Apple Remote Desktop assists Mac network administrators manage modest sized workgroups, but doesnit always fill the bill for large, corporate Mac installations. Nowadays, the arrival of price competitive Intel Macs with virtualization and increasing popularity of Macs has led to more sophisticated management tools, like LANDesk, according to Computerworld on Tuesday.
For a long time, Mac network administrators were jealous of their PC brethren and the enterprise-class remote management tools they had for large PC installations. "Itis always been an area of contention ? like, iHow come THEY get this nifty tool?i" said Randy Rowles, a technical support analyst with Harcourt, Inc.
In his company, going back years, the PC admins were able to remotely manage 4,000 PCs, automating tasks such as tracking software licenses and enforcing group policies. Mr. Rowles was relegated to using spreadsheets. He pointed out that Appleis Remote Desktop was "possible, though not efficient."
Today, all thatis changed with LANDesk Softwareis version 8.8 of its management tools. Now, admins can manage all their PCs and Macs from Vista. The tool can achieve everything needed to manage a large installation of Macs and PCs, including OS deployment, settings, software deployment, and inventory.
In fact, according to CWis Eric Lal, LANDesk has a customer, that they declined to identify, who may increase their Mac installation from 400 to 4,000 by yearis end thanks to the new capabilities in LANDesk 8.8.
In addition, Symantecis Altiris Client Management Suite, a close competitor to LANDesk, has seen tremendous interest and deployment of that suite for Mac management in 2007.
Mr. Rowles would like to see additional capabilities for Macs in the latest version of LANDesk 8.8, but for now, "It shows a lot of promise," he said.