Desktop management tools found lacking

Analyst IDC to criticises the lack of maturity and cost effectiveness of tools to manage the growth of desktop and other client devices.

By Miya Knights, 14 Apr 2008 at 16:33

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Although organisations may be adopting a greater variety of laptops, PCs and other client devices, an analyst report published today has questioned the ability of current tools to manage them effectively.

A recent IDC survey of IT executives found the use of client devices, including desktops and mobile devices, is widespread in European enterprises. But many complained that the additional tools often taken on to manage the device estate lack maturity and cost effectiveness.

Matthew McCormack, IDC European Systems Group consultant and the study's author, said: "Client device management tools and practices are widespread but enterprises continue to face big challenges in gaining real value and savings because of high integration costs and sub-optimal success rates."

The IDC study into "European Client Management Trends" found that, as IT infrastructure continues to grow and diversify in the number and type of devices needing support, client management will become more critical to controlling and maximising IT investment value.

The vast majority of the 150 executives surveyed (90 per cent) said they used client management practices. But many said they had proved ineffective in delivering value. Many said they were still hampered by the high cost of basic management tasks such as inventory, patch deployment, software deployment, and asset management.

"Driven by increasing concerns over security, compliance and IT complexity, client device management is an issue that is not only on the minds of IT infrastructure executives, but also IT directors, CIOs [chief information officers] and business stakeholders," said McCormack.

The study said that client device management would continue to play an important role in IT infrastructure framework management this year.

But it advised IT organisations to look for tools to correct many of the old problems encountered in this area in the past, such as interoperability with other infrastructure and security tools.