Freightliner LLC

Heavy Truck Maker Cuts Software Distribution Time and Cost, Enables Secure Vendor Access

Freightliner LLC wanted to improve management of thousands of computers spread across 13 facilities to reduce costs and to provide secure network access for outside vendors. It’s in the process of doing all that and more with the help of Microsoft® System Center Configuration Manager 2007. The company expects to cut software licensing costs, improve planning for major deployments, and roll out applications to users in just 15 minutes.

 

Business Needs

Freightliner LLC knows trucks—it’s the nation’s largest heavy-duty truck maker in North America. The company built 187,000 units in 2006 alone. Freightliner LLC encompasses seven brands, each with its own business unit headquarters. With more than 800 dealers in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, the company maintains nine manufacturing facilities and multiple parts distribution centers. It produces a highly diverse set of product lines (heavy-and medium-duty commercial vehicles for long-haul transport, local and regional distribution, construction and services; school buses; and chassis for delivery vans, recreational vehicles and shuttle buses).  The company’s export markets include Australia, South Africa, and South America.

Just as Freightliner knows how to make and distribute trucks, Freightliner’s IT department knows how to deploy and maintain software to support the company’s growing business and increasingly diverse and sophisticated products. Freightliner IT has been using Microsoft® Systems Management Server since the product was first released almost a decade ago.

The software has been helpful in deploying operating system software, application software, and software updates, and in tracking hardware and software inventory. All of that has been a benefit to Freightliner, which has some 13,000 computer servers and desktop computers in 12 sites—and a relatively lean IT staff of 12 professionals dedicated to maintaining those systems.

“Systems Management Server has definitely helped us to manage our computers and keep up with our growth,” says Noah Johnson, Senior Systems Engineer, Freightliner.

But as Freightliner has grown, so has its needs for automated software distribution and management. For example, its roster of applications has grown to 21,000—with a significant number of users having 50 or more applications on their desktops. Knowing exactly what software was in use where—for purposes of software licensing, as well understanding hardware inventory status—still required time-consuming, manual correlation of Systems Management Server inventory information with purchase history information.

Deploying, managing, and updating 21,000 applications, even with Systems Management Server, is an effort, especially since many of the applications required gave users administrative rights to their computers, which opened the door to inadvertent configuration changes and errors that drove up support time and costs. And when Freightliner pushed out an automated software update, there was no good way to ensure it didn’t cause machines to reboot while they were otherwise in use.

Freightliner works with thousands of outside vendors who needed to connect to the Freightliner network. The company was faced with the expensive choice of outfitting those vendors with secure computers for that purpose, or taking a risk that the vendors’ own computers might inadvertently load viruses onto the network.

Solution

To solve these issues, Freightliner didn’t have far to look. The company has adopted Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007, the latest version of the Systems Management Server software it was already using.

The biggest benefit we get from Configuration Manager is that it enables us to do the things we know we need to do, but that didn’t get done for lack of time or money. Noah Johnson Senior Systems Engineer, Freightliner

Freightliner is using the Asset Intelligence capability of System Center Configuration Manager to address its software licensing and hardware inventory issues. The tool provides enhanced inventory classes—such as computer age by processor and software inventory by suite and version type—enabling the company to do quick software license compliance audits. The company also anticipates that Asset Intelligence will assist software deployments by better identifying qualified systems and enabling more accurate planning for deployments of major software, such as the Windows Vista® operating system.

Freightliner’s planned use of SoftGrid Application Virtualization with System Center Configuration Manager will enable the company to deploy virtual versions of many of the applications its users require. Freightliner will be able to virtualize an application, create a protected “sandbox” space on the target computer, and then download the virtual software without having to grant users administrative rights, and without changing the underlying configuration settings of the computer. The company will control authorization to the virtual software through the Windows Server® 2003 Active Directory® service. When the user finishes the software session, the application will disappear from the machine until the next time the user requests it.

The company is also taking advantage of the Maintenance Windows capability of System Center Configuration Manager to help ensure that update deployment doesn’t interfere with server operation. Maintenance Windows enable Freightliner to specify that non-critical updates be implemented during the company’s outage window of 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. on Saturdays and Sundays, when rebooting servers is least likely to affect users.

To enable cost-effective yet secure network access by outside vendors, Freightliner will use a combination of System Center Configuration Manager capabilities, including Desired Configuration Manager (DCM) and Network Access Protection (NAP). With DCM, Freightliner can check the configurations of computers to ensure that they remain within the parameters set by IT policy. NAP enables the company to quarantine external machines that fail to meet those policies, and to update them with required software before allowing them to access the network. Freightliner also plans to use DCM to help maintain both servers and desktop computers in facilities without onsite IT staff.

Benefits

“The biggest benefit we get from Configuration Manager is that it enables us to do the things we know we need to do, but that didn’t get done for lack of time or money,” says Johnson. “As we put the pieces of Configuration Manager to work, we’ll have a more dynamic infrastructure, one that works better for us without requiring us to spend so much time fixing issues and conducting reactive maintenance.”

Johnson says that System Center Configuration Manager is a key to the vision that Freightliner has for its IT infrastructure. “We envision an IT environment that’s easy to maintain, with computers that automatically download updates and other required software every time they boot up, from the first day they’re on the network,” he says. “Each computer will be customized according to the user’s profile, easily providing software to which the user is authorized without requiring us to send technicians to load applications. We can see this happening with Configuration Manager—all the tools are in place in this new version.”

Freightliner sees cost savings as well as increased effectiveness coming from its adoption of System Center Configuration Manager. Johnson estimates the company will save at least U.S.$300,000 in the cost of distributing more than 250 application packages to its users.

“Tracking software installation and use with Configuration Manager will enable us to identify and eliminate licenses that we’re not using, saving us significant sums in software licensing,” says Vivienne Flores, Senior IT Developer, Freightliner. “We’ll also save resource time by being able to more quickly forecast the need for computer replacements and plan more effectively for operating system upgrades.”

Freightliner’s users will benefit directly from the adoption of System Center Configuration Manager. “Thanks to Configuration Manager, our users will get their applications faster and with fewer problems,” says Johnson. “They won’t have to schedule a deployment with the helpdesk. We’ll just add them to the appropriate security group and their software will be available to them within 15 minutes, for them to run when it’s convenient.”