any suggestions?

[edwinhunt]

hi all,

i'm working for an organization with about 150 users and we're all microsoft environment here. we're currently researching for a good software deployment solutions. besides sms, do you have any suggestions for something that's simple and fairly easy to setup and manage? also, something with a good reporting capability too so that we will know who's been upgraded or not.

thanks!
-ed

 

[kmkeshav]

I am not sure for what reasons you looking for a solution other than SMS for software deployment. There are many companies offering software deployment solutions (eg. Altris). I have not experienced with those solutions but I would to share my experiences with SMS. We are using SMS 2003 in our environment. We did have problems patching computers using SMS 2003 but solved this by shifting patching activity to WSUS. I don't recommend SMS for patching computers in an environment having more than 5000 computers or having computers in many languages. Also we have problems extracting reports on software usage and installation count (for MS licensing). Software installation counts were either wrongly reported or not reported at all. We have made MS aware of this problem. I don't think they have rectified this yet.

Some one correct me if I am wrong.

MS SCCM 2007 seems to be better than SMS 2003. I have been going through some of the documents.

I am curious to know about Altris. I have heard many people saying about this. I would request some one who is experienced with Altris to share it here.

 

[ncotton]

What do you want to know about Altiris? It is very similar to SMS in business scope, very different in detail/operation.

What kind of software are you wanting to deploy. I think SMS and probably Altiris will be a bit overkill for a ~150 machine infrastructure, financially.

Have you thought about just deploying through Active Diretory?

Neil J Cotton
Technical Consultant
Anix