Most large organisations operate a diverse mix of PC’s running Windows and MacOS, mobile devices across iOS and Android, printers, peripherals, conference spaces and even virtual machines. This complexity is growing. The number of connected devices in corporate environments has surged from 16.6 billion in 2023 to a projected 40 billion by 2030.
With numerous endpoints sourced from multiple vendors, IT teams face a rapidly expanding and increasingly fragmented ecosystem. Every new device type added to the environment exacerbates the challenge, making device management more complex and labour intensive. As a result, organisations are looking to address this complexity through unified management approaches that provide greater visibility, consistency and control.
Endpoint sprawl and the proliferation of management tools
Large organisations typically oversee tens of thousands of endpoints sourced from multiple vendors. “Vendor sprawl creates security and asset management challenges,” says Matt Little, Solution Consultant for Tier 1 Global Sales at HP. Keeping every device compliant, patched and protected, both inside and outside the office, requires constant effort, particularly as cyber threats escalate. Tracking devices across their full life cycle is also a major challenge, with lost or unmanaged assets posing financial and security risks.”
Many enterprises rely on multiple security and asset management solutions to meet these challenges. As one recent study highlights, nearly 60% of companies use four or more different endpoint security tools. As each system comes with its own GUI, alerts and workflows, IT teams can struggle to achieve a unified view of their devices.
Meanwhile, inconsistent data and overlapping alerts make it difficult for operations teams to prioritise issues or act proactively. “IT leaders are looking to reduce tool sprawl, close visibility gaps and replace siloed systems with integrated insights and automation, without adding yet another layer of operational friction,” adds Little.
Where system complexity and capability gaps meet
Closing visibility gaps is crucial. No single platform covers every requirement across analytics, software distribution, security, performance and experience management, forcing IT teams to stitch together multiple tools to fill gaps. This often results in fragmented data and inconsistent insights and requires significant operational resources, driving up costs for IT.
This fragmentation is particularly evident in integration with IT service management (ITSM) workflows. Joey Stork, Services Specialist for Tier 1 Enterprises at HP, says: “Many organisations operate numerous specialist portals that deliver alerts and insights, but lack the integration needed to feed that intelligence into core ITSM processes.”
As a result, alerts simply signal that there is an issue without context, prioritisation or remediation. Little adds: “Enterprises are clear that they don’t want more alerts or more consoles. They want integrated data across all assets, enriched with AI and machine learning, to support informed decisions and automate fixes.”
The role of digital experience and endpoint intelligence platforms
The solution is to achieve a unified view across all devices that can integrate data and provide consolidated insights. Here, digital experience and endpoint intelligence platforms are key.
Solutions like HP Workforce Experience Platform (WXP) can solve the challenges of endpoint sprawl by unifying data from across the entire endpoint ecosystem, inclusive of PCs, conference suites and printers into a single, coherent view.
Little says: “HP’s platform uses a single agent architecture that operates across multiple PC operating systems, while also extending visibility into print and collaboration environments. This is a critical differentiator. By bringing conference rooms, printers and endpoints into a single view, IT gains insight into elements of the digital workplace that are often managed separately. This leads to fewer blind spots and a more consistent experience across devices and environments.”
In these solutions, endpoint telemetry data is consolidated within a secure, multi-tenant cloud data lake, providing IT teams with a single pane of glass through which to manage devices. This foundation delivers unified visibility, enables advanced analytics and supports proactive and automated remediation.
AI native capabilities drive automation and insight
“When assessing various digital experience solutions, IT leaders should look to deploy an AI-native platform that can help IT from a reactive to a proactive posture,” says Little. “While telemetry and automation have existed for years, AI allows platforms such as HP WXP to scale these capabilities across diverse environments, continuously analysing endpoint signals to predict issues, prioritise action and automate remediation.”
When deployed effectively, AI in digital experience platforms enables IT to focus on user experience, rather than device status. Traditional tools may show all systems as “green,” yet employees can still suffer from poor performance. By combining telemetry with behavioural and sentiment indicators, platforms like WXP can help IT teams understand how technology is actually experienced by users and act accordingly.
Putting data visibility at the heart of endpoint management
By integrating endpoint intelligence directly into existing enterprise systems, AI-driven automation and machine learning can identify, prioritise and resolve issues without burdening IT.
Rather than reacting to alerts across disconnected consoles, IT teams benefit from automated end-to-end workflows. The result is a more effective technology environment that reduces costs, improves the employee experience and allows IT to focus on supporting business strategy.
Click here to find out how HP can boost productivity with an AI-powered approach to workforce experience management.