LANDesk Software, a leading provider of integrated systems and security management solutions, today announced that Broward County Public Schools has selected LANDesk Management Suite and LANDesk Security Suite over competing solutions to help their IT organization better manage the district’s 80,000 Macintosh-based computers and 20,000 Windows-based computers.
Broward County is the largest, fully accredited school district in the United States, with more than 274,000 K-12 students attending 251 different schools. The district employs approximately 39,450 staff members including teachers, clerical support and administrative personnel. The computing needs of such a diverse and distributed organization have driven Broward County Public Schools to establish a premier IT organization that relies on best-of- breed technology solutions to efficiently and cost-effectively manage new and existing computers in its computing environment.
“With so many computers and mixed operating systems across the district, we really had to have the solution with the best integrated, cross-platform support,” said Vijay Sonty, chief information officer for Broward County Public Schools in the press release. “Our IT organization tested a number of competing solutions and found LANDesk Management Suite to be the most scalable solution with the broadest capabilities for our needs.”
LANDesk Management Suite is a comprehensive, integrated suite of system management tools for asset management, software distribution, application healing, OS distribution and profile migration, software license management, remote problem resolution, patch management, security management, server management and more.
“In addition to controlling security threats, it is important for the district to be able to inventory and track computers. LANDesk provides us the capability to maintain real time computer inventory along with the capability to generate hardware and software inventory for individual computers,” said Angela Coluzzi, network integration director for Broward County Schools in the press release. “End user support is also a priority issue for the district IT. Features such as LANDesk remote control will assist current technology support staff in increasing end users satisfaction while keeping support cost under control.”
LANDesk Security Suite enables IT to solve critical issues such as security policy compliance and auditing, remote system troubleshooting, keeping up with patches, spyware detection and removal, and other security configuration issues.
“We are looking forward to working with Broward County Public Schools and their progressive IT department,” said Bill Smith, LANDesk vice president of sales for North America. “It’s great to work with an IT organization that knows exactly what they need to continue being successful at managing the systems in their extensive network. This will help them realize a faster return on their investment in LANDesk solutions and help them more quickly drive increase business value for their school district.”
LANDesk Software is a leading provider of systems and security management solutions for desktops, servers and mobile devices across the enterprise. LANDesk enables thousands of organizations to easily deploy and use end-to-end management solutions. LANDesk is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, with offices located in the Americas, Europe and Asia, and can be found on the Web at http://www.landesk.com/
MacDailyNews Take: LANDesk Security Suite’s ability to “keep up with patches and spyware detection/removal” will obviously be heavily in use by 20,000 of Broward County Public Schools’ PCs – at least until they get rid of those, too.
Being the curious sort, we asked, “But, Mr. Broward County Schools IT Guy, what about the 80,000 Macs?” MBCITG responded, “Shhh, those Macs just basically run themselves! Why do you think we’ve got the system up to 80-percent Macs already? Now, if you’ll excuse me, our department has a golf, er, a meeting to attend.” *
* The Q&A portion of our MacDailyNews Take did not really occur except in our imaginations. Broward County Schools IT Guys and Gals are doing fine jobs – that are about to get even easier as evidenced by the related article below. Remember, they still have 20,000 Windows PCs in their system that are constantly threatening to infect each other with viruses, worms, and assorted malware, so the golf will have to wait for now. Note to Henrico County IT staff: run for your life to Broward County!
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Apple announces 30,000 iBooks deal with Florida’s Broward County Public Schools – July 27, 2005
Henrico school officials on Apple to Dell switch: The logo will change, but the tool is the same – April 30, 2005
Henrico school board dumps Apple Macs, picks Dells with Windows – April 29, 2005
I’m moving there now!
Same for the guys in Cobb Couty
Actually LANdesk is sweet stuff, it lets you fix all sorts of things from your desk; like (re)installing software (after idiots delete it accidentally), system updates, fixing various problems.
Heck simply being able to inventory systems is a huge timesaver and makes it nearly worth the cost.
When the boss asks “How many systems do we have to upgrade to Tiger?” you can give him a real answer instead of saying, “err, um, a bunch?”
Just because Macs don’t get spyware and viruses they still have users and software…and believe it or not, catherding 100K systems is a big job, macs or not.
Brlieve it or not that are other IT functions outside of virus and spyware patching. Working in IT myself and supporting Windows machines, even I find that hard to believe but besides my job being primarily security based we are occasionally tasked with implementing more practical solutions.
