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Workgroup management is not enterprise management, but It Is becoming an increasingly vital part of the enterprise. As small businesses and departmental workgroups mature and become more diverse, so too does their need to manage systems. At NETWORK COMPUTING'S lab at Syracuse University, we tested six workgroup-based systems management products from Intel Corp., McAfee, Microsoft Corp., Novell, Seagate Software and Symantec Corp. to see what they offer. Although these products talk about heterogeneous management, they have a scope limited to PC platforms-leaving MVS, OS/400 and Unix to the likes of Tivoli Systems and Computer Associates. As a group, however, workgroup management systems have grown to maintain a more distributed environment, supporting console/server hierarchies and bandwidth reservation for the distribution of software over slow WAN links.
We looked at inventory and systems management functionality, but found the biggest gains were made in the area of software distribution. There is no doubt that inventory and systems management are important, but installing and maintaining software consumes the most time in the management of a PC network environment.
When the testing dust had settled, we gave top honors to Microsoft's Systems Management Server (SMS). It not only manages all flavors of Windows, but also is easy to use and does an excellent job of software distribution and inventory management. Microsoft has worked through the issues of desktop support and now has a product that provides the biggest bang for the buck.
Microsoft Corp. System Management Server 1.2
Microsoft is beating the drum of systems management and the rhythm is "make it better, make it better." It's a catchy beat, and we found ourselves tapping our toes-even with a beta installer thrown in on the offbeat. SMS was rock solid, but it lacks the support for heterogeneous environments, as found in Symantec's Norton Administrator. For managing Windows desktops, this Redmond two-step is hard to top.
The product does hit a few bad notes, however, because it lacks the ability to manage real heterogeneous environments. Microsoft seems to think that managing three flavors of Windows and three versions of Windows NT means managing the enterprise. Although this might be disappointing to shops that have Unix, OS/400 or even Novell NetWare, Windows desktop management represents the majority of systems management work for...