In order to implement and manage distributed systems, there is a need to use what is known as system management software. Assuming a company is big enough and has operations spread out far enough to warrant a distributed system, the advantages are fairly obvious. For a growing company, there is a cutoff point at which it becomes unrealistic to do individual installations on each station, and sort through the paper and electronic trail left by each user in order to centralize the entire setup.
Once system management is implemented, the process becomes more streamlined. The automation starts offering immediate benefits. It enables reduction in IT staff levels and improves security and information sharing among employees and departments, and with the data already centralized, the reporting and monitoring process becomes a lot easier.
Installation & Management: The biggest help, obviously, comes in the easy and automated installations and updates. A small company with one office and a few computers may find it easy to do installations one by one. But for a large and diversified company with hundreds or even thousands of computers, that's not a choice. Servers and system management makes automation possible and new installations are a painless process, needing no extra time or manpower.
Cost Reduction: First of all, no company, big or small, needs to worry about not benefiting from system management. The only debatable point is the ROI related to the cost of the software and paying a system administrator. Regardless, once implemented, it cuts down the need for IT staffing and other related expenses on a long-term basis.
But the possibilities are much bigger than this, since the system management infrastructure opens up pathways to install enterprise level systems such as ERP and enhance the client server IT architecture. This allows the company to expand its footprint, add new operations to the work flow and open branches which previously would either not have been required or would have been impossible to manage. Bottomline is that this is not just an IT help tool, but something which will ripple through the company's entire operation.
Security: System management helps enhance security in various ways. For starters, universal settings can be deployed on all stations, and users can be granted access based on their username and job description, regardless of which station they use. It also helps in keeping the system safe from external attacks and hacking.
Security patches and critical updates can be done instantaneously on all stations without any extra effort or manpower, which reduces the window that attackers can use to take advantage of bugs. The network gets centralized enterprise anti virus and malware protection. Even the data is more secure as regards hardware failure or data corruption, since everything is stored on servers with a backup system.
Monitoring: A huge improvement in monitoring capability is one of the biggest advantages here, other than cost effectiveness and automation. Since the data on the network can be monitored, it is possible to make adjustments to more effectively manage peak periods and down time. Employee monitoring helps management keep an eye on employees and detect work patterns.
To summarize, the immediate advantages of using system management are very much real and the possibilities even bigger. End of the day, each company has to make an informed decision about this based on its own size and growth curve. A cost benefit analysis to figure out the ROI of system management software would be a good place to begin.
