text augmentation and document search, is up to 56% faster.
- The productivity benefits extend to collaboration environments as well. Zoom leverages AI NPU based noise suppression, background blur, and AI-enhanced lighting, to help users look professional and improve battery life. Similarly, Microsoft Teams benefits from Windows Studio Effects optimised for Intel NPU, providing features like automatic framing, portrait lighting, portrait blur and eye gaze correction with improved power efficiency.
Addressing modern security challenges
Today's threat landscape demands a fundamental shift in security strategy. With 79% of attacks now employing malware-free techniques and 90% of successful cyberattacks originating at endpoints[iii], traditional security approaches prove insufficient for hybrid work environments. Both attacks, and the defence strategies that repel them are moving increasingly closer to ‘the metal’.
AI PCs address these challenges through hardware-assisted security solutions that leverage dedicated AI processing units. Intel® Threat Detection Technology (Intel® TDT) provides increased security performance at the hardware level, helping prevent ransomware, crypto mining, and memory scanning attacks.
CrowdStrike exemplifies this new approach, says Luo. “Faster endpoint security and management – reducing that CPU load from 20% down to 1% really enables local secure experiences that are much faster and responsive versus sending it up to the cloud.” Meanwhile, Intel TDT's Advanced Memory Scanning offloads scanning to the GPU, resulting in up to 7x memory scan performance, while dynamic malware classification on NPU shows 3.7x better performance compared to CPU-based solutions.
Additional security vendors including Microsoft Windows Defender, ESET, Acronis, Bufferzone, Trend Micro, and McAfee have also optimised their solutions for AI PC architectures, offering AI-powered ransomware detection, sensitive data protection, and even deep fake content detection.
Enhanced manageability through AI telemetry
AI PCs also boast unprecedented visibility into enterprise computing environments through advanced telemetry capabilities. Luo highlights that Intel is, “working with companies like Lakeside to provide new AI telemetry and really allows companies of all sizes to best measure the software and usage of the PCs by all their users to really provide new insights and data on what's being used in their environment.”
Solutions like Lakeside SysTrack enable on-device anomaly detection for Digital Employee Experience (DEX), allowing continuous federated model training while reducing latency and bandwidth requirements. Similarly, Ivanti Neurons enhances digital employee experience by enabling on-device data analysis and detecting anomalies through NPU and AI models.
The local AI advantage: Privacy, cost, and performance
Enterprise AI adoption often faces challenges around data privacy, unpredictable costs, and limited internal expertise. Local AI processing on AI PCs addresses these concerns directly. Partners like LLMWare.ai demonstrate how enterprises can deploy private, affordable, and more secure AI to PCs through solutions that keep data within enterprise boundaries.
The performance benefits are equally compelling, with optimised model inferencing delivering up to 30 times faster than other inferencing formats while supporting over 100 Small Language Models (SLMs) that run entirely on AI PCs with minimal resource requirements.
Meaningful gains
The business impact of AI adoption is no longer theoretical. Luo notes that, “across companies, across customers, across end users, AI is being used by 60% of their people. So, it's here to stay. AI has changed how we work and how we're productive.
“The ROI is very real. The productivity gains, the time savings, the power and performance, these are all very real things and measurable.” For IT leaders evaluating the business case, Luo poses a critical question, “At what point does the company consider a 20% gain meaningful, right? A 40% gain meaningful?”
Luo’s advice for IT decision makers is unequivocal: “Don't wait. Take advantage of this opportunity today. Your workers will benefit from this already.”
For more information and examples of these opportunities and benefits, head to Intel’s Business AI PC Showcase.
Seizing the AI PC opportunity
The transition from Windows 10 is an opportunity to fundamentally transform enterprise computing capabilities. As organisations prepare for an AI-powered future, the question isn't whether to adopt AI PCs, but how, and how quickly, they should be deployed to benefit from them, within budget and within the context of Windows 11 adoption.
With Intel actively enabling over 200 worldwide ISVs across 480 AI features, the ecosystem is reaching maturity and ready for widespread enterprise deployment.
For IT leaders, the choice is clear – embrace AI PCs now to unlock immediate productivity gains and position your organisation for continued success in an AI-driven business landscape. What’s more, the devices they specify today will determine their endpoint estates’ readiness throughout the next three to five years of rapid AI PC evolution.
Find out more about the impact AI PCs could have at your organisation.
[i] Intel® Core Ultra 7 268V vs. Intel® Core Ultra 7 165H. See www.intel.com/PerformanceIndex for workloads and configurations. Results may vary.
[ii] Intel® Core Ultra 7 268V vs. Intel® Core i 7 1280P. See www.intel.com/PerformanceIndex for workloads and configurations. Results may vary.