ABSTRACT
Purchasing software is an expensive proposition for any enterprise, but license fees are only a small percentage of the total cost of ownership (TCO) of software. Deploying it, managing the licenses, and installing patches/upgrades are actually far more expensive than the software itself. And, if software is not kept up to date and properly inventoried, one is vulnerable to legal problems, huge fines, and hacker attacks. With so many challenges inherent in using software, it is essential that companies be aware of these dangers, as well as what can be done to overcome them such as employing the proper tools to minimize risk and exposure. Although the previous chapter addressed one aspect of this problem, asset management, perhaps a more vital activity these days is that of software deployment and distribution. Software deployment addresses the area of how to get new applications, upgrades, patches, and the latest antivirus signatures out to every single server and desktop throughout the enterprise. The “sneakernet” may have been good enough in the mid-1990s, but it has no place in the 21st century.
