If you are an Altiris diehard or have inherited an existing implementation, and are facing issues related to its performance, functionality or are even contemplating a replacement, rest assure you’re not alone.
Anybody familiar with Altiris product lines such as Client Management, Server Management, IT Management or Service Desk can attest that getting these solutions to perform and function as advertised can be, at best, challenging for most admins. In most cases, “Set it and forget it” does not resonate well with the Altiris line of products. Altiris admins need to continually stay “On Top” of the environment to ensure success. Typical maintenance headaches include;
- Ensuring compliant hardware configurations
- Regular (monthly) software updates/fixes
- Managed Clients functionality
- Producing required/custom reports
- Creating custom workflows
Our technical team at Lanworks have been doing the Altiris thing for over 12 years now, helping customers get the most out of their solution. I know, I know, you are probably asking yourself why? Symantec as well as the competition has managed to get a lot of customers to develop an allergy to the word Altiris. Having said that, we do support similar solutions from other vendors and as far as Altiris is concerned, in my opinion, it is one of the most comprehensive, flexible, scalable and one of the easiest platforms to implement and manage despite of all its challenges. Then again, which software, especially of this magnitude, does not have its ‘issues’?
I do agree that when Symantec acquired Altiris they were too eager to impress and have fallen short with their initial release of SMP 7.0. This caused a lot of customers to look at other solutions, and since implementation of any ITMS solution is a massive undertaking, most of these customers, once switched, were not interested on going back. With that said, the release of SMP 7.5, cloud enabled management and Bomgar partnership offered a very robust and secure offering for management of local as well as remote users. That release happened in the third quarter of 2013 and since then a significant number of improvements and enhancements has been implemented and has put Altiris back into the ITMS landscape.
We have developed a simple yet effective solution for existing Altiris environments. We begin by performing a complementary (yes free) Altiris Health-Check. Oh no, free…nothing is free, well.., this one is…and here’s why. As a Certified Symantec Platinum Partner we are privy to MDF or Market Development Funds that we can apply to perform these Health Checks.
This Health-Check starts with a discussion on the current Altiris implementation, its functions, likes and dislikes. We then dive deeper to examine the architecture, performance, detailed information on solution patch levels, functionality and provide you with an analysis of the troubled spots, bottlenecks, security risks and potential enhancements that may be required to ensure an optimal environment. In addition, each section of the report includes recommended actions based on Symantec best practices and Lanworks real life experience. Some organizations take our recommendations and do it all in-house, others may outsource to us… you decide.
To simplify the process, this service can be performed on site or via remote access.
