News

Field Report: TechMentor 2004 New Orleans

</i>MCP Magazine<i>'s TechMentor lured hundreds of Windows IT professionals to the bayou for five days of in-depth learning, product demos, networking, and plenty of fancy eating.

• By Doug Barney
• 04/08/2004

The TechMentor exhibit hall was packed Tuesday night with attendees enjoying New Orleans' libations, fresh seafood, and hot new products.

Symantec (http://www.symantec.com/), which recently acquired PowerQuest (http://www.powerquest.com/), was busy promoting PowerQuest's V2i Protector 2.0, Desktop Edition, its latest data protection tool. The vendor claims that a one-step disk imaging process can backup all relevant PC or laptop files and its configuration.

Symantec touted another acquisition, pitching the latest from ON Technology (http://www.on.com/). ON's iCommand infrastructure management suite includes an end-user web portal for items such as corporate procedures, a portal that helps administrators respond to problems, and agents to management network components.

ThinPrint (http://www.thinprint.com/) roused some attention with its Content Beamer, an innovative approach to mobile device data access and printing. Content Beamer allows mobile devices to display a variety of data types, including e-mail attachments, and compresses the files to reduce networking bandwidth and ease printing.

Filtering Tech
WebSense (http://www.websense.com/) is continuing to keep our networks clean and pure. Websense Enterprise filtering software can block inappropriate content, streaming media, and even peer to peer networking tools. A new tool, Websense Enterprise IM Attachment Manager, can restrict attachments sent via IM, which often bypass existing safeguards.

Like Websense, SurfControl (http://www.surfcontrol.com/)had a range of filtering tools, including Instant Message Filter, which can determine which employees can have IM access. For instance, a CEO could be given full access, while the guys in the mailroom are shut off.

Package and Install
OnDemand Software (http://www.ondemandsoftware.com/) showed off WinInstall 8, the latest rev of its ten-year old software packaging and deployment system boasting integration of MSI packaging, distribution, inventory, client reset and patch management.

Wise Solutions (http://www.wise.com/), recently acquired by Altiris, was on hand with the popular Wise Package Studio, which includes conflict testing, release management, and of course, packaging.

New Boundary (http://www.newboundary.com/) made its packaging pitch with Prism, a tool that can customize apps for different deployment scenarios. The company also showed off Prism Patch Manager with automated patch tracking.

InstallShield (http://www.InstallShield.com/) rounded out the packaging booths, and showed off its InstallShield Update Service, AdminStudio for packaging, and InstallShield AMS for application management.

Look for a roundup of packaging tools in an upcoming issue of MCP Magazine.

Training Day
Looking for training, but have no bread? IT Skills Loan was on hand to lend IT pros the money to get that career boosting certification. Check 'em out at www.itloan.com.

And right next door just happened to be The Training Camp (http://www.trainingcamp.net/), a broad based training company with new courses such as a seven-day CISSP security training camp, and a wide range of Microsoft courses.

Global Knowledge (http://www.globalknowledge.com/) had a smorgasbord of tasty training treats on hand, covering everything from Windows Server 2003 to Group Policy and Active Directory specific courses.

Transcender (http://transcender.com/) had its own array of training offerings, including some developer centric courses such as C#, and some hardcore server and SQL offerings.

The book folks were in full force, and had celebrity authors such as our own Don Jones signing their latest. Que (http://www.quepublishing.com/) had dozens of titles on display, including its popular Exam Cram 2 series.

Patch it and forget it
Patching mavens may want to take a peak at PatchLink Corp.'s PatchLink 6 (http://www.patchlink.com), an upgrade that can discover security holes based on unauthorized services and systems that are not in line with corporate policies.

ScriptLogic (http://www.scriptlogic.com) was kept busy doing demo after demo of Desktop Authority, a tool that gives administrators fine control over users and resources. It includes remote control, drive mapping, folder redirection, printer deployment, security policies, and much more.

The scripting world was also well represented by SAPIEN Technologies (http://www.sapien.com), with its new PrimalScript 3.1, a script editing and automation tool.

Winternals (http://www.winternals.com) touted a full line of Windows tools, including Administrator's Pak (repairs disks, imports/exports registry files, and recovers deleted files), Defrag Manager, Recovery Manager, and Insight for Active Directory that can resolve AD issues and related failures.

Raxco Software (http://www.raxco.com) is making a run at the disk defrag market with PerfectDisk, a tool that integrates with Active Directory, easing the deployment of the software.

Software Pursuits (http://softwarepursuits.com/) had a full range of products on display, including SureSync for file synchronization and replication, BootBack for system recovery, and ArchivedSync for tapeless backup and recovery.

TNT Software (http://www.tntsoftware.com/) had its ELM Performance Manager (automates monitoring and managing of servers and PCs), and ELM Log Manager which helps make sense of reams of log data.