Intuit's Zephyr Unmasked
BetaNews has gotten the dish on "Zephyr," the next iteration of Intuit's Track-It! software. Track-It! functions as a help desk and asset management solution for small and medium sized businesses and is intended to automate many time-consuming tasks required to keep IT infrastructure consistent. Track-It! was obtained by Intuit following its acquisition of Blue Ocean Software.
Track-It! takes inventories, tracks assets, monitors incidents, and manages software delivery as well as providing knowledge base tools. Zephyr marks the second Intuit-branded release of Track-It and is currently undergoing beta testing until it is released to manufacturing in June.
Some of the features that will find their way into Zephyr streamline deployment, reduce bandwidth consumption, improve performance, shore up data integrity and enhance the software's reporting capabilities.
According to testers, Track-It! remote installation and set up through Workstation Manager deployment has been simplified and re-designed to reduce network traffic and improve connectivity. The Track-It Technician Client has also been tuned to cut back in bandwidth usage and, more importantly, reduce collisions with real-time antivirus scanners.
In addition, the Technician Client now resides locally on a technician's machine so that the technician can manage and update automatically. Time zone information is also stamped in to keep time references for both the technician and end-user.
Track-It's Server and Monitor installation has been redesigned to automate the merge of audit data and provide status. Data storage and integrity, and system performance is enhanced in the Single and Standard editions by Track-It!'s added support for Microsoft SQL Database Engine (MSDE). Intuit claims that the addition of MSDE also improves a user's web browser experience.
Since Zephyr uses pre-defined Crystal Reports, decision makers will notice better reporting of audit, help desk and inventory metrics. Track-It's native graphing module has been replaced due to Crystal Report's built-in graphing abilities.
Intuit did not return requests for comment by press time. No pricing details are available at present.