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Thread: managing 3rd party apps

  1. #1
    AO übergeek phishphreek's Avatar
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    managing 3rd party apps

    How does everyone here manage 3rd party apps when updates are released? Do you have some opern source or commercial solution to deploy or do you let the programs autoupdate? Or, do you just ignore them?

    I use Microsoft's WSUSv3 for m$ updates. I love it. I can manage all m$ related patches, service packs, etc. from one place. Many apps I can deploy via active directory or logon scripts...

    Though, as my network is growing, I need to work smarter and not harder. One of my main goals this year is to find some way to centrally manage most software packages.

    I know there are 3rd party apps out there like Numara Deploy, GFI network security scanner, microsoft's solution (don't remember the name off hand) but they're all every expensive.

    Whenever possible, I'm all about hacking together open source software and making a solution work. However, I feel this time I'm going to just to bite the bullet and buy some commercial solution.

    Please tell me what you do to manage these apps.
    Quitmzilla is a firefox extension that gives you stats on how long you have quit smoking, how much money you\'ve saved, how much you haven\'t smoked and recent milestones. Very helpful for people who quit smoking and used to smoke at their computers... Helps out with the urges.

  2. #2
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    Thats funny cuz I am getting a presentation on LanDesk in an hour from Avocent. Check it out.

    http://www.avocent.com/web/en.nsf/Content/LANDeskSM

  3. #3
    Dissident 4dm1n brokencrow's Avatar
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    We use AuditWizard.
    “Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.” — Will Rogers

  4. #4
    AO übergeek phishphreek's Avatar
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    Well, I know what software and hardware is on our PCs. We use Numara TrackIT8 for daily auditing of workstation hardware, software, reporting changes of software, etc. It's also my helpdesk ticketing system, software/book library manager, purchase ordering and reporting on all of the above.

    However, I want to be able to manage all of the sofware installed. Deploying upgrades for various software, uninstalling obsolete or unapproved software, etc.

    Since I already have a lot invested in Numara, I'm going to give their "Deploy" solution a try. They have a demo available. Though, I must admit that I'm not thrilled with their latest version of TrackIT... but I'll try it.
    http://www.numarasoftware.com/Deploy.asp

    I'll check out the Lanman solution too.
    Quitmzilla is a firefox extension that gives you stats on how long you have quit smoking, how much money you\'ve saved, how much you haven\'t smoked and recent milestones. Very helpful for people who quit smoking and used to smoke at their computers... Helps out with the urges.

  5. #5
    AO übergeek phishphreek's Avatar
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    Well, I haven't made it terribly far on this project. More testing and reading than anything else. However, I could very well have a decent and inexpensive solution to this problem.

    I've been going through trying to determine exactly which apps need to be managed and on how many workstations. Most of the apps thus far are third party apps that are not public.

    As it turns out, most of the public apps that we do use have MSI files out there. So, I've been testing deployment of software via Group Policy. So far, everything has been going great. In the past, this was impossible due to the horrible WAN links I had. However, that is no longer a problem and I have a very decent distributed file system up and running for software deployment.

    I've been playing around with http://www.advancedinstaller.com/ to repackage the third party apps that won't provide us the packages as MSI. It's quite a pain to go through and determine every file and registry key that is installed with the free version, so I may end up purchasing the enterprise version. It's only $500 and so far it's repackaged the dozen or so apps that I've tested without a problem.

    Some of the third party apps that I've looked into cost about $6000 just in licensing just to manage ~200 workstations. That's not including parent and child servers... So, I think that approach may be a waste.
    Quitmzilla is a firefox extension that gives you stats on how long you have quit smoking, how much money you\'ve saved, how much you haven\'t smoked and recent milestones. Very helpful for people who quit smoking and used to smoke at their computers... Helps out with the urges.

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