Australian universities turn to software asset and security patch management solutions
ManageSoft automates software management for leading higher educational institutions
April 1, 2004 Melbourne, Australia
Australian universities are turning to IT solutions such as software configuration and security patch management solutions to help cope with rising student and staff numbers and the added security risks associated with their increasingly wireless environments.
“Educational institutions are one of the leaders in IT management. This sector has generally been quick to embrace new technologies,” said David Thomas, Asia Pacific Regional Manager at ManageSoft Corporation. “It’s not surprising therefore to see an increase in universities adopting not just IT asset management solutions, but also security patch management measures.”
Thomas said that these days, many universities have as many as up to four different locations, which makes it labour-intensive for IT departments to manually monitor all of its desktops, laptops and remote devices.
“The task becomes more complicated with an even larger student base. To add to this, university computers often suffer more wear and tear compared to those in the corporate environment. As a result, IT departments need to ensure that their computers are maintained properly,” said Thomas.
“More students are also bringing their own laptops to campus nowadays. This opens up additional security risks for universities that have wireless hubs,” said Thomas. “IT departments in these universities need a quick fix to deal with the countless viruses out there.”
In the past six months, ManageSoft has secured contracts with leading higher educational institutions to provide software configuration management solutions. These customers include The Australian National University (ANU) and Edith Cowan University (ECU).
A recent report by analyst group Gartner on the top 10 strategic technologies for 2004 indicated that many organizations are beginning to realize that too many of their IT assets are under-utilised. The solution, Gartner predicts, is to use technology to automate the management required, or what Gartner terms as “policy-based management”.
Edith Cowan University uses ManageSoft for the deployment and management of its software assets on 2,500 computers across the university’s four campuses.
“Managing more than 130 applications across more than 2,500 computers gets to be quite a mammoth task,” said Mark Ridge, Manager – IT Support Services at ECU. “Policy-based management with ManageSoft enables us to tackle this job a lot more efficiently, allowing us to direct our IT resources to other more pressing jobs.”
Ridge added that using ManageSoft had enabled the university to be in a better position when re-negotiating contracts with software vendors. “Tracking our software assets with ManageSoft tells us which applications we have, how we can better allocate them, which licences need renewing and which don’t,” said Ridge. “This will help us in the long run to control our software expenditure.”
ManageSoft’s ability to automatically self-heal installed software has also been welcomed by other educational institutions. Rick Van Haeften, Head, Systems and Desktop Services, Division of Information at The Australian National University said that this feature had enabled the university to support hundreds of desktops more efficiently.
“Rebuilding student computers back to their desired state is now much easier,” said Van Haeften. “We can now program software maintenance enabling us to deliver quality and timely services to the teaching and learning environment.”
Van Haeften added that ManageSoft’s Security Patch Management solution which was soon to be implemented would enable ANU to respond and handle virus attacks more effectively.
“Operating in our relatively open environment means that we have to be more vigilant about virus attacks. ManageSoft gives us greater peace of mind in dealing with viruses and enables us to manage the situation more efficiently,” said Van Haeften.
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