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Marimba Inc. on June 16 will launch the second major release of its 1-year-old Windows Migration tool with a series of enhancements that emphasize a streamlined graphical user interface, improved inventory scanning and better integration with market-leading imaging tools.
The Marimba Windows Migration module, an add-on to the Mountain View, Calif., companys Desktop/Mobile Management product family, automates all the steps involved in Windows operating system migrations “in a best practices way,” said Bruce Campbell, senior product marketing manager at Marimba.
“We think migration should be a repeatable process that fits into application provisioning. If you cant manage ongoing support of that new OS and the applications provisioned on top of it, then you have to manage a gigantic library of images, and you have no central way to manage problems caused by a new software install,” he said.
With Marimba Windows Migration as a part of Marimba Desktop/Mobile Management, users only need operating system images. Once those are installed on a machine, the Marimba infrastructure agent knows what a user is entitled to, Campbell said.
The streamlined user interface in the new release steps the user through each step of the migration process, executing each step along the way, without requiring domain expertise. When migration projects are executed, the new version also instantly produces reports confirming the success of the project, so that users can determine whether a migration occurred as expected.
The new releases step-by-step workflow process also helps different groups to collaborate on large-scale migrations by creating departmental or geographical groups of machines for scheduled updates.
That fits in with the way users at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power plan to execute their mass migration to Windows 2000 and Windows XP. “Well manage [the migration] centrally but empower groups to manage their own people. All [migration] packages will be developed centrally, and well make sure people cant move forward faster than we want them to,” said Jim Levesque, systems programmer for the city of Los Angeles.
The enhanced user interface also includes new menus specific to PowerQuest imaging—a feature that had already been available for Symantecs Ghost imaging tool. Those tools represent the lions share of the installed imaging tools, Campbell said.
The new release better leverages Marimba Desktop/Mobile Managements inventory scanning capability for migration purposes. “We enhanced the process of identifying end points for migration with improved inventory scanning and integrating collection lists from those queries into the user interface,” Campbell said. “The user interface says, Click here to do a scan. It in the background launches the inventory tool, brings [the data] back and puts it in a form that lets you use it for migration.”
The new release can be launched from the Marimba Desktop Management tools user interface. Pricing has not been set yet.