Overview Features Technology References
Unleash the power of Group Policy
While almost all organizations rely on Group Policy to control their basic client settings it takes a bit of imagination to realize the true power of Group Policy. The core business of Specops Software is to figure out what sort of additional management features it would make sense to control through Group Policy and create products which achieve those goals.
Since Group Policy is an enforced set of rules which are automatically applied throughout your domain hierarchy it is possible to centrally manage any size of environment with a minimum of human resources.
The fact that domain joined Windows clients are actually forced to apply whatever settings their admins have applied to them helps provide the extreme reliability found in the Specops products.
Group Policy is also a standard technology which is well known to Windows administrators. Most administrators need no more than a 30 minute demonstration to understand enough of our products to start using them on their own.
Rule based deployment
Specops Deploy offers a rule based view of both software and os deployment.
Administrators create rules in Group Policy which tells the clients under which circumstances they should perform a certain operation, like installing Microsoft Office. When the client detects that is supposed to install Office, it proceeds to execute the download and installation instructions.
This simple solution removes an enormous amount of unnecessary configuration commonly found in other systems.
Rule based deployment also ensures that you will configure a reliable, automated deployment procedure capable of performing the same operation over and over again without failing as long as the circumstances remain the same.
This explains why our customers commonly report software installation success rates in excess of 99%.
Active Directory integrated OS deployment
Specops Deploy does not need any external database in order to perform zero touch OS deployments. By allowing you to create your new computer accounts directly in your Active Directory we make it easy to manage the system and monitor what will happen. Creating the computer account before Windows is installed and domain joined also gives you the additional advantage of making it possible for you to place the new computer account in whatever security groups you might use to control your software deployments.
This is what makes it possible for Specops Deploy to complete bare metal installations right at the workplace of the user who will get the new machine instead of preparing new hardware down at the IT-department.
Where did all my settings go?
If you are an administrator used to working with other enterprise deployment tools it is easy to wonder what happened to all the configuration settings you typically have to make in order to get things working. If you really like poking around with those things we’d like to apologize as you’ll have to do most of your fine tuning in Windows rather than in our own tools. We like to handle as much configuration as possible directly in our software to save you the time and trouble.
Since we’re building on top of all the Active Directory stuff you’ve already configured for your organization we also hope you’ve done a good job with that. A stable Active Directory environment will certainly make us look a lot better than an unstable one. Fortunately, that stable Active Directory will make you look really good as well, so we’re going to trust you on that one.
Facebook
LinkedIn
Twitter