Software inventory is configured to report the name of the software manufacturer as well as all of the installed software from the manufacturer. The Thruway Authority can view all installed software for any installed client at any time. The information is dynamically updated on a weekly basis. The Thruway Authority uses this information to determine which PCs need updated software and then distributes the updates using the capabilities of Systems Management Server. Hardware inventory reports on every piece of installed hardware and is configured to automatically update on a weekly basis.
Inventory also includes computer and user name.
Whenever a different user is assigned to a machine, that information is sent to the Systems Management Server database. This eliminates the labor-intensive task of manually updating this information in the spreadsheet when a change occurs. The Thruway Authority can now use Systems Management Server 2.0 to determine if a potential client desktop has enough resources for a software package. This can be determined by running a simple query from the Systems Management Server Administrator console. This is extremely beneficial for an organization like the Thruway Authority with 1,150 desktop systems scattered over four major cities.