PC, workstation utilities flood federal market

Software vendors are bringing to the federal market a range of tools that run the gamut from distributing software electronically to uninstal-ling applications.

Symantec Corp. Cupertino Calif. this week will ship its first uninstall product Norton Uninstall Deluxe and plans to target federal accounts. Seagate Software Inc. Scotts Valley Calif. today will announce its WinINSTALL v6.0 software distribution tool which the company will sell through federal resellers and integrators. Raxco Software Inc. Gaithersburg Md. also is lining up resellers for its Microsoft Corp. Windows NT defragmentation product unveiled last month.

Symantec's Un-install Deluxe removes unwanted programs and files from Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0 machines. Uninstall Deluxe "raises the bar" for uninstall products in that it goes beyond the traditional remove move copy and store functions of such products said Sarah Hicks Symantec's senior product manager for Uninstall Deluxe.

Uninstall Deluxe for example offers a program installation feature called InstallGuard. This feature allows a user who has second thoughts about a program he has just installed to remove the program and restore the PC to the same condition it was before adding the new program. "It's a one-step undo that rolls the system back " Hicks said. Files overwritten in the course of installing a program can be restored because InstallGuard saves the originals in a temporary file. This feature works from the last program a user installs.

Other features of Uninstall Deluxe include AutoClean which gives users the option to automatically remove junk files and Internet cache files whenever they boot their PC.

The product is expected to hit the General Services Administration schedule this week according to a Symantec spokesman. Symantec's GSA resellers are ASAP Software Express Inc. Corporate Software Inc. GTI Government Technology Services Inc. Softmart Inc. Software Spectrum Inc. and Software House International. The estimated retail price is $39.95.

Seagate's WinINSTALL v6.0 is an upgrade to an earlier electronic software distribution product. It provides intranet capabilities and integration with enterprise systems management tools. WinINSTALL v6.0 can be purchased as a stand-alone product or as part of Seagate's Desktop Management Suite which includes hardware/software inventory management and software metering among other functions.

The product includes Microsoft Corp. ActiveX and Netscape Communications Corp. plug-ins that allow users to obtain software packages via an intranet page established for that purpose. Seagate includes a sample page with the product that can be used as a template said Kristen Marks Seagate's WinINSTALL product manager.

WinINSTALL v6.0 integrates with Computer Associates International Inc.'s TNG and Tivoli Systems Inc.'s TME 10 systems management products among other products to provide enterprisewide software distribution.

WinINSTALL v6.0 will be added to the Air Force's Global Combat Support System (formerly BLSM) a contract held by Lockheed Martin Corp.

Earlier versions of WinINSTALL have established a "great presence" in the federal market said Jack Palmer Seagate's vice president of sales. Federal customers include the Air Force the Army the Navy the Treasury Department the Department of Housing and Urban Development the Department of Veterans Affairs the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

A 50-user license has a list price of $795 and a 100-user license is priced at $1 395. Federal pricing will be 15 to 25 percent less depending on volume.

Raxco meanwhile has introduced its first disk defragmentation product for Windows NT having developed similar products for the Digital Equipment Corp. VMS environment. The company's PerfectDisk NT features Raxco's patented Optimization technology which tracks file usage patterns. If a file is not accessed in a user-definable time span the file is migrated to the outer periphery of the disk. Frequently used files however are moved closer to the master file table. The Optimization technique reduces the average head seek time of a hard disk drive said Robert Nolan president and chief executive officer of Raxco.

Nolan said he plans to market the product to federal customers through such established contract vehicles as the GSA schedule. The firm is discussing marketing relationships with companies such as BTG Inc. and Sciences Applications International Corp. Raxco officials said.

The workstation version of PerfectDisk NT is priced at $49 while the server version is priced at $199. Those introductory prices are available through Dec. 31.