I've been working with a university in Estonia that has been using Altiris products (including HP Client Manager) for some years now. Here's how they've leveraged the software to keep the IT systems well-oiled and working.
Trying to maintain a stable platform for all Compaq and HP computers, by making sure that they are at the correct BIOS level, and have all required SoftPaqs.
As the IT Budget in the University is small (for 1,000 nodes), it was necessary to find a product that can achieve these requirements for as little cost as possible.
As Notification Server and HP Client Management Suite and MSDE are all free products, this suited our needs quite nicely.
Having the ability to deploy SoftPaqs as well as config BIOS settings have saved the University's IT team an enormous amount of man hours.
The inventory data that the agent brings back is very detailed, and the built-in reports allow us to quickly and easily find out if any machines are in need of renewal.
Notification policies inform us right away if a machine is having a hardware failure, so that we can quickly resolve it without impacting the campus community.