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MIAMI--Florida Power & Light Co. had a problem. It was migrating its mainframe-based net to a client/server architecture and needed an easy way to update applications on thousands of PCs spread across the state.
Finding an effective way to distribute software is a problem that's sneaking up on more users as they convert client/server pilots into enterprise-scale systems supporting thousands of desktops.
It's a nightmare synchronizing code on personal computers, Unix machines and mainframes, according to Beverly Loftus, technical services supervisor with FPL's information management group. Users have to ensure that all PCs have the right software revision, which is impossible to do one machine at a time, she said.
FPL conducted an extensive evaluation of 10 software distribution products, finally selecting Novadigm. Inc.'s Enterprise Desktop Manager (EDM) to update software automatically on 3,500 of the utility's 8,500 PCs at 24 sites spread over 28,000 square miles.
The utility found the object-oriented product simple to configure and easy on bandwidth, because it only ships the differences between an existing and updated application over wide-area links. And it does this only once per workgroup, letting a local server handle distribution to clients.
One newly built customer service application runs on some 700...