ZOHO Corp. (formerly AdventNet), the publishers of ManageEngine Desktop Central, sponsors two licenses of its Windows client management solution’s Professional Edition. The winner will get licenses for 100 computers (worth $995) and the runner 50 (worth $545). If you want to take part in this contest, you just have to send an email to:

with the subject line ManageEngine Desktop Central. Please, add your name and the name of your organization. The deadline is July 12, 2009.

It would be great if you also answer this question:

What type of reports should a client management tool have?

Since ManageEngine Desktop Central has quite a few features, I will introduce this web-based Windows management software by three articles.

(more…)

In my last post in this series, I discussed the concept behind ManageEngine Desktop Central. Today, I want to dig a little deeper and describe some of Desktop Central’s capabilities. As outlined before, all management tasks are basically Configurations. There are two types of Configurations: User Configurations and Computer Configurations. Computer Configurations are applied during startup and User Configurations are applied during user logon. Both configurations are also applied every 90 minutes.

(more…)

In my last article I covered ManageEngine Desktop Central’s capabilities with regard to configuration management, software deployment, and patch management. I outlined that all three tasks are basically Configurations. Desktop Central has a few functions that are not organized as Configurations.

The integrated Inventory solution is one of these. It has its own tab where all inventory settings are configured and where you can access all inventory data. You can either scan all your computers manually or schedule regular scans. Desktop Central supports hardware and software inventory. You can retrieve information, such as the number of installations of a certain program or a certain device. With a few mouse clicks you can find out on which machines a certain program has been installed. Programs can be arranged in categories. My favorite feature is the Prohibited Software function. Whenever Desktop Central finds a program in this list, it will just be uninstalled.

(more…)