Unlike most other products where "you had to have a live operating system running on the box before you could install another package, such as Microsoft Office," with CCM "you could configure a machine from scratch from a raw disk," explains Perrin. Installed toward the end of 1997, CCM went through various upgrades. "The product was a little flaky when we first got it but now it is really reliable," Perrin asserts.
CCM has saved TIAA the cost of at least six full-time employees. "And that's not just a one-time cost, because you're forever updating the desktop or delivering patches," notes Chuck Dvorkin, vice president, systems, TIAA.
The solution allows for the central management of desktops in four major locations, plus several secondary locations dispersed around the Northeast. "We have a branch office in Philadelphia, for example, so we just configured a couple of PCs and sent them down, and we administer them through CCM," Perrin relates. "This saves us from being on the phone with them, instructing them what to do, them doing it wrong, and us undoing it, etc."
SUNSETTING SUN
TIAA now runs more than 500 desktops, and administers a mixture of Sun Solaris and Windows NT and 2000 servers, and plans to migrate almost everything to Linux over the next year, according to Perrin. "It looks like we can duplicate Sun Solaris performance for probably a tenth of the cost using Linux on Intel-Santa Clara, Calif. servers," he observes. To support the move, TIAA is moving to ON Technology's Linux-based iCommand product.
