Stretching your network budget: Standardize

Fred Tippins, director of desktop strategy in the IT group at Motorola's semiconductor division in Phoenix, has to upgrade software several times a year on 20,000 desktops scattered all over the world. The cost to do this manually gets "fairly large fairly quickly,'' Tippins says.

"We needed to find better ways to manage that desktop environment,'' he says. What Tippins came up with was a strategy based on standardizing the desktops and automating the updating process as much as possible.

The first step was to define a global standard for software to replace the patchwork that had grown up over the years. For example, Tippins, whose 20,000 desktops are split just about evenly between Macintoshes and Windows-based PCs, decided to standardize on e-mail from Netscape and Microsoft's Office 2000.

Then he selected automated software distribution and management software from Novadigm. After installing a Novadigm client on each desktop, a central server can remotely update software, add or remove applications, scan desktop programs to spot variations and even fix problems. For example, if an end user accidentally deletes a key file, or if a file is corrupted, the monitoring system will recognize the problem and replace the file.

Tippins says the server automatically scans each desktop in the wee hours of the morning, looking for variations from the "desired state'' for each particular machine.

The software also provides key information to help Tippins with asset management, tracks software license compliance and can even distribute the latest virus protection software.

Tippins says he doesn't have a dollar figure for what the standardization and automation moves will save his department as he moves from the planning to implementation stages, but he does know this: "We will be able to assign some people who are occupied with manual processes now to areas that are more strategic for us, so we will get a net productivity gain.''

In the same vein, Mary Lu Steube, operations director for data communications at Alegent Health in Omaha, Neb., has automated software distribution and desktop management with Novell's ZENworks, not so much to reduce staff, but to keep pace with growing demands on existing employees.

With rural hospitals and clinics scattered across Nebraska and into Iowa, Steube's six network administrators and 12 desktop analysts were putting in for a ton of what she calls "windshield time'' - time spent driving to these locations.

By piggybacking the ZENworks rollout with a previously scheduled desktop hardware upgrade for Year 2000, she was able to standardize hardware and software on 3,500 desktops "in one big swoop.''

ZENworks has provided several money-stretching features: Steube can install software remotely; lock down desktops so rogue users can't add software; and take control of an end user's desktop and fix a problem remotely.

More tips:

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Automate
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Delegate
Outsourcing offers new lease on your network.

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