LANDesk rules the roost in desktop management

By Paul Ferrill, Network World
January 23, 2006 12:00 AM ET

In this round of testing desktop-management software, we decided to analyze how well the tools performed from the perspective of five different roles, or sets of users. For example, looking at these products from the perspective of the help desk, we evaluated how well the products help diagnose and fix problems on remote desktops, and we looked at the deployment of software, imaging, personality transfer and upgrades.

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We analyzed the products from the perspective of security in terms of patch management, anti-virus updates, and software application monitoring and metering. We also looked at the products' support for Cisco's Network Admission Control (NAC) and the protection they offered for mobile workers away from corporate networks.

We looked at these tools from the perspective of users - how well the products let them find and restore lost files, fix applications or reset their passwords. We took the perspective of IT executives in terms of how the offerings produced accurate and informative software and hardware inventories and useful reports for CIOs, and how they addressed day-to-day management issues at the operational level.

We invited several top desktop-management vendors to participate, as well as Altiris, LANDesk, Microsoft and Novell. CA had a new release of its Desktop Management Suite in beta, but it wasn't ready for release before we finished our testing. Numara Software (formerly Intuit) submitted its Track-It Enterprise product, which we reviewed separately, because it doesn't match up well with the other products tested.

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How we did it

For this test, we weren't scoring the products on installation and setup, so we let vendors deliver their software as a virtual machine using either VMware or Microsoft's Virtual Server. We ran these virtual images on a Gateway four-way server with 4GB of memory.

The network consisted of a variety of desktops and laptops with different processor speeds and running Windows 2000 and XP. The network also contained two 10/100 16-port switches and a DSL connection to the Internet through a four-port switch and wireless 802.11b access point.

To test different roles, we performed tasks typical of a person in that role, such as creating a system image and deploying it, using the software distribution tools to deploy an application, initiating a remote control session of a desktop, running various reports and restoring a lost user file, if possible.

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Our Clear Choice Award goes to LANDesk for having a broad range of features that covered our five sets of users well, and had superior security features.

LANDesk

LANDesk has provided the broadest-possible level of platform support in all its products since we've been testing its gear. Version 8.6 of the LANDesk Management Suite is no exception: It supports multiple versions of Linux, Macintosh and Windows. The inclusion of the LANDesk Management Gateway makes it possible to manage a laptop or desktop system over the Internet. This release of Management Suite makes significant strides in its reporting capabilities. Previous versions delivered a set of canned reports and a simple report generator, but we found a more complete (although complex) capability in this release.