My day job is to automate processes in the area of Information Technology and end-user support and services. Now generally this means that I take a piece of software that needs to be delivered to a reasonable number of PCs in the company, enough to make it practical for my effort to be fiscally appropriate, and I make the process simple, painless, and consistent in the delivery.
I have help, I have people and technology around me that ensure this goes well. There's a great guy in Vancouver who tests what I build, another guy in Mississauga who queues the software up on a server for deployment, and the software we used for deployment, Altiris (it's owned by Symantec now) that works out the details of the delivery. This all goes together with an inherently not-automated process for requesting the software and getting it to the users. I'd love to get that sorted out.
Now, this is all in the interest of saving money, improving inefficiencies, and being consistent. The challenge is that we have 6500+ systems that are all running Windows XP and are just slightly different, but this is becoming less so. We have used this process to deploy the latest Service Pack, 3, for Windows XP, and a web browser which I actually need to re-visit because there's a glitch that I need to tweak out of the 6500 systems that we deployed it to. So... I'm not perfect, but I'm only as good as my tester(s), though I'll be spending time tomorrow tracking that issue down.
Now, what I'd like to know, from anyone, is what do you think would help you in day-to-day use of your computer, that I might be able to find for you, and if I can't find it, I'd consider building it. Now I'm no miracle worker, I'm just a guy who likes to solved problems. I love a challenge!
So I want you to challenge me. Like I said, I'm not going to re-invent the wheel, I'll recommend a product if it exists already, but if it doesn't...
Let me know with a comment. I'll even respond.
