An asset management campaign targeted at 250,000 SMBs is running until the end of the month, and will rely on Altiris’ Asset Management Suite to search for unlicensed software, retire old licenses and consolidate licenses.
Matt French, segment manager for Altiris’ Asset Management, said: Microsoft’s SMB group has been hit hard by compliance issues…. if you don’t have a mechanism to track licenses [like Asset Management], you don’t know if you are in compliance.
Microsoft’s work comes as Altiris also announced software updates to Asset Management Suite ahead of its Management Forum conference in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Asset Management Suite 6.0 features improvements to security and administration. Role-based access can be established out of the box, using a set of templates for different categories of user such as a help desk manager or contractor. This means customers do not need to configure role-based access by hand.
The suite can also create hierarchical relationships between assets on a network, so administrators can identify the impact of potential changes to applications and devices.
Other improvements tackle systems management at the helpdesk, where a set of smart tasks can recommend a cause of action in the event of particular user problems, such as undertaking back-up and recovery, with the results recorded.
Altiris is also expected to announce client and server management software for Hewlett Packard Co’s systems. HP Client Manager Software (CMS) for the Altiris 6.0 infrastructure aggregates data about HP’s hardware to monitor patch updates and provide other diagnostics, and is updated for UP Compaq Notebooks nc6000, nc8000 and the HP Point of Sale System rp5000.
The Altiris Connector for HP Systems Insight Manager (SIM) integrates client and server management, covering hardware deployment, client hardware tasks and access to the Altiris console for HP SIM users.
This article is based on material originally published by ComputerWire
