IT historically has not been a paragon of speed and innovation when it comes to standardizing the desktop, but that appears to be changing as concerns grow about rogue software downloads. There are many ways to discourage end users from downloading unapproved applications without presenting a completely inflexible policy, and Computerworld's John Brandon takes a look how four IT organization are finding this balance.

Untested applications and old software can contain landmines for the corporate network, but at the same time there are employees who rebel strongly against a locked-down desktop. Standardization does not have to mean inflexibility, however. A library of pre-approved applications can be made available to end users, or a process for requesting new tools can be established. However, even if these options are provided, some employees are bound to download their own, unapproved programs, Brandon writes.

Saint Luke's Health System has 10 locations throughout Idaho, and standardization is key to managing the many departments' desktops. End users can choose the devices they want from a pre-approved list, and they can select their applications from an in-house library. The IT staff saves time by focusing on managing the software library rather than assisting individual end users with single app installations. 

Application virtualization software removes administrative rights from end users' desktops so they can't download their own applications. Versioning remains a challenge at St. Luke's, as it is at a lot of organizations pursuing standardized desktop. Approximately 22 different versions of Java are in use across the organization, and the IT staff manages them via application virtualization. They can identify incompatibilities among applications using Java. Even the IT staff at St. Luke's is subjected to the standard desktop. About 99 percent of the IT pros do not have admin rights, but this is a somewhat unusual practice, Brandon writes.

Starwood North--a division of Starwood Hotels, which owns numerous hotel chains, including Four Points, Sheraton and Westin--manages about 15,000 desktops in the United States. As a chain, the company strives to establish consistency among all the properties, but when different hotels used different computers and different applications, incompatibilities kept cropping up.

Starwood North deployed ScriptLogic Desktop Authority to manage the operating system, applications and user settings. It establishes a standard for different departments, and sets up the user settings. End users in the field help test applications to included in the standard desktop. Upgrades usually are done on schedule under the enterprise agreements with vendors.

For more, see:
- John Brandon's article at Computerworld

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