I don't think budgets allow for SMS/SCCM much less the deployment/planning time for putting existing machines under management by those tools. The solution I'm looking for has to be able to scan machines that just appear on the network and have never been managed.
Secunia's Network Software Inspector looks like a reasonable paid alternative for auditing a network, Shavlik also has an audit-only version but no online pricing for it. At this point auditing is all that's been requested, and I extended that request into my "what can be done that is WSUS-like" question. Thanks for all the responses so far - I think I know the paid alternatives now. If there's anything good for free, I'm still listening. Carl From: Ken Schaefer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, April 17, 2008 3:19 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: What do you use for 3rd party software updates If you use a tool like SMS/SCCM or Altiris to deploy patches, you can have them verify whether the patches are installed. Cheers Ken From: Carl Houseman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, 17 April 2008 11:02 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: What do you use for 3rd party software updates I know some of you push Flash player, Adobe reader, etc. updates out through Group Policy. How do you track whether machines were successful at installing the updated software, and/or identify machines that are at risk with older versions? It seems every 3rd party program is bundling a auto-updater application and sooner or later you don't want every client machine pulling those updates from the Internet. For example, Oracle Applications qualifieds a certain version of JRE, and like it or not, a site might want to delay installing the latest JRE, or maybe test it before allowing clients to install it. Would we not prefer WSUS-like solution that can report and confirm that machines have been updated? Does such a vendor-independent thing exist yet? I mean, just about the time Microsoft comes along with a NAC server and NAC client (which I assume only verify software update status of MS products), the battle has moved to the 3rd party products. Carl ~ Upgrade to Next Generation Antispam/Antivirus with Ninja! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbelt-software.com/SunbeltMessagingNinja.cfm> ~
