Real World System Centre Successes

This was a presentation by 1E and was largely a sales pitch for their products than a discussion of real world success.
key figures:

• Dell saved $1.8m per year on 50k PCs using Nightwatchman to power down PCs and monitors
• Verizon saved $1.3m on energy and $9.5m using the zero touch deployment technologies for 85k machines. Their deployments went from 6hrs per machine for Cloned HDD to 0.8hr with 1E products integrated into System Centre.
• 1E stated that ROI is generally achieved on all their products within the first 3-6 months.

They are adding multicast with failover to their Nomad product in Q3.

Launched PXE Lite 1.6 via this session. this has better technology to deal with branch offices and for re imaging.

1E are concerned with global warming, they showed that IT is responsible for 2% of man made CO2 (4% in USA) which is equivalent to the airline industry. Of that 2%, 39% is due to PCs and monitors being left on unnecessarily. This ties into some of their power management products.

By this point I have to say I was more than a little underwhelmed, they they launched Shopping 3.0. This product is essentially a web portal that IT can publish to end users. It works similar to other online shopping sites and allows a self service approach to end user requests. For example, if I wanted a new application I would log in and select it, the web site has the ability to charge if a license is required, or offer a rental period (ideal for project teams who may need short term access but not a dedicated license - this allows the organisation to minimise license purchases). Shopping 3.0 will then either complete the request, or pass it on to an approver by a workflow email. The approver can then choose to deny or accept. If accepted, Shopping will deploy the application via SCCM. All without any interaction from IT. The user can even login and check the progress of their order.

Shopping 3.0 can also be used to give access to file shares, group memberships, Active Directory objects/permissions/resources and so on.

Furthermore, over time it will email the user to ensure they still need the application and if they do not can uninstall the application (via SCCM) and ensure the license is then available for other users. In our environment this would be a great assett as many people change roles, but rights are not removed and applications rarely uninstalled. We would have the potential to save license costs, GTS costs and effort and streamline the process for our end users.

I was amazed that they presented this product last, I had seen 20 or so people leave before then but this was clearly their show stopper.