1

LANDesk® to the Rescue!

A LANDesk Success Story

Case Presentation for the

School Administrator’s SymposiumWashington, DC - National Press Club

Monday, 5 December 2005

2

Fulton County School System OverviewNumber of Schools..............................90 • 52 elementary, grades K-5

(Pre-kindergarten available in some schools)

• 18 middle, grades 6-8 • 12 high, grades 9-12 • 2 alternative high schools • 2 learning centers • 4 charter schools

The district covers a expanse of 60 miles between the two furthest schools.

System-wide Enrollment• Enrollment

80,659

• Teachers 5,800

• Other Full-time Staff4,200 + / -

2005-2006 General Fund Budget$669,883,548

The system serves the area of Fulton County, GA outside the city limits of Atlanta.

In addition to unincorporated areas, Fulton County Schools serve the cities of Alpharetta, College Park, East Point, Fairburn, Hapeville, Mountain Park, Palmetto, Roswell, Sandy Springs and Union City.

3

FCS Computing Environment

Our environment consists of:• 25,000 + workstations • 600 + servers

• OS environment ranges from Windows 98, NT, 2000, XP and server 2003 machines as well as a few Apple machines.

• 3 years ago all of our elementary and middle schools were Apple machines.

• We have been refreshing with all PC’s except for graphic arts labs.

• The Apple and Windows98 machines were not included in the LANDesk deployment.

4

FCS Technical Support Staff

• One technician per local school (90)

• Approximately 10 technicians support the local school techs

• 6 technicians provide support for the administrative sites, WAN, email and other systems.

5

LANDesk to the Rescue!

Fulton County Schools uses LANDesk for4 Primary Functions:

1. Inventory Reporting

2. Remote Control

3. Software Distribution

4. Patch Management

6

1) LANDesk for Inventory Reporting

Before LANDesk:• Our view of the district was based upon a lot of assumptions• We knew how particular machines hardware was configured

when we bought them. But tracking changes of machines was very difficult.

• Before deploying a software package the local school tech used a lot of sneaker technology going to each machine to ensure they met the requirements.

After LANDesk:• Now with a couple mouse clicks I can tell the exact configurations

of every machine.

The Hardware Inventory is only one of many available turnkey LANDesk reports

“This is an especially helpful tool for performing our required annual hardware inventories.”

- Greg Smith

7

LANDesk for Inventory Reporting continued …

Software Summary:– See what software packages are deployed on which

machines.

Real example:• Just recently, I was asked to provide an urgent report on the installation

status of a particular Special Needs Software program, and on which computers that package was installed on.

• Without LANDesk:• An e-mail would have to go out to each school. • The schools techs would have to stop what they were doing • e-mail or visit each teacher• compile a list • send that list to the one requesting and • then someone would have to combine those results into some kind of

meaningful report. Literally within a few minutes I had the report.

“I cannot begin to describe how many man hours or foot steps this tool alone has saved FCS.”

- Greg Smith

8

LANDesk for Inventory Reporting continued …

This quote is from my supervisor in response to a request he

received.

“Giving us a 2 hour deadline to complete this task was a real short

notice… Greg managed to pull the attached reports together”

Reporting has provided Fulton County Schools a factual view of our district enterprise - one we have never been accustomed to in the past.

9

2) LANDesk for Remote Control!

• This is a very heavily used tool! • Before LANDesk, FCS used:

– Terminal services, – PC Anywhere and – McAfee’s Remote Desktop.

• Previously, there was a lot of wasted

brain space remembering which

required which remote program.

• LANDesk provides one remote control

product with a central console.

10

LANDesk for Remote Control continued...

• Not only is LANDesk Remote Control convenient, secure and easy but the role based administration provides total control over – who can use remote control, and – what machines can be controlled remotely by each user or

group

Examples: 1. I can give a school-based tech the ability

to remote control only the machines in their school and no one else’s.

2. I can give a department group control over just their servers throughout the district.

11

LANDesk for Remote Control continued...

• I didn’t realize just how many people were really using LANDesk until I took down one of the servers to upgrade the OS. – I immediately began receiving urgent e-mails wanting to

know why remote control access was not available.

