California Polytechnic State University Simplifies Image Deployment Using SmartDeploy

The IT support team in California Polytechnic State University’s (Cal Poly’s) mechanical engineering department was drowning under the flood of unique computer images that it had to maintain, and its Symantec™ Ghost™ Solution Suite implementation didn’t make the task of image management any easier. The IT support staff for the department had to maintain PC images for all of the lab and faculty computers.
Worse, because the department refreshes lab equipment every school year, preparing unique images for each of the labs to accommodate the specialized software used by the engineering students was a perpetual chore—and it was only getting more difficult to get Ghost Solution Suite to work with newer hardware and operating systems. Not only was this frequency of computer imaging a drain on IT resources, the IT team also had to refresh and maintain dedicated hardware solely to serve as a gold image for each lab every year. Fortunately, SmartDeploy® provided a way out.