AppsAnywhere
is a software delivery platform that gives students and staff access to
the software they need to get their work done wherever they are, both on and
off campus.
Boasting more than 2 million students at over 200 universities
and colleges worldwide, the vendor states AppsAnywhere improves student outcomes by making
software available on any device, including BYOD, thanks to their unique approach
to virtualization. Used by higher ed
institutions, including University…
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Microsoft System Center
Score 8.2 out of 10
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Microsoft System Center Suite is a family of IT management software for network monitoring, updating and patching, endpoint protection with anti-malware, data protection and backup, ITIL- structured IT service management, remote administration and more.
It is available in two editions: standard and datacenter. Datacenter provides unlimited virtualization for high density private clouds, while standard is for lightly or non-virtualized private cloud workloads.
I have been monitoring the use of this app for the past year now and it has been incredibly useful in providing my team with easy access to the applications they need. It is well suited to organizations with a large variety of applications and users that need to access them from multiple devices. It has been very easy to deploy, manage and maintain, and I love the fact that users can easily find what they need without having to navigate complex menus. (search can still be abit better). Still a really good pick :)
We used a product before that was designed to prevent users making changes and saving files to the desktop computer. This required a renewal of the license. By using SCCM in our environment we were able to discontinue using that product because SCCM allows us to completely restore a machine back to the original configuration. We have taught our users to save their individual work on either a network drive or a cloud drive. By doing this, if we do a re-image of their machine they have lost no data, and it makes for a faster resolution. In some instances having a computer in our SCCM environment it can become cumbersome when creating new users for very specific purposes. It can be done by creating new organizational units and applying new policies but when in a pinch it can be frustrating. For the most part we have tried to make "new" purpose images and groups to at least accommodate a quick install.
Provides our users the ability to deploy and manage our own datacenter based on defined software with understandable solutions for storage, compute, networking and security.
We are able to update at once all the computers from all departments without having to install the OS on every computer.
It allows us to have everything in one place for database management and datacenter inspection as well.
Needs web based storefront for requesting new software
Needs ability to manage the packaging work flow better
Sometimes is slow to download and there is no indication the entire catalog is being loaded, resulting in confused users not being able to find common software in the available list.
Almost everyone you tell to use it to access a specialist application can find the software they need and install it. However, surprisingly many have difficulties finding AppsAnywhere under the start menu or on the task bar - it is not a icon or name they recognise, and they really want to lunch the target specialist software (Zbrush or whatever). Once you find it, many people ignore the search function which is probably the fastest method, and browse the long list alphabetically, because the standard filters do not help much. Favouriting is rarely used as it is too burdensome and not an issue for users when they are looking for the applicationt hey need.
It is not user-friendly for the most part. With IT infrastructure, sometimes it cannot handle excess requests. Every few months, you will need an upgrade in terms of server resources to keep up with incoming alerts and requests. This does not happen all of the time, but it does happen when there are too many requests.
If I had to dislike something about the system it would be how much it changes once you upgrade. This could be more of a problem of mine since I get used to one way and don't like it when it changes so much. I am enjoying the newest update, but it is a mess when you are actually going through the upgrades.
The AppsAnywhere team is very quick in setting up things and also having everything in a single place. The bundle of the apps can be easily configured as the documentation is also very straightforward while setting up things and also having the team to work accordingly customize as per the needs
We previously used a mix of FOG and Clonezilla to image machines. The biggest issues with these products is that changing one piece of the image required you to rebuild the entire image itself. These pieces of software also did not allow you to manage applications and Windows Updates, causing IT to have to constantly touch machines after they were imaged and update or manage them with a much more hands on approach.
We have been able to automate our patch management, firmware and other security concerns.
We have a standardized "image" ensuring our setup is consistent across the enterprise. This alone has saved us in time to support and time to understand how to use our desktops.
