Supporting multiple desktop hardware platforms and OSes isnt really all that hard, all you need is competent personell. Security patch updating can be trivial with utiltities like Altiris Deployment\Inventory Solutions, or if you have the money, their Patch Management. As far as OS X goes you could use Apple Remote Desktop to automate patch distribution. Someone with a good deal of linux expierence im sure could come up with similiar software. If your going to ask why spend a six figure sum on the Altiris solution or the (four figure?) sum on the Apple solution, because you probably allready have for your desktop support team, if not then ask your desktop support manager why he is building boxes manually. Anyways it can be more expensive to support a single platform. Did you factor in the cost of retraining personel? What about the increases in support requests from the retrained personel? The loss of time (which is money) due to errors made by the retrained personel who use a unfimilar system...

[ reply ]

Link to this comment: http://www.securityfocus.com/comments/columns/284/29648#29648