LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla.—LANDesk Software Inc. is preparing a big product push behind its flagship LANDesk management suite this fall that centers around the latest release of the mature desktop administration suite.
LANDesk Management SuiteVersion 8.0, which will be launched Tuesday, boasts a re-architected user interface that provides an even more integrated and unified console than previous releases.
LANDesk later this fall as a part of Version 8.0 will launch new options that deliver specific functionality for managing servers in a new LANDesk Server Manager and for managing lower-level hardware.
The new LANDesk Systems Manager can monitor the performance of hardware and receive alerts when components such as a fan fail.
Further reading
While both of those new options are available today with the release of LANDesk 8.0, the Salt Lake City vendor, a spinoff of Intel Corp., will later launch a new LANDesk Patch Manager designed specifically to automate the whole process of deploying new security patches—including the automation of the testing process for new patches.
The new patch manager, due out later this year, will also support different operating system platforms and different languages, according to Joe Wang, CEO of the firm in Salt Lake City.
As for LANDesk Management Suite Version 8.0, the new release adds role-based administration, allowing functions to be assigned to specific individuals. The role-based administration also allows users to set up management for a specific group of desktops.
"Most companies in our space dont provide that," said Wang.
Version 8.0 also enhances the suites support for mobile devices with new targeted multicasting, bandwidth throttling and checkpoint restart functions.
The new release can also discover end stations that do not have a LANDesk client agent installed. As long as the device has an IP address, LANDesk 8.0 can discover it.
Rival Altiris Inc. here at the Gartner Symposium/ITXpo 2003 conference will introduce new barcode management capability for taking a physical inventory of hardware assets and add the ability to inventory networking devices using SNMP.
The new Barcode Solution, which integrates with the Altiris Asset Management Suite, is intended to reduce data input errors and accounting redundancies.
It is based on the PocketPC today, although Altiris plans to add support in the future for Palm devices, said Matthew French, senior segment leader for Altiris in San Diego.
Altiris also plans to release a major new version of its change management software platform early next year. In preparation for Version 6.0, Altiris released a new agent earlier this month that enhances bandwidth management, adds secure communications between the agent and server, supports a new user interface due in 6.0 and requires less overhead in the managed end station, according to Mark Magee, senior segment manager for the firm in Lindon, Utah.
In the patch-management space, the company will release the second revision of its patch management tool by years end, according to Magee.
Discuss this in the eWEEK forum.
Research Assistant
