Three Year Workstation Lifecycle was coming due, and we needed a technology to manage the deployment of the Windows 7 Corporate Image to a variety of desktops, workstations and laptops.
As a new Systems Admin for a Municipal Department I was tasked with replacing Ghost for our Image Deployment.
Since there technically was no "budget" for this software replacement, cost was a big deciding factor. Even with deep discounts from Dell, KACE was just way too expensive, I received a demo but decided not to implement a test lab. Mirage was intriguing, also expensive, but the technology of only sending de-duplicated changes from a Master Image out to workstations for all security updates, software layers, etc, really had me interested. Mirage was a bit too complicated and had some hardware/network issues as well. The SmartDeploy option came very very late to the game after reading a thread in the Spiceworks forum. It wasn't without some minor challenges as well, but the support received from Spencer Dunford was second to none, along with Philip Park and the rest of the SmartDeploy Support team.
In the end we now have a solution that basically any of our admins can quickly learn and re-image machines within minutes, SmartDeploy support is always fast and helpful, any new computers we buy can easily be added (we even shipped SmartDeploy Support our new Panasonic FZG1 tablets that they created a Driver Pack for), we also can re-purpose our old workstations and laptops, and I'm confident the company will keep innovating and bringing new features and technologies in the years going forward.
After dreading the many layers involved in re-doing the corporate image for our organization, we now have one less piece to worry about.