GPOVault 2.1 from DesktopStandard Corp. takes this year's Bronze Award in SearchWin2000.com's Group Policy Management category. It's an add-on to Microsoft's Group Policy Management Console and provides complete lifecycle management for Group Policy Objects. It also allows off-line editing capabilities through an isolated working environment that can be used to manage GPOs off the production network.

Although judges didn't think GPOVault 2.1 offered the value and innovation of our Gold and Silver winners, it excelled in the areas of performance, ease of use and integration. GPOVault 2.1 does not require installation on a domain controller. Ideally it should be installed on a server that has good connectivity to the domain controllers and moderate resources available to control the vault of GPOs. Administration of the GPOs residing in the vault is done within the GPMC.

The software controls both simple and complex Group Policy environments. It provides full access to archived GPOs while tracking every change made to every GPO in the network. It allows administrators to restore GPOs from the archive, roll back to an older GPO or roll forward to a newer GPO.

Pricing: GPOVault 2.1 is licensed per Active Directory domain at a cost of $1,400 per domain, which includes one year of product updates and customer support.

SearchWin2000.com editors