Local software development house Gencentric recently released the popular NetWhyz network administration application that is proving invaluable for companies wanting to manage their resources in a PC network.
Whether you want to ensure software licensing compliance so that you don`t get caught out with more products installed than you have licensing for, or you would like to determine who is using what software products, NetWhyz will give you a full and detailed breakdown of exactly what is installed on each PC on the network.
NetWhyz is also able to provide a detailed breakdown of the hardware specifications on all of the PCs on a network, including the processor type and speed, amount of RAM, size of hard drive(s) and available free space. This is particularly useful when installing new software you need to determine that minimum specifications are met on the PCs. NetWhyz will also inform you on additional hardware installed such as CD-ROM drives, printers, USB and IR ports, PCMCIA cards, scanners and digital cameras, etc.
NetWhyz deploys an agent to each PC via the login script or a small batch file can either be e-mailed to users or executed off a central shared folder. Every time an audit is requested, the information on each PC is gathered and compiled into a central log. This is very useful for change control as you can be alerted when software or hardware is added or removed from any PC. The agent works transparently in the background and is invisible to the users.
Audits are written to either an MS Access or SQL file, depending on which you select and reports can be written to an Excel spreadsheet in a number of different formats. For example, you can obtain a list of the RAM on all the PCs on the network or a list of users with Microsoft Office 2000 installed.
The application is very user-friendly and only 11MB in total size for the administrator console, with the agent installation less than 2MB in size. Communication with the networked PCs is via TCP/IP. NetWhyz will run on all Windows operating systems, including 95/98/ME/NT/2000 and XP, and the server console can be installed on any of these PCs so that any number of administrators can be set up. In the server console window you can also group users together, for example as Management or Accounting, so that it is easier to determine what software the users should and shouldn`t have installed on their PCs.
Licensing of NetWhyz is inexpensive as there are no server console costs that are found with many other products. Similar applications such as TrackIT are also really helpdesks with auditing capabilities tagged on and although Sentenial has more bells and whistles, the product comes at a much higher price. The unit cost of NetWhyz is less than R100 per PC and pricing is based on a sliding scale so that larger networks are cheaper per unit. For an additional 8% maintenance cost per year you can get the latest version upgrades at no additional cost when they become available. It is also possible to purchase a one-month or three-month licence for once-off audits and by paying the difference between the price for these licences and the full licence you can upgrade the software to a full version.
For more information on NetWhyz or a trial version, visit www.camsoft.co.za/netwhyz.htm.
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