Lenovo has bulked up the support and security in its ThinkVantage PC software. Access to the various applications has also been significantly improved with the addition of LANDesk Management Suite.
With LANDesk, Lenovo said it now offers IT managers a “mission control” console view that consolidates the various tools under one view. LANDesk’s Management Suite includes software licensing monitoring, software distribution, image creation and deployment, inventory and remote control.
Matched up with Lenovo’s current Rescue and Recovery 3.0 software IT managers can, for example, initiate a backup or recovery remotely.
“We had customers looking for a higher level of integration,” said Tom
Tobul, director of marketing for ThinkVantage Technologies. “LANDesk is an
industry leader and integrated with the functionality of ThinkVantage takes
us to the next level.”
At last week’s Intel
Developer Forum, Lenovo demonstrated its new Antidote Delivery Manager
which is also part of Rescue and Recovery. The software enables IT staff to
deliver fixes and updates to users wherever they are even if their system is
down from a worm or virus, the company said.
“I’ve been demoing with ThinkPads for years and there were instances
where ThinkVantage didn’t quite work or the interface was tricky to deal
with, but this most recent update is solid. It gets you what you need with
very little user intervention,” Roger Kay, analyst with Endpoint
Technologies Associates told internetnews.com. “Dell and others will
tell you they have something similar, but these guys (Lenovo) have more
mileage [in developing] than anyone else. ”
Lenovo has also made a flurry of other updates and changes to
ThinkVantage. Secure Data Disposal is an application that acts like a
virtual paper shredder enabling users to permanently erase sensitive data
from their hard drives.
On the flip side of data destruction, several enhancements were made to
ThinkVantage’s “Rescue and Recovery” options. A new restore capability is
designed to let users recover from a crash without losing key personality
settings or having to rescue files. A single-instance storage feature keeps
only the most recent copies of large files. This reduces the size of backups
and hard drive space used.
As part of an enhanced System Update application, ThinkVantage now
integrates with a company’s PC management system for both push and pull
distribution of selected applications.
Separately Lenovo, which bought IBM’s ThinkPad notebook and ThinkCentre
desktop computer line earlier this year, received good news today from
Technology Business Research which rated the company highly in its latest
customer satisfaction survey. TBR’s Corporate IT Buying Behavior and
Customer Satisfaction study is a quarterly report based on data collected
from the previous six months from among an audience of enterprise buyers
that plan to purchase at least 100 desktop systems in the next year.
“Those expecting to see declining satisfaction and loyalty due to the
Lenovo acquisition will be surprised by the latest TBR results,” said Julie
Perron, TBR analyst in a statement. “Lenovo has achieved increased sales to
over 400 of its largest customers since the merger, as well as significant
increases in customer satisfaction.”