Cluttered Deployment-tool Market Adds to IT Headaches

The number of PC cloning and deployment tools on the market is staggering — Symantec's Altiris Management Suite and Ghost Solution Suite, Acronis True Image, Microsoft DISM, Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM), Dell KACE appliance, LanDesk Management Suite — the list goes on. Each of these cloning and deployment tools claims to be better than the others, but none of them truly offers a complete imaging solution. That's why, over time, many companies try a variety of deployment tools but never find one that's a perfect fit.

If you've worked in IT for any length of time, you've probably wrestled with several of these products. There's always the struggle to find one that will create an image and deploy it properly to most, if not all, of your hardware platforms. In the end, most companies are forced to create and maintain several different PC images, which adds to the IT workload.

Device Driver maintenance: A major hurdle
One major hurdle IT personnel face when cloning a device is that none of the popular tools features a comprehensive device driver database. Because most companies have different hardware configurations, using a deployment tool that doesn't have a comprehensive and updated driver database forces IT personnel to spend much of their time maintaining numerous images, hunting for missing drivers, and worse, dealing with the dreaded blue screen of death. These headaches make the PC rollouts more time-consuming than necessary.

Some of these imaging tools attempt to make up for this limitation by searching for and downloading drivers during deployment, slowing down the deployment process. When they're successful, they typically locate and stage generic Windows drivers only for limited types of network cards and external storage drives, while ignoring main hardware components and other peripherals completely. So in the end, you're forced to complete the image deployment manually and maintain a separate image for each platform or hardware configuration.

Your deployment tools are costing you time and money
At this point, you're probably a little apprehensive about trying a new tool. You've tried a number of these cloning products with mixed results, and although they've often added headaches, you've managed to make them work.

But face it — your tools are costing you time and money. Image deployment doesn't need to be a complex, time-consuming process. What you need is a tool that lets you create one image for all of your hardware.

That's where UIU comes in.

Curing your headaches with the UIU
Big Bang's Universal Imaging Utility (UIU) is the only software application that works with your existing cloning application to deliver a single, hardware-independent image to any laptop or desktop, regardless of manufacturer or model.

Now, with the addition of the UIU for SCCM, Big Bang simplifies image deployment even more for administrators of SCCM environments. During deployment, the UIU for SCCM automatically handles both existing drivers and new driver updates, selecting the right drivers from a continuously updated database of more than 40,000 Plug-n-Play Ids, further ensuring that your machines start every time. And it works seamlessly within your existing SCCM environment, eliminating time-consuming and tedious driver update tasks.

Now, instead of spending all its time maintaining multiple hard drive images, your IT team can give time and attention to the IT projects that really run your business.