Client systems get better management tools

Managing client devices presents a conundrum to IT managers looking to monitor activity, secure systems and improve performance across disparate machines that require constant attention and upkeep.

Best practices would dictate standardization as the logical way to monitor thousands of like systems, but achieving homogeneity among client devices is nearly impossible. Desktops - and other client devices such as laptops and PDAs - can vary widely across a large company. Diversity among machines can range from the applications end users employ to various versions of operating systems to customized interfaces and the hardware sitting on the desktop.

"We are a schizophrenic organization. On the one hand, we are corporate and have standardized machines and controls in place, and on the other hand, we are like a college campus with unknown devices logging on to our network," says Ethan Fener, associate director of IS for Partners HealthCare Systems in Wellesley, Mass. "We have about 27,000 machines that are closely aligned and potentially an equal number of IP addresses for machines that are not standard. There is no way to achieve 100% certainty and visibility into each machine."

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Managing client devices presents a conundrum to IT managers looking to monitor activity, secure systems and improve performance across disparate machines that require constant attention and upkeep.

Best practices would dictate standardization as the logical way to monitor thousands of like systems, but achieving homogeneity among client devices is nearly impossible. Desktops - and other client devices such as laptops and PDAs - can vary widely across a large company. Diversity among machines can range from the applications end users employ to various versions of operating systems to customized interfaces and the hardware sitting on the desktop.

"We are a schizophrenic organization. On the one hand, we are corporate and have standardized machines and controls in place, and on the other hand, we are like a college campus with unknown devices logging on to our network," says Ethan Fener, associate director of IS for Partners HealthCare Systems in Wellesley, Mass. "We have about 27,000 machines that are closely aligned and potentially an equal number of IP addresses for machines that are not standard. There is no way to achieve 100% certainty and visibility into each machine."

But users are trying the use of client-management systems is on the rise. According to a 2004 Forrester Research survey of 137 IT managers, 92% of companies use client-management tools or software, while 69% of small and midsize businesses (SMB) report doing so, as well. In response, vendors have augmented their products to better address the range of capabilities needed to tackle client systems.

For instance, HP acquired Novadigm to improve its client-management tools and recently made available a scaled-down version of its software to appeal to the fast-growing SMB market, which Yankee Group estimates includes about 6 million companies with two to 1,000 employees. Companies such as Symantec and BigFix have expanded capabilities in their software suites beyond security and patch management, respectively, to include more systems-management capabilities.

And Altiris, LANDesk and Computer Associates have augmented their systems-management portfolios with more security-specific offerings, such as spyware detection. Yet Microsoft leads the market for client-systems management, possibly because the company included SMS with its Back Office bundle, and SMS was often sold as part of corporate license agreements, Forrester speculates.

Adding to the management challenge, client systems demand much more than availability monitoring. IT managers must track end-user systems for security, compliance, software license and inventory purposes, among other things. In fact, the coming together of once-separate IT tasks is probably best demonstrated when managing client machines. Consider patch management, which couples vulnerability scans and configuration management with software distribution capabilities.

"There is a big convergence right now in terms of endpoint management. The whole operational discipline is becoming critical for security," says Peter Firstbrook, a research director at Gartner. "Standardization would be great, but it's not likely, so IT managers need to get processes and procedures in place that technology can ultimately automate for both operations and security management on endpoints."