Systems Deployment

Our organization (50K Desktops) is consolidating and reorganizing IT, and is wanting to develope a common Desktop appearance and deployment method. As we have 35 major sites, there are 35 appearances and deployment methods...<G>

The primary decision would be whether to deploy the OS+APPS+Latest patches as the image, with updates and patches being pushed to the Desktop, or, deploy ONLY the OS, with everything else coming from the network, usually via Admin Installation Points. In either method, until the HW is standardized (planning a huge buy), there will have to be products such as UIU (Universal Imaging Utility) to provide the variety of HW drivers, or, seperate images for each HW platform.

The supporters of the OS-only method plan on using Computer Associates (CA) Unicenter products to push all else out.

I just need to know, from all the experience out there, which method makes the most sense, is the easiest to do, and provides the lowest maintenance.

Thanks!