IBM Global Services" customers are continually faced with the challenges of reducing their internal IT costs, while simultaneously maintaining and improving the environment within which they conduct their core businesses. Customers are looking to create more reliable, more user friendly, and more manageable solutions across their enterprises. A component of this enterprise is the distributed computing environment. This refers to the desktop, laptop, PDA, and enterprise server devices within a company. The Enterprise Management & Software Distribution (EMSD) organization services this area for commercial customers. EMSD's information technology plan is synonymous with the business plan. The plan is to utilize information technology tools and processes to reduce the support costs for these devices, without compromising their utility. The mission of the EMSD service is to provide a complete software management solution by:.
• Defining and deploying a core image to all end user systems that is customizable to functional or site requirements. .
• Designing, deploying, and utilizing systems management infrastructures, processes, and systems management tools to provide a cost effective, stable, reliable, and controlled software environment for in-scope end-user systems.
According to Morgan Stanley, due to the poor economy, many companies are revising their IT spending plans to spend less ("IT Budget"). EMSD understands that the economy is down. However, EMSD's strategy has proved to be successful even in tough times. At the core of the EMSD service offering is the understanding, that by standardizing the software configurations on distributed computing devices, and centralizing the support for them, the cost of maintenance and improvements can be driven down. For example, performing automated Electronic Software Distribution reduces the labor costs needed to deploy software applications, patches, and upgrades.
