Microsoft Advanced Group Policy Management
Enhancing group policy through change management
Microsoft Advanced Group Policy Management makes it easier for IT organizations to keep enterprise-wide desktop configurations up to date, enabling greater control, less downtime, and reduced total cost of ownership (TCO).
Microsoft Advanced Group Policy Management is a core component of the Desktop Optimization Pack for Software Assurance, a suite of advanced technologies designed to improve desktop manageability and security and decrease TCO.
Challenges in managing group policy
Group Policy Objects (GPOs) play a powerful role in how your network is managed. They enable your IT staff to quickly manage user and desktop settings on many computers at once. This means that changes to Group Policy can affect every user and computer on a network.
There is a risk associated with this degree of flexibility. Without a change control system, when your IT team alters GPOs, those changes can start affecting computers before they have been tested. If there's a problem with the updates, it can be difficult to quickly reverse them.
Additionally, although Group Policy provides a delegation model, the editor role has full permissions to deploy changes to the live environment. With the possibility of multiple editors per GPO, there is no way to detect who has made what changes, or to accept or reject changes before they are put into effect.
By giving you added control, Microsoft Advanced Group Policy Management makes it easier for you to more securely manage Group Policy throughout your organization.
Microsoft Advanced Group Policy Management: Advantages
Increase control
Microsoft Advanced Group Policy Management provides a more secure archive for controlling changes to GPOs by letting IT develop, review, and modify GPOs without affecting employee desktops. By acting as an extension to the Active Directory management console and providing granular administration, it enables your staff to have much greater control over how edits are made and applied, resulting in a much richer level of PC manageability.
Reduce downtime
Microsoft Advanced Group Policy Management helps you avoid the downtime that can result from improperly configured or conflicting GPOs. Its offline editing and workflow delegation capabilities allow IT to configure, test, and approve changes before they go live, and quickly roll back changes if needed. It also helps IT recover deleted GPOs and repair live GPOs, reducing the risk of widespread failures.
Improve TCO
Robust difference reporting and audit logging help your IT staff quickly diagnose and prevent problems with Group Policies. This enhanced diagnostics capability translates to fewer helpdesk calls and labor costs. It also increases both end user and IT productivity, improving overall desktop TCO.
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Some product features are only
available in certain editions of Windows Vista and may require advanced or additional hardware.