SMS 2003 Mobility Datasheet
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On This Page
 | Supporting a Mobile Workforce |
| Infrequently Connected Users |
| Roaming Users |
Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003 provides a comprehensive solution for addressing and resolving your change and configuration needs, enabling the delivery of key services to the growing mobile workforce by utilizing standard Internet technologies.
| • | As enterprises become increasingly mobile, more business is conducted by roaming and infrequently connected users who need the same access to critical business applications and security updates available to the desk worker. |
| • | SMS 2003 supports the roaming and infrequently connected users by extending its enterprise proven asset management and application deployment capabilities to the mobile workforce. |
Supporting a Mobile Workforce
As the enterprise workforce evolves from cubicle dwellers to road warriors, it becomes increasingly difficult to provide end-users with the critical business applications in the right place at the right time. SMS 2003 provides a comprehensive and integrated solution for enterprises faced with these challenges by leveraging the technology and best practices from Windows Update—used today to implement hundreds of millions of software updates per month to remote users—and extending its enterprise scalable asset management and software distribution solution to the mobile client. The ability to support groups of mobile users, including those that are infrequently connected, as well as those that roam between locations, is becoming increasingly vital to the evolving business. With SMS 2003, enterprises can manage both groups of mobile users seamlessly through the same processes used to manage the rest of their IT, significantly reducing the operational cost of supporting a mobile workforce.
Infrequently Connected Users
Until ubiquitous connectivity is a reality, business travelers will continue to utilize slow, unpredictable network connections to conduct their business. These systems need to remain managed in order to ensure access to critical business applications, as well as maintain up-to-date security configurations, while also providing IT with visibility into application configuration, presence, and usage. SMS 2003 extends the enterprise-proven application deployment and asset management capabilities to these devices and users through the new bandwidth aware Advanced Client, using standard Internet technologies to deliver support to mobile users and systems with unreliable or varying connections.
Bandwidth Aware Clients
The Advanced Client uses the Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) technology to automatically detect the capacity of the client network connection and to adjust transfer rates efficiently, allowing both traditional desktops and mobile PC's to download software in a bandwidth sensitive manner. The download rate is dynamically tuned to relegate SMS 2003 traffic to the background as other services start using the shared link. Rather than installing applications and updates while connected, the Advanced Client can also be configured to download an entire package, running the installation at a later time, even when no network access is available. Should a connection be terminated during transmission, SMS 2003 provides restart capabilities for resuming a transfer where it left off when the connection is restored instead of re-sending the entire package - transferring the minimal amount of software to targeted recipients.
Standards-based Communication
SMS reduces the reliance on proprietary technology by communicating to mobile clients through standard Internet technologies such as Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and Extensible Markup Language (XML), and by utilizing standard installation technologies such as Windows Installer, which greatly reduces deployment and support costs.
Roaming Users
Business users frequently traveling between multiple sites require the same level of cost effective management as is provided for users in a fixed location. SMS 2003 provides location awareness, resulting in the Advanced Client locating the closest software distribution point and downloading critical software and updates from that source. This capability dramatically reduces the traffic across expensive wide-area networks, and allows effective support for devices frequently moving between physical locations.