Judges awarded Bronze for SearchWin2000.com's Active Directory Products of the Year to Specops Deploy 3.0 by Special Operations Software. This Group Policy-based software deployment product's high marks come from how easy it makes deploying software to any users or computers in an administrator's Active Directory.

Some of the key features of Specops Deploy include real time-full feedback with actual error/warning codes/texts from client computers and the ability to deploy software over weak network links such as a VPN. The real-time feedback is for all deployment operations; it lets systems administrators see where deployments have failed and the exact error texts from the actual client machines.

The software supports both Windows Installer and legacy setup files. It has an admin interface that works directly from the Group Policy Management Console and includes a built-in Setup Assistant to make the installation process quick and easy.

Pricing: Pricing starts at $1,900 for 100 workstations or servers (including maintenance for 12 months).

SearchWin2000.com editors