Workspace Manager

[dazza007]

Hi

I am looking at an all in one solution for printer and workspace assignments to users as a replacement to CSE Workspace Explorer.

I wanted a product with good support, updates and reliability. We have a project that has RES Workspace Manager in its infancy however I would love to know whether people use a workspace manager or use group policies to assign users a desktop.

Many thanks,

Darren

[dazza007]

I gather from the lack of response the use of a workspace package is not a common thing.

Has anyone replaced CSE Workspace Explorer with another product?

 

Now I have looked at our needs I can manage application shortcuts and printer deployment using scripts and group policy. I can script user creation too. I was quoted 25k for the RES workspace bronze package so patching all the bits together looks like the only way forward!

 

Any one else retired CSE Workspace Explorer? What did you do?

[mrhcarlin]

We have a RES Workspace Manager Gold license and I can only whole heartedly recommend it. I took a quick glimpse of CSE's package and it doesn't look as robust, reliable, professional or feature-rich.

 

We also use RES Automation Manager for deployment and automating various AD tasks (among other things), but they're completely separate packages and totally standalone.

 

WM is great, though, and makes things like printer assignmemt, drive mapping, shortcut creation, and applying registries a doddle. 'Zones' and 'containers' makes it a cake walk to segregate policies and such. Its featureset is extensive beyond what I've laid out, and I'm sure you'll find many more uses the more you use it.

 

RES support is among the best vendor support I've had the pleasure of dealingnwith, and their knowledge base has a plethora of information, tips and tricks, and general fixes.

 

Have never had a problem with the software or company, so I certainly give it/them my seal of approval (for whatever that's worth).

 

For the record, implementing RES was my main project after joining a newly formed IT team at my current school. We replaced a CC4 network with a vanilla Win 2K8 R2/7 network + RES. For a school infrastructure, it's the only logical choice.

 

I dont have any experience or knowledge of your current management software, but If you have the resources and time to devote to a project like this, do it, and do it with RES.

[dazza007]

Thanks for that. I have enquired about this product but for 850 concurrent licences for the bronze version (which has support) is 25-30k which was disappointing. I was hoping a cost reduction for a non-profit education purposes. What is the cost of the gold version?

[mrhcarlin]

Shop around. I don't have pricing to hand unfortunately, but they have increased their costs since we jumped on-board a few years ago. I think it was between 5-10K, though, for 400 concurrent licenses. Renewals are significantly cheaper. A license is only 'consumed' within the WM console when a user logs in, so only buy as many licenses as you have machines (student/staff numbers are likely to be far greater than machine count).