Symantec has purchased ON Technology, a maker of remote
PC management technology, for $100m (£59m).
ON makes products for network administrators to inventory and
manage desktop computers, servers and mobile devices on local- and
wide-area networks.
Symantec will use ON's technology to enhance its line of
enterprise security administration products, with the goal of
giving Symantec customers the ability to spot and patch security
holes in their computer network.
For example, ON's iCommand product allows administrators to use
a web-based portal to co-ordinate a variety of activities such as
pushing out new operating systems, software applications or
security patches to computers or mobile devices on their network,
or to remote systems outside the organisation's firewall.
ON's technology is already being used in conjunction with
Symantec's Ghost software cloning and restoration product to deploy
Ghost "images" centrally (snapshots of an operating system or
application configuration) which are used to restore a compromised
or malfunctioning system.
While Ghost performs many of the same functions as ON's
technology, it lacks features to track and manage large numbers of
computers on a network, making it a tough sell for enterprise
customers, according to Eric Ogren, an analyst at Yankee Group
.
In recent months, Symantec has attempted to make Ghost better
suited for enterprise use. The company released Ghost 8.0 Corporate
Edition last week, which included features for sending out software
hot fixes or operating system configuration changes to multiple
workstations at once and reduce the amount of bandwidth needed to
send Ghost images back and forth over the network.
With the ON technology, Symantec now has a "network aware"
product that can do what Ghost does. If it is successfully
integrated into Symantec's Enterprise Security Architecture, the ON
technology will allow Symantec customers to manage network device
security from their desktop or from a web interface over the
internet, Ogren said.
The purchase of ON will will help the company compete against
other, larger companies with an interest in network device
management, including Microsoft.
Microsoft's Systems Management Server also enables companies
to manage software deployment to PCs, servers and mobile devices
centrally.
Paul Roberts writes for IDG News Service