A little over a year ago, my team and I were looking down the barrel of a brand new Altiris solution that was going to revolutionize the way that we manage assets. This solution carried the promise of increased patch coverage, faster data return and a more solid view into our remote workforce. There has to be a catch right? You want me to place an unhardened Windows box on the edge of our fiercely protected beach AND put it’s toes in the water?! Blasphemy! It will never work! Well, after much work with Symantec engineering over certificate relationships and trust models, we finally felt confident that we were safe. After this journey, to be honest, I only half expected this solution to work much less yield any tangible results.
It turns out that I couldn’t have been more off-point. In the last year with Cloud Enabled Management, I have seen our coverage and reach increase tenfold. Patching has never looked better, assets that were once lost are now found, and our management team has so much more insight into where and what are endpoints are experiencing on their respective journeys. Anyone with a mobile workforce would benefit from CEM in more ways than you can imagine. In my adventures as a system admin, I come across all sorts of nonsensical “reviews” and “blogs” claiming miracles. I’m the first one to shoot holes in these claims but as a real world admin with real world concerns, I can confidently stand behind this product as a winner.