Chapter 17: Software Deployment and Distribution on Windows Platforms

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Purchasing software is an expensive proposition for any enterprise, but license fees are only a small percentage of the total cost of ownership (TCO) of software. Deploying it, managing the licenses, and installing patches/upgrades are actually far more expensive than the software itself. And, if software is not kept up to date and properly inventoried, one is vulnerable to legal problems, huge fines, and hacker attacks. With so many challenges inherent in using software, it is essential that companies be aware of these dangers, as well as what can be done to overcome them such as employing the proper tools to minimize risk and exposure. Although the previous chapter addressed one aspect of this problem, asset management, perhaps a more vital activity these days is that of software deployment and distribution. Software deployment addresses the area of how to get new applications, upgrades, patches, and the latest antivirus signatures out to every single server and desktop throughout the enterprise. The "sneakernet" may have been good enough in the mid-1990s, but it has no place in the 21st century.

Deployment Complexity

Software management used to be fairly simple. The enterprise either wrote its own customized applications and took care of a limited number of changes internally or depended upon a company such as IBM to put together a complete package. Changes could be made on the mainframe over a weekend. Nowadays, though, it is more a matter of assembling software from many different vendors and figuring out how to get them to work together in a harmonious fashion. Calls for a return to those seemingly simpler days, however, fail to take into account technology advances and the explosion in the number of applications in use on enterprise networks. Gartner Group reports that in 1996 the average help desk supported only 25 applications, but by 2001 that number had mushroomed to 200. It is not unknown for some companies to possess over 1000 applications. Adding to the confusion, usage of laptops and PDAs has experienced tremendous growth in recent years. Employees not only expect the latest software on these devices, but they also demand access to enterprise applications from their home computers.

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