If it seems that Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) is beginning to monopolize the Systems Management category of these awards, that's because the product, according to one reader, "meets our needs better than others." SMS 2003 is also "great in combination with IntelliMirror," according to another voter. Whatever the praise, SMS is your pick for Best Software Deployment Tool.
A comprehensive solution for planning, testing, deploying, analyzing, and optimizing software applications, SMS 2003 helps you seamlessly deploy the latest business productivity applications to all your machines, from servers to handheld devices. When you plan software deployment, you need to know the status of your current hardware and software assets to determine compatibility and usage. SMS 2003 gives you scalable hardware and software inventories combined with integrated Web-based reporting so that you can make informed business decisions about deployments. You can create collections according to certain inventory criteria, then selectively target applications to these collections to ensure compatibility. SMS 2003 can use Active Directory (AD)embedded organizational information to provide departmental rollouts.