1. What was life like before using SolarWinds? (Include what you were using and why you decided it was time for a change)
We had to manually visit each user's machine to install third party updates because they did not have administrative rights. We decided this took too long and was too disruptive, so we looked for a management tool to do it for us.
2. Which SolarWinds product(s) saved your bacon?
Patch Manager
3. Did you consider other options, and why did you choose SolarWinds?
Yes, at first we used Desktop Central. However, our VPN users are required to pull updates rather than us push to them. Desktop Central can't do this, but since Solarwinds uses our WSUS server, it worked perfectly.
4. How has life been since you've rolled out SolarWinds in your environment?
We have had to troubleshoot a little with some custom packages, but the pre-built ones work perfectly.