And whether the Mac community wants to believe it or not Mac don’t “run themselevs” when in a coporate setting. At home? Absolutely. But for day to day operations and when increasing the software infrastructure you have to administer a Mac just like any other machine.
Even if it is a much more plesant, and in some cases rewarding, experience.
We don’t need no
Education
I used to do Mac tech support for The Hollywood Reporter (and a few of their affiliates like Billboard). We had many, many Macs. Even the editorial departments were on Macs.
I’d sometimes go days without doing anything at all. A PRAM battery here. A printer setup there. But the common issues I ran into were simply dumb end users not knowing what they were doing.
“Well, I saved the file and now its gone.”
“Where did you save it to?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did you save it to your desktop?”
“No. I saved it on my computer.”
Why not use ARD….? Client Free. ARD costs $299 unlimited clients, and I’m sure Apple would cut a deal…. they could save the cost of the LANDesk and replace those Windoze machines… with Macs naturally.
Apple Remore Desktop http://www.apple.com/remotedesktop/
Hey Version 3 is comming out soon mabe
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Huh? “Broward County is the largest, fully accredited school district in the United States, with more than 274,000 K-12 students attending 251 different schools.”
Huh? Broward is #6 behind #1 New York City, #2 Los Angeles Unified, #3 Puerto Rico, #4 Chicago, and #5 Miami-Dade.
That’s not exactly a hard fact to get right.
267k students and 100k laptops? Who decides who gets one and who doesn’t? Storm system is about to hit Broward (Thursday night). Who gets the bill for those repairs? We all will. Declare a National Disaster. Our taxes are going up so they can buy Laptops, and in 4 years 100,000 laptops will go on sale for $50.
School system is the second most corrupt organization in the country.
We need more money, its for the children……..my #$#%.
RE: Why not use ARD….? Client Free. ARD costs $299 unlimited clients, and I’m sure Apple would cut a deal.
Actually, ARD is $299 for 10 users, $499 for unlimited clients. And Apple was un willing to cut us one red cent on mutliple purchases of ARD. All of our admin copies cost $499.
Tommy Boy– That statement about Broward Co size also stopped me my tracks. I couldn’t even concentrate on the rest of the article ’cause my mind kept going back to that, saying, “Wha-a??”
Is this is why Broward real estate value is escalating at a Californian pace?
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/local/sfl-zhomesbrow24aug24,0,2818406.story?coll=sfla-business-headlines
And BTW, system management is always needed if you have 80,000 computers. It’s no insult to the Mac, and no need to be defensive about it.
MacGoog,
I don’t think they are giving laptops to the “K thru 3” type kids and others, and that’s probably why there are less laptops than kids. As far as repair costs, stack that up against the cost of updating hard bound textbooks every couple of years and I’m sure they (and the taxpayers) are money ahead. Also, it doesn’t sound like they are so stupid that they would sell pervectly good Mac laptops for $50. Even iBooks for parting out go for $150 on eBay, and the airport card alone is worth more than $50.
Tommy Boy,
Serious question – are the five larger school districts FULLy accredited?
I have a friend in a similar situation. He does the IT for a school with around 180 Macs and 20 PCs. He says that almost all of his time is taken up dealing with the 20 PCs.
ARD is $299 Unlimited Clients on Apple’s Higher Education Institution site…
ARD is $299 Unlimited Clients on Apple’s Higher Education Institution site…
But ARD can only handle like 50 other Mac’s at once, certainly not 80,000 Mac’s across different areas and networks at once.
While ARD is a great concept, it is seriously lacking in the stable and robust dept. It is flakey and bug ridden and hasn’t been patched in forever. I hope they decide to develop it further and give the team the resources to improve, but right now it is hardly “enterprise grade”.
Yup, ARD is clunky. For that matter, so is WorkGroup Manager.
i work in the district, word around here is that Vijay our IT guy and other suits are in Round Rock TX sucking up to Mikey Dell. Lets hope Apple gets things together asap…send help!
Actually, I tried to use LANDesk and implement it in my school district. After a year and a half, I gave up. We simply could not get it to scale to the size of the enviroment. We have about 50,000 macs, none of them under management. It seems like in order for it to work you need to be on the LAN and at your Desk. Humm, go figure. Hope you have better luck than we did.