“Oops …, now I give ample warning before performing any routine maintenance that might disrupt services.”

12

LANDesk for Remote Control continued...

• Remote Control also helps FCS technicians when solving problems. – Our techs regularly use this feature to educate or uncover

problems. – When “remoting” a machine, the end-user can watch how the tech

solves the problem. – That helps stop return calls and increases the speed of problem

resolution.

“give a man a fish and he will eat for a day, teach a man to fish…”

13

LANDesk for Remote Control continued...

• With support issues, a tech can watch exactly what an end user is doing to correct and demonstrate

– This is really helpful with more technical matters such as setting up personal folders, installing drivers, mapping drives, etc.

– The end users screen can also be blanked - this is very helpful in the event that the tech does not want them to see what you are doing for security reasons

– A user’s keyboard and mouse can be locked out– There is also a chat window much like Instant Messenger for those of you

that are familiar with that product.

“Again I cannot begin to estimate

the steps this has saved our techs.” - Greg Smith

14

Some LANDesk-related “Quotes”

“Thanks for the update Greg!  Randy and I were looking at Abbots and

Alpharetta ES.  They seem to have low disk availability for the C Drives.”

A routine LANDesk Report indicated a C-drives were full before a crisis ensued.

“One question – now that we are able to use the LANDesk (which is wonderful by the way), I would like to have access for the rest of our district office staff (about 10 people). 

We are all part of the SASI Support domain group.  All access servers throughout the day and jump from one server to the next.  In addition, if you get to site where Remote32 does not exist on the user desktop. you can spend forever trying to access one of the servers, e.g. Parent Connect, to get to a file.  LANDesk takes all of that away, and it is really a tool that we can use.  If you can make sure the SASI Support group has access, I will show them how to use it.   I appreciate your help – enjoy the rest of your time off!”

15

Before LANDesk:• Software Distribution was a slow and labor-

intensive process requiring individually touching each machine.

After LANDesk:• Save technician support time by mass pushing

software to machines.

• What took hours before, now takes minutes.

3) LANDesk for Software Distribution

LANDesk was listed in the leader quadrant in Gartner’s 2004 Desktop Software Distribution Magic Quadrant…

According to the report, “those vendors that have maintained a presence have done so by incrementally adding capability to meet the ever-changing needs of IT organizations and tying their tools to process."

16

Before LANDesk:• Patch Management - a subject that strikes fear in

the hearts of techs!

– We knew we had a patch problem with machines that were not up to date.

– We were using MS SUS to deploy patches.

• At best, it was intermittent in patching machines.

• Not only was the result unreliable, but also we didn’t get any confirmation that a patch had been successfully installed.

• Even with MS SUS running, I had no idea there were so many machines in need.

4) LANDesk for Patch Management

17

LANDesk for Patch Management continued …

LANDesk Patch Management provides a HUGE benefit in a school environment.

– Keep any number of systems securely patched and up-to-date

– We are slowly, but surely getting LANDesk deployed and closing security holes in the FCS enterprise

– Once deployed, LANDesk quickly and easily eliminates potential virus and security outbreaks from causing global system downtime

18

The Present LANDesk Landscape at FCS

• Presently installed 10,000 nodes of LANDesk.

• Goal is eventually 25,000 nodes.

• LANDesk is not fully deployed, but has already resulted in tremendous ROI just with its present use.

19

• I didn’t even mention these additional LANDesk features: package building imaging-hardware independent imaging software monitoring software blocking spyware detection & removal!

• I am very excited about LANDesk and its use in the Fulton

County School System!

Conclusion

20

• LANDesk has brought four main benefits to Fulton County Schools in our initial deployment:

1) Inventory Reporting - Asset management, - Pro-active failure prediction (storage space, low memory, etc.), - Machine targeting for software pushes.

2) Remote Control - Save teacher/student downtime and technician support time.

3) Software Distribution - Save technician support time by mass pushing software to

machines. - What took hours before now takes minutes.

4) Patch Management - Keep systems patched and up to date, - Eliminate potential virus and security outbreaks from causing global system downtime.

Conclusion