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SpecOps Command
By Adam Bell | November 1, 2007
PowerShell is gaining in popularity, and more companies are announcing products that provide access to interfaces to PowerShell for automation and administration.
This situation is very similar to when the Windows Installer (MSI) technology first came on to the scene around 2000-2001, and anyone authoring setup software was dealing with how to get it out into their environments. Everyone was including the redistributable with their software in case the machine it was going to be installed on didn’t have it in place already.
The complexity with PowerShell however is that there are two questions that need to be dealt with:1) Like MSI, how do you deploy PowerShell out in your environment? and 2) How do you manage your PowerShell landscape of Snappins?
I was lucky enough see an online demo from Magnus and Thorbjorn from Special Operations Software today. They have a new product expected to be announced at TechEd later this month, called SpecOps Command which I believe will deal with these questions, for starters.
SpecOps Command, seems to be a tightly integrated product between Group Policy and PowerShell. This combination has the ability to provide it with the best of both products: the ease and flexibility of PowerShell, and the centralised environment management of Group Policy.
The tool has loads of cool features including the ability to run PoSH scripts assigned in GPO’s, Undo scripts for when things fall out of scope, reporting, and the ability to target clients in a very granular manner e.g. Only apply to Dell machines running Windows XP.
Thorbjorn advised that SpecOps intend to release a couple of versions of Command, including a free version that should provide the core functionality including the abilty to distribute PowerShell out into your environment.
I think it’s great that ISV’s like Quest and SpecOps are adding value to the PowerShell community with free offerings, as well as their commercial products. It give them exposure to their intended market, and provides us with some cool tools to make life easier :)
Like Quest’s AD Cmdlet’s I think SpecOps Command is likely to have a big impact on the way we use PowerShell going forwards.
[Update 2 Nov]
Magnus just gave me the link to the SpecOps website for Command. This will be the product page when it releases.
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Topics: Group Policy, PowerShell | No Comments »