With approximately two hundred physical sites and an additional 160+ temporary sites at any given time, this multi-national organization needed to have a reliable and cost-effective management platform with which to handle system inventories and configuration management. Approximately five years ago, Symantec Altiris was deployed to handle this need, but, as installed within this organization, the product has not provided the desired level of reliability nor scalability.
As a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement subscriber, with a Core CAL component, the organization already owns the client licensing for System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) for all of its approximately 5400 workstations. Realizing that they could maximize their investment in the MS Enterprise Agreement by deploying SCCM as a replacement for Symantec Altiris, the organization engaged with Oakwood to do a customized SCCM design and implementation.
Rather than simply implementing the SCCM infrastructure in the same manner as the Symantec Altiris solution had been deployed, Oakwood experts took the time to completely understand the existing infrastructure and recommend a solution that would create a better return to its client. Specifically, bandwidth utilization could be minimized by implementing multiple distribution points, and, since available bandwidth scaled all the way from a DS3 to a cable modem depending on the site, minimizing the bandwidth requirements of this solution was critical.
The final SCCM solution was designed with over sixty distribution points and over 130 branch distribution points, all managed from the SCCM server implementation at the corporate office.
SCCM is now managing configurations, inventories, and package deployments with a higher degree of reliability and a far lesser impact on bandwidth. In addition, the organization saved over $50,000 in annual licensing costs by utilizing the SCCM licenses they already owned through the Microsoft Enterprise Agreement.