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Large and small companies are quickly realizing how expensive networks can be to maintain and manage. Asset management suites can help reduce costs and improve support by maintaining an inventory of network assets, metering applications and automatically distributing software, among other tasks. We tested six such products in our San Mateo lab.
Symantec's Norton Administrator for Networks 2.0 (NAN) is our top choice, because of its operating system independence and enterprise scalability. Intel's LANDesk Manager 2.01a is a worthy challenger, providing the most functionality out of the box, but it's hampered by its NetWare focus and lack of enterprise scalability. McAfee's Brightworks, to become Saber LAN Workstation 5.5 after McAfee's marriage with Saber Software, is also a compelling consideration. It's very easy to use and includes a scalable application metering component and a help desk application. Combined with Saber's custom menus, this product will be a strong competitor in this market.
Frye Utilities for Networks (FUN) wins the award for coming in the most pieces. While you can purchase these pieces separately, you can also combine them into a powerful suite. Its DOS interface is getting a little old, however. Microsoft's SMS 1.0, which scales incredibly well and provides the plumbing for a custom enterprise solution, is difficult to use and lacks application metering. Horizons' LANauditor 3.0 and LANrecord 1.0 are an effective combination, but lack a software distribution component and several other key features.
Symantec Norton Administrator for Networks (NAN)
Symantec's NAN v2.0 is a major improvement over its v1.0, which we reviewed last March. Like Microsoft's SMS, NAN provides a good level of enterprise support, along with an easy-to-use Windows interface, excellent manuals and very complete inventory information. Still, while it offers multiserver capabilities, it doesn't have SMS' level of hierarchical, distributed processing. Moreover, the agent that provides the transport between servers is a 16-bit DOS application, which could potentially cause performance problems if you have lots of users. Still, NAN's NOS independence, complete inventory and very good desktop operating system support are tough to beat. Its only weak point is the lack of bundled utilities, such as remote control or trouble ticket management.
NAN 2.0 is a very well integrated suite of components. The database inventory is readily accessible to the...