Example 1

Scenario - A security vulnerability has been exposed in the Windows XP/2000 operating systems and Microsoft has released a patch that closes the security hole.  Machines are being infected by the hundreds upon connection to the internet.  This is a very time sensitive issue.

With SMS...  we can create a simple package for the security update and assign it to all Windows XP and 2000 machines.  The total time from when we begin to create the package to the time it is installed on most every SMS managed machine should be under one hour.  After installation, a report may be run to confirm that all machines have received the update.  Total time involved:  1 hour

Without SMS - Alternative options would include:

1. Systems would need to be updated by hand.  This obviously isn't a viable option since it would be very time consuming for an administrator to physically be at each machine running the update.  To do this, the administrator would need to interrupt the users' work.  Depending on users to run the update themselves is very risky.  Total time involved: Five minutes PER machine

2. Waiting for Windows Update to install the updates.  This is not viable because not all Windows machines will have Windows Update enabled.  Even if Windows Update was enabled, most machines wait until 3 AM each night to install the update.  Total time involved:  Overnight, but only if all machines had Windows Update enabled.

3. The Update could be assigned to run via Group Policy.  This is the most viable option next to SMS but is a much more passive method of application deployment.  Machines would first need to refresh their Group Policy settings, which occurs ever 90 minutes, by default.  Because of the way that Group Policy is processed, a user would need to log out and log back in (and in some cases, a machine would need to be restarted) before the policy takes effect.  Total time involved:  updates would begin installing quickly but would depend on Group Policy being refreshed and possibly users logging out and then back in.  No confirmation would be given that the update was installed and there would be no reporting available without advanced scripting.

Example 2

Scenario - A certain video driver for a certain model of video card is causing errors and screen freezes on many computers because of a system conflict with another piece of software.

With SMS...  a collection may be created that is based on a WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation) query that will identify systems that have the specific video card and the specific, problematic version of the video driver.  Once this collection is created, an updated video driver can simply be made into a package and assigned to all of the machines that are having problems.  The packaged can be scheduled to run in the middle of the night if desired.

Without SMS... unless every computer in the entire department had an identical hardware configuration, a support person would need to physically check each system's configuration to see that the offending device and driver were present and manually install the driver.  Since manually installing the driver at each workstation means using the video card with the faulty driver, this would be an obstacle for the support person fixing each computer.

Example 3

Scenario - A new version of Microsoft Office has been released and thousands of systems need to be upgraded to this new version.

With SMS... a package that installs the entire Office suite can be created and assigned to all of the systems that require the upgrade.  The upgrades first download to each of the thousands of systems and then installs locally on those systems, as opposed to running directly from the network location and wasting network bandwidth.  The download uses a system called BITS (Background Intelligent Transfer Service) that uses only bandwidth a user on a client machine isn't using.  No network slowdown will be apparent to the user for this reason.  The whole process should take a few hours from the time the Office suite is packaged to the time it is available on managed machines.

Without SMS...  The Microsoft Office suite could be deployed via Group Policy (the same as in alternative option #3 in the first example) but the same pitfalls would apply.  In addition, the very large download of the Office installer files would be done without the BITS technology and users would have to sit through the download and installation when they logged in for the first time before Windows starts.  There would be no confirmation or reporting on the success of the deployment of the package.