A SaaS service that could cut into the underlying systems management costs for many users – particularly the smaller businesses where the cost of on-premise systems management tools are prohibitive – has come from ViewFinity. Its Cloud Computing Systems Management suite is aimed squarely at a primary requirement and bugbear for all businesses using IT – keeping its desktop and laptop systems up to scratch.
Typically, this requires companies having an on-premise management system for assets in use, application auditing and versioning, and ensuring that all systems are updated correctly. It also requires trained staff to not only run but also run around, physically servicing and updating end user systems. This is an expensive but essential requirement.
By moving it to a hosted, SaaS-delivered service, ViewFinity claims to be able to eliminate the majority of that operational expense. It also reckons that the majority of users can be up and running with the system within 10 minutes.
The company has developed three core software suites to provide the management environment. The Systems Management suite provides centralised software deployment, asset inventory, remote desktop and power management resources. It also adds a few unsual support features, such as activity recording and rollback/undo of user personality components. This can be available free for up to 50 PCs in evaluation mode.
The Privilege Management suite controls what end users are allowed to do with their systems, providing flexible blocking/whitelisting, privilege elevation, automated policy management and auditing. This is achieved through granular regulation of administrator rights. The User Migration suite manages the delivery of software upgrades to end user systems, such as the upgrade to Microsoft Windows 7 operating system – with a claimed time reduction of 83% on this task alone.
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