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Solution for Remote Software Deployment on Windows?
DownTownMT asks: "I work as a Windows administrator in a small company with roughly 180 WinXP/2000 and 30 Win98 machines. Our current method for installing Windows patches is WSUS which works great for the non-98 PC's. However, when installing software, such as Adobe, QuickTime and various other tools, our only method is to manually install it on each machine. What are you sysadmins using to deploy software across all of your machines?"
You sound like the same idiot who stole my job for $20k/y less then what I was getting paid.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Spent several years using the Altiris Deployment Server product to install software packages in a ~4,000 user site. It worked quite well; you install the Altiris Client on each computer you want managed (there's an automated remote install, or it can be done manually, or via logon script, or whatever works for you), and then you can perform a ton of actions on the client computers from the Deployment Server console--installing packages, removing packages, power on (via Wake-on-LAN) and power off events, hardware & software inventory & reporting, all kinds of stuff. The packages you install will generally be MSIs, created yourself with something like Wise Package Studio or from regular off-the-shelf software with a transform of your own making applied post-install.
Microsoft's SMS is also a fine option and competes with Altiris; while Altiris comes with a lot more pre-configured features out of the box, SMS is just as extensible and has the same leg-up over Altiris that most MS products have over competitors--seamless integration into the host OS and domain.
I believe BackOrifice was originally designed for this kind of thing, on Win95/98 machines, no less.
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