Large community college district researching patch management

[Ric Getter <ric.getter () PCC EDU>]

I’m a member of a committee of IT people at Portland Community College
assigned to research other schools’ approach to automating software
patching. We are currently running WSUS services on some of our campuses
and use Dell KACE for inventory management, service desk and, to some
degree, endpoint management (but not patch management at this time).

We've come up with some preliminary questions (see below) and would like to
open up an email exchange or perhaps a phone call with someone interested
in sharing their experience and possibly providing a bit of mentoring. We
are particularly interested in speaking with someone who had the experience
of bringing patch management online in a large institution.


PCC is Oregon’s largest higher education institution with a total
enrollment approaching 90,000 students spread across four main campuses and
numerous local centers.


Our questions:


   1.

   What product are you using?
   2.

   What do you like about the product? What are its drawbacks?
   3.

   How well integrated is your solution with other systems that you’re
   using?
   4.

   Is the solution integrated with Active Directory
   5.

   Roughly how much staff time does it take to maintain the product
   6.

   Are you deploying patches throughout your district (across campuses) or
   is it more local?
   7.

   How is pushing patches impacting end users, desktop and mobile?
   8.

   How do you preserve the configuration of instructional computers (using
   a solution like Deep Freeze, AD profiles)? Are patches managed any
   differently in these environments?
   9.

   Does your patch mangement system integrate in any way with your imaging
   tools?


Many thanks for your help,

Ric

Ric Getter
Programmer/Analyst I - TSS Enterprise Applications Team
Portland Community College - Sylvania
971-722-8036