As the feature sets of PC lifecycle management (PCLM) suites have increased, so has the complexity of their software. Organizations that don't allocate enough effort to properly manage the PCLM infrastructure are often unable to provide the desired level of service to their users.

For this and many other reasons, cloud-based solutions are emerging for a variety of systems management functions. Just as some companies are well-suited for cloud-based CRM, some companies are more well-suited than others for cloud-based PCLM. Is your company one of them? Dwain Kinghorn, Partner at SageCreek Partners and member of the Viewfinity Board, addresses this issue in greater detail on ebizQ: http://bit.ly/9acbxS.

You can download Dwain’s complete white paper from Viewfinity here: http://bit.ly/9HPNoh

-New OS Image Deployment, Patch Management, Privilege Management and Interactive Dashboard Features Continue Viewfinity’s Commitment to Customers-

Waltham, MA – June 14, 2010 – Viewfinity (www.viewfinity.com), the innovator of privilege and systems management, today released version 3.0 of its solution suite. Nearly 3 months after its debut launch into the market, Viewfinity continues to make good on its commitment to customer-led product development and to build products that are critically needed in the market.

See the new features and updates in a live webcast demonstration, June 16th at 11:45 am ET

Register here to attend: http://www.viewfinity.com/Resources/LiveDemo.aspx?reg=sm

Additional Viewfinity features / functionality include:

· Privilege Management: administrators can create policies that will execute scripts without needing to assign local administrator rights to the end user; identify applications that require administrator rights, and permit or block the use of child processes

· OS Deployment: creates an exact disk image of the laptop/desktop including the operating system, configuration files and all applications and deploys the image to multiple systems simultaneously, making it ideal for rapid bare-metal installations (OS deployment via Acronis Snap Deploy)

· Patch Management: fully manages the distribution of updates released through Microsoft Update to computers in your network as well as mobile computers not connected to the internal network

· Viewfinity Dashboard: provides a quick view into the operations and status of the company assets through live monitoring of select desktops and servers to identify problematic areas

· Windows 7 OS Deployment with Viewfinity User Migration: a valuable add-on to the Acronis image deployment software for domain based migration of user personal settings, application settings and user data files to prepare for and perform the migration from Windows XP or Vista to Windows 7.

Viewfinity also complements traditional systems management, such as SCCM, by offering new flexibility to manage administrator rights for locked down computers.

Viewfinity Systems Management solution can be delivered from a web-hosted platform or installed on premises. All desktop management is done through a secure and encrypted HTTPS connection which provides the ideal method for managing PCs for remote and mobile workers. Its web-hosted platform is also ideal for proof-of-concept evaluations because it eliminates the need to build a complex server environment to evaluate or deploy the software.

Online registration is available for trial evaluations here: http://www.viewfinity.com/SaasStart.aspx

Tags: Viewfinity, Desktop Management, Systems Management, Patch Management, OS Deployment, Software Deployment, Privilege Management, SaaS, Windows 7 Migration

About Viewfinity

Viewfinity is the innovator of systems and privilege management via cloud-computing, allowing IT professionals to focus on managing systems and not the platform's infrastructure. With the cloud model, IT can be up and running quickly to provide management, support and control for desktops, servers and laptops. This makes it extremely cost effective and easy for IT to support local as well as mobile workers.

Viewfinity uses virtualization technology as the foundation to simplify and automate deployment and management of applications, licenses and assets. Viewfinity also complements traditional systems management by offering compliance adherence to flexibly manage privileges for locked down computers. Viewfinity's cloud approach delivers immediate and long-term value, scales with business need, and eliminates the equipment, training, and substantially higher costs of on-premise implementations. Based in Waltham, MA, information on Viewfinity systems management solutions can be found at www.viewfinity.com.

Managing desktops and laptops in a distributed environment is a top challenge for IT departments.  Current industry research shows that the most urgent and pressing issues are clear: 

• Providing better support and management for your mobile workforce
• Securing your environment through desktop lockdown without simply causing a shift in the type of help desk calls
• Deploying software versions and patch updates easily and with extended reach to mobile workers
• Resolving help desk calls faster

Yet, many solutions that exist on the market today to help alleviate these issues become a burden themselves.  With some legacy systems, in 50% of the implementations, the time to roll the system out takes over six months.  And for every 5,000 desktops an organization must manage, they must have at least one full-time employee on staff to simple tend to the administration of the systems management servers. 

We'd like to hear from you - what are some of the  systems management challenges you are dealing with in your organization?  Are they the same issues as noted above, or do you have an entirely different set of challenges?

Elevating security rights to administrative levels on a per application basis

An important and challenging problem for IT Administrators to maneuver around is managing administrative privileges on the desktop. Many applications that are developed in-house as well as some commercial products, such as Visual Studio, require running the application as an administrator. If the user doesn't have administrative privileges, the application components will not function or even worse, the application will not run at all. A typical situation facing IT administrators is where an end user needs to run such an application and must either grant full local administrative rights to the user account or utilize the native Windows command "RunAS" and provide the administrator password. Allowing users to have administrative rights or exposing the administrator password is risky and creates a less secure environment, which opens the door for desktop problems to occur.

This problem is especially challenging for IT Administrators working for the government as the recent US Government Federal Desktop Core Configuration (FDCC) mandate stipulates that administrative rights cannot be granted to end users and may not be made available on federal desktops and laptops.

Granting administrator rights at the application level and removing privileges from end users is the best approach for optimum desktop security. With this approach, the desktop operates within the least privileges mode except for applications flagged for elevated privileges.

Here's a 70 second video clip demonstrating Viewfinity Elevate Privileges. Feedback is welcome.

Business Need
Is it possible to setup and manage white listed only applications versus having to maintain a list and block all unapproved software?

Viewfinity Capability
Viewfinity can be configured to support a "white list only" model so that when an end user logs in, his/her desktop is configured to only present and run the applications that are required for them to work. Other standard desktop applications are not available — no games, IM, iTunes, etc. are visible.

See it in several Easy Steps

• Reduces end user support and malware incidents
• Improves network and asset utilization by restricting the use of non business-critical applications
• Ensures business-critical applications are meeting corporate configuration standards

• Block Application
• Compliance