By Paul Jensen, Managed Desktop Practice Lead

An introduction to Managed Desktop

Managed Desktop is a new practice at Acrodex. The term can mean different things to different people, so let me explain. Managed desktop, sometimes called the optimized desktop, refers to the application of toolsets and processes that improves an organization’s ability to control and secure desktop clients, deploy software updates, deploy applications, or even deploy an entire operating system.

Get to know SCCM

System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) is Microsoft’s flagship product that gives these abilities and more. You may be familiar with SCCM’s predecessor, Systems Management Server (SMS). SCCM has built on that technology and added features, expanded capabilities and made administration easier. SCCM R3 is the latest version which was released Q4 2010, included functionality to manage power settings making it easier for large organizations to become more environmentally friendly. We will cover the complete list of SCCM’s features in upcoming posts.

The path to easy migration

As today’s organizations look to migrate from Windows XP or Windows Vista towards Windows 7, SCCM provides the only method to automate that process while maintaining user’s documents and settings. This ability, along with the upcoming end of support for Windows XP, makes SCCM a very hot technology.

That’s it for this post, I just wanted to introduce the topic and pique your interest. Keep an eye out for future posts here on the managed desktop blog, where we will discuss topics such as:

• New features of Windows 7 and Office 2010
• What can SCCM do for me?
• Deploying Windows 7, where do I even start?
• Alternatives to SCCM

If you would like to know how we can help you more effectively manage your desktop environment, we would love to hear from you! Click here to contact a Managed Desktop expert at Acrodex.