"As the anti-virus vendors are working on their newest signatures," said Moegling, "we'll have access to them, even before they're publicly released. We'll be able to take those signatures and implement them to the Desktop Management customers proactively."
Other features in the service suite include agents that monitor its status and overall health, and proactively deploy patches or other fixes to solve upcoming problems. A virtual help desk is also available to end users through a portal running on the local server, which offers up an array of online information. If that's not sufficient, the problem can be automatically bumped to the in-house IT staff.
Although Desktop Management Services is only available to companies buying 100 to 1,000 seats, the company's working on solutions for even smaller organizations, said Moegling. "We want to bring the same services to small businesses [with fewer than 100 seats] at the same price point, but right now that's impossible."
The new services are available world wide, but at differing prices. In Canada, for instance, the service runs $55 (U.S.) per seat per month, while in Europe the monthly cost is $50 per seat.
