The self-managing desktop

 

Outsourcers aim to aid new data center Doing your due diligence Deciding to outsource Tooling up for the new data center The self-managing desktop Compelled to outsource

When it comes to the automation portion of your new data center strategy, don't forget the desktop.

So says Herb Schmoll, manager of end-user services at Jarden Consumer Solutions, the Boca Raton, Fla., company formerly known as Sunbeam Products. As much as automation is changing network and server operations, it is affecting desktop management , he says. So great are the implications that companies need a "desktop architect" on staff, he believes.

At Jarden CS, for example, a desktop architect has helped craft automated patch-management processes and has investigated the use of application virtualization. The primary tool at the desktop architect's disposal - the Altiris Client Management Suite (CMS) - is a class of tool that differs from the typical help desk products usually associated with desktop management. This systems management suite performs functions such as software distribution, IT asset management, remote control, PC backup and configuration management.

"Tools like Altiris ... have huge implications [for desktop support] - suddenly, I can do things the server and network  groups have long been able to do. That's an order of magnitude more sophisticated than desktop management has ever been," Schmoll says.

He offers his automated patch-management system as an example. With the help of The Blue Willow Group, an Altiris integrator, Schmoll's desktop team has built a "package server" network for distributing Windows XP and Office patches to 21 Jarden CS facilities around the world. At all but one site, a desktop running XP acts as the local package server, housing patches it receives from an Altiris Notification Server located in Boca Raton. Only in Boca Raton, which serves 450 users, does the package server reside on a server-class machine, he says. When a user machine, which talks periodically to the Notification Server, learns that it needs a patch, it taps into the package server on its local subnet for the appropriate download. This automated process is transparent to users - even the reboot is handled automatically, after hours.

Fast and easy

Automated patch management, served by low-cost desktops, is saving Jarden CS's desktop team thousands of hours of manual effort. For instance, Schmoll recently determined that over the course of a couple of months, this automated process resulted in 110,000 "touches" of user machines. Undertaken manually, at 10 minutes per update, those patch updates would have required 17,000 hours, or about 2,000 working days, Schmoll calculates. Instead, one technician spent about 120 hours testing the patches and readying them for deployment.

Likewise, using the software distribution capability found in Altiris CMS, Schmoll's team recently installed Office 2003 on 300 employee desktops in the course of about an hour. Previously, that effort would have meant desktop support technicians going on-site (or asking local "super users" to help with the installs) and spending a half-hour per user machine, for a total of about 150 hours, he says.