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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT face="Times New Roman"><FONT size=3>Hello,<?/x-tad-smaller><?/fontfamily><BR><BR><?fontfamily><?param Arial><?x-tad-smaller>As
you may know, BES 5.0 will be coming out soon. The official release date is
around November 1 and the upgrade Fixlet messages on the BES Support Fixlet
site will be available soon after. We are currently in the beta stage of the
release process and have BES 5.0 currently installed at a few medium
and large deployments.<?/x-tad-smaller><?/fontfamily><BR> <BR><?fontfamily><?param Arial><?x-tad-smaller>Note
that with the introduction of BES 5.0, there are now two product lines: BES
Standard Edition (SE) and an extended version of BES that includes
authoring abilities (see below for more info) that will be sold for an increased
price. BigFix management has decided that everyone who was a customer
before 11/1/04 will <?/x-tad-smaller><?x-tad-smaller>receive the additional
authoring capabilities <?/x-tad-smaller><?x-tad-smaller>at no additional cost<?/x-tad-smaller><?x-tad-smaller> <?/x-tad-smaller><?x-tad-smaller>as a
'thank you' to our current customers.<?/x-tad-smaller><?/fontfamily><BR><?fontfamily><?param Arial><?x-tad-smaller><?/x-tad-smaller><?/fontfamily> <BR><?fontfamily><?param Arial><?x-tad-smaller>Here
are some new features that you as a current BES customer <?/x-tad-smaller><?x-tad-smaller>may be specifically be <?/x-tad-smaller><?x-tad-smaller>interested
in:<?/x-tad-smaller><?/fontfamily><BR><?fontfamily><?param Arial><?x-tad-smaller>-
Decreased BES Console memory usage - The BES Console's memory footprint has been
lowered dramatically. Initial indications at our beta sites show that memory
usage will be 20-50% of the memory footprint of the 4.1 version of the BES
Console.<?/x-tad-smaller><?/fontfamily><BR> <BR><?fontfamily><?param Arial><?x-tad-smaller>-
General BES Console performance optimizations - The lower memory footprint plus
a number of optimizations make the BES Console work faster, especially when
multiple users are simultaneously using the BES Console. (Note: there is
now a central control in BES Admin that will allow you to make a global
change to the refresh rates of all the BES Console computers.)<?/x-tad-smaller><?/fontfamily><BR> <BR><?fontfamily><?param Arial><?x-tad-smaller>-
Named actions - You can now name your actions instead of using the default
Fixlet name. So, for example, instead of seeing "MS04-028: Buffer Overrun in
JPEG Parsing (GDI+) Could Allow Code Execution" in the action list, you can name
the action: "MS04-028: Production Server Deployment" or write whatever you would
like.<?/x-tad-smaller><?/fontfamily><BR> <BR><?fontfamily><?param Arial><?x-tad-smaller>-
Action presets - You can now save your action settings so that you can use them
later. For example, if you want to always have an action always show a specific
message box, reapply 3 times upon failure, and apply only to logged in
users, you can now save those settings and easily select them for later.<?/x-tad-smaller><?/fontfamily><BR> <BR><?fontfamily><?param Arial><?x-tad-smaller>-
Additional Message Box / Restart capabilities (these should be very popular) -
You can now have message boxes time-out (i.e., only stay active for 10 minutes
then automatically apply the action), you can show message boxes during an
action rather than before (i.e., "Windows XP SP2 is currently being applied. Do
NOT restart your computer!"), you can customize the restart dialog message, you
can allow the users to postpone the actions or restarts, and more...<?/x-tad-smaller><?/fontfamily><BR> <BR><?fontfamily><?param Arial><?x-tad-smaller>-
Improved BES Web Reports - The Web Reports have been improved significantly. You
can now: Filter the overview page to specific criteria, allow web reports
management rights for multiple users (i.e., web report user "manager" can see
the computers managed by 4 BES Console operator "<SPAN
class=321452300-08102004>pete</SPAN>", "<SPAN
class=321452300-08102004>bill</SPAN>", and "tina"), see example Web Reports when
selecting a custom report, group by properties when displaying Fixlet reports
(i.e., see the breakdown of Fixlet Compliance by geographic location), see
a Fixlet trend analysis, and more... In addition, the Web Reports are now
significantly faster and put less load on the database.<?/x-tad-smaller><?/fontfamily><BR> <BR><?fontfamily><?param Arial><?x-tad-smaller>-
Many small bug fixes - BES 5.0 fixes a wide range of small issues in the BES
Console, BES Server, BES Relay, and BES Clients to allow for easier use, faster
BES Client reporting, and less
problems.<?/x-tad-smaller><?/fontfamily><BR> <BR><?fontfamily><?param Arial><?x-tad-smaller>-
Integrated Fixlet authoring - You can now create Fixlet messages directly in the
BES Console and deploy them to BES
Clients.<?/x-tad-smaller><?/fontfamily><BR> <BR><?fontfamily><?param Arial><?x-tad-smaller>-
View an interactive visual representation of your network - You can now see a
visual representation of your network using our
"Visualization" feature. <?/x-tad-smaller><?/fontfamily><BR> <BR><?fontfamily><?param Arial><?x-tad-smaller>-
Send out tasks to your BES Clients - You can send out "tasks" that are like
Fixlets, but allow for more flexibility in deployment. For instance, you
can use a task to easily deploy a software package to a group of
BES Clients. There are also wizards that allow you to easily create and
customize tasks (such as the "Software Deployment Wizard").<?/x-tad-smaller><?/fontfamily><BR> <BR><?fontfamily><?param Arial><?x-tad-smaller>-
You can now create "analyses", which allow for targeted customizable views
of retrieved properties, so if you want to see the breakdown of running services
on only your workstation computers, you can do that without having to create web
reports or rearrange your retrieved properties list.<?/x-tad-smaller><?/fontfamily><BR> <BR><?fontfamily><?param Arial><?x-tad-smaller>-
And more...<?/x-tad-smaller><?/fontfamily><BR> <BR> <BR><?fontfamily><?param Arial><?x-tad-smaller>For
more detailed information about the new features along with some interesting
pictures, please read: <?/x-tad-smaller><?color><?param 0000,0000,EEEE><?x-tad-smaller></FONT></FONT><A
href="http://support.bigfix.com/bes/changes/bes_5_0_features.pdf"><FONT
face="Times New Roman"
size=3>http://support.bigfix.com/bes/changes/bes_5_0_features.pdf</FONT></A><?/x-tad-smaller><?/color><?x-tad-smaller><FONT
face="Times New Roman" size=3>.<SPAN class=321452300-08102004>
</SPAN><BR> <BR><?fontfamily><?param Arial><?x-tad-smaller>A preview
version of BES 5.0 will be released soon that you can use in non-production
environments to see the new features before the full release.<?/x-tad-smaller><?/fontfamily><BR> <BR><BR><BR><?fontfamily><?param Arial><?x-tad-smaller>More
information will come soon,<?/x-tad-smaller><?/fontfamily><BR><?fontfamily><?param Arial><?x-tad-smaller>BigFix
Product
Team</FONT><?/x-tad-smaller><?/fontfamily><BR></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>