Riding herd on desktop demands

Software vendors attempt to ease the burden of managing desktops, laptops, servers and mobile clients.

Basil Blume learned a lot about desktop management his first week on the job at Centennial Bank of the West. For one, he learned that he needed a better way to do it.

Blume, CTO at the chain of banks headquartered in Fort Collins, Colo., found a software distribution project waiting for him when he started his new job. "I was told on a Wednesday we had a new release for one of the bank's primary applications that had to be installed by Saturday," Blume says.

With the bank's 150 workstations at nine locations and a staff of three, the application upgrade took more than 40 hours of "going to each branch and physically installing the software on each computer," he says. Today, with the help of Vector Networks' desktop management software PC-Duo Plus, Blume says he can upgrade Centennial Bank's 225 workstations and 25 servers spread across 13 branches from one management console in eight hours or less.

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Basil Blume learned a lot about desktop management his first week on the job at Centennial Bank of the West. For one, he learned that he needed a better way to do it.

Blume, CTO at the chain of banks headquartered in Fort Collins, Colo., found a software distribution project waiting for him when he started his new job. "I was told on a Wednesday we had a new release for one of the bank's primary applications that had to be installed by Saturday," Blume says.

With the bank's 150 workstations at nine locations and a staff of three, the application upgrade took more than 40 hours of "going to each branch and physically installing the software on each computer," he says. Today, with the help of Vector Networks' desktop management software PC-Duo Plus, Blume says he can upgrade Centennial Bank's 225 workstations and 25 servers spread across 13 branches from one management console in eight hours or less.

Desktop management software - products that perform software distribution, inventory and asset management, remote control and remote access capabilities -- typically doesn't top the list of sexy new technologies. But desktop products from Computer Associates, Microsoft and Marimba do fall under an enterprise network manager's list of must-have management software - especially in today's tough economic times.

"With the economic effects of downsized IT staffs, desktop management is an area that can significantly impact productivity of operations and service desk," says Audrey Rasmussen, a vice president with Enterprise Management Associates. Because desktop management tools automate several tasks, the software can reduce headcount on tedious tasks and increase efficiencies.

"We have seen tremendous time savings, and we can serve our users much better and faster than we could before," Blume says. He also increased his staff's response time by five times. "Today, we can respond to the user support calls faster and be more productive."

Patching things up

Along with time savings, network managers also can look to desktop management as a source for additional security on their networks. Patch management broke out as a high priority for IT managers last year; partly because IT shops haven't been able to upgrade hardware as often, and partly because frequent virus and software updates quickly overwhelm understaffed companies.

Industry watchers say the technology, which automatically distributes software patches to desktops and servers, will continue to garner attention this year because it promises to better secure networks.

"People are looking for the immediate benefit of patch management to eliminate risks on their desktops and servers, but it's really a one-trick pony," says Ronni Colville, a research director with Gartner. "The interest in patch management will help people get their arms around the bigger problems that can be addressed by configuration management and software distribution tools."

Carey Allen True, IS director at Mark IV Industries in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, deployed Computer Associate's Unicenter suite of desktop management products in January 2002. He says he initially needed to update antivirus software across 400 clients. "We were concerned that our software was not catching the latest viruses," he says.