Introducing Altiris: A New IT Asset Management System for University-Owned Computers

In 2004, the University adopted its Information Technology Strategic Plan (http://www.muohio.edu/itplan). Two of the goals of this plan committed us to:

• Providing faculty, staff, and students with the support they need, and
• Planning and managing information technology as a strategic asset.

Accordingly, Miami recently acquired a university-wide site license for a hardware and software asset management system called Altiris Total Management Suite. This system will eventually allow the university to:

• Improve the quality and simplicity of support for desktop computers, by requiring less “hands on” effort to deploy, support and decommission computers, servers, personal devices and software products,
• Better plan the purchase of new computers and “retiring” of older computers, by maintaining an inventory of computers and software and allowing data-driven decisions,
• Be more cost effective in purchasing hardware and software, thereby producing savings for departments,
• Reach better informed decisions about needed software site licenses, resulting in cost savings for the university as a whole.

Altiris Total Management Suite Implementation Approach

A project titled “Life Cycle Management of Computers” has been initiated to put the Altiris infrastructure in place at Miami and roll out the product to university-owned computers and servers. The roll-out will occur through close coordination with Deans/Directors/Heads of Offices and local technology support staff. Implementation schedules and a more comprehensive outline of the functionality of this system will be distributed by the project team as work proceeds.

Update from the Life Cycle Management Project Team, November 2005

The Altiris agent is a small software application that will be installed on university-owned computers and servers. Initially it will be used to perform the following functions on desktop/laptop computers:

• gather an inventory of the computers attached to Miami’s network and the software installed on those computers
• distribute operating system and software patches (for example, Microsoft Windows updates)
• provide “push-button” installation of operating system and other software to assist technology support representatives with managing lab computers, setting up newly acquired faculty/staff computers, and distributing new software applications.

Additional capabilities will be reviewed and deployed over time in close coordination with Deans/Directors/Heads of Offices and local technology support staff.

Current Project Status

October was a month of intensive learning for the Life Cycle Management project team. During that month, the team worked closely with Dell Professional Services consultants to establish the core Altiris infrastructure and deploy the Altiris agent on a pilot collection of computers. The pilot computers include all IT Services staff computers, select lab computers in other departments/divisions, and computers in classrooms managed by IT Services Classroom Services.

The Information Security Office has been heavily engaged in the work performed to date and will continue to be actively involved throughout the entire Life Cycle Management project to ensure that every aspect of the Altiris deployment undergoes a thorough security audit before being placed into “production status”.

Outline of Next Steps

As this article is written, the Altiris deployment team is just returning from a week-long intensive training session provided by the vendor. With the knowledge gained from this training, the project team is turning its attention to evaluating the information gained from the pilot and will be creating a proposed roll-out approach to share with the university community.

A Note About Communication

Effective communication is key to the success of this (and every) project. Regular project updates will be published in the university IT newsletter, Miami TechTalk, and the Miami Report. A project web site is under development; an announcement will be posted on myMiami as soon as the web site is available. In addition to a high-level project overview, project updates, and basic project documentation (like the project scope document, team organization chart, and timeline), the web site will also include “Q&A” and “Issues” sections with forms for submitting those items. Should you have questions or concerns before the web site becomes available, please forward them to the IT Services Support Desk at supportdesk@muohio.edu.