Big Bang's Disk Imaging APP Is Platform-Neutral

While imaging proves its mettle when it comes to moving data across similar hardware platforms, solution providers are finding a critical weakness with the technology, namely the lack of platform-independence. Software packages have become increasingly hardware-dependent, especially operating systems, and even a minor change to the hardware environment can cause major compatibility problems. That simple fact limits imaging's potential as a deployment, migration and backup tool for those who need the technology most: the overworked IT staff typically found in enterprise companies.

Enter Big Bang, a Milwaukee-based distributor, which has created version 2 of its complementary disk imaging software, Universal Imaging Utility. UIU works with any imaging utility to transfer images from one machine to the next regardless of platform or architecture. The software cleans the machine of all hardware references and prepares it for cloning. UIU is the ideal utility for new system rollouts or operating-system upgrades. It also eliminates the problems associated with multiplatform imaging, such as blue screens and IDE controllers that do not work.

UIU is not a stand-alone utility and cannot be used as such. It must be used with a major cloning software utility such as those from Altiris, PowerQuest, Symantec or Novell.

UIU was developed so IT departments could create a single master image on a machine and then quickly and easily can deploy it onto any platform in their IT environment. The hardware-independent image they then create can be deployed into any hardware platform without having to re-image multiple machines.

IT staffs that have multiple images to work with can now scale those down to one or even two images.

Some of the advancements in version 2 are with the driver database, which now contains more than 25,000 hardware components. Down the road, the company plans to streamline that amount to have selective driver databases for hardware-specific companies.

Sysprep, a free image utility offered by Microsoft, is currently required for UIU. The vendor is working on a Sysprep-type utility that will not require Microsoft's support, which it hopes will be in the next release of UIU.

The sweet spot of the market—and where resellers can make some money—is usually 250 seats or more. The company claims it has more than 100,000 seats deployed. Some UIU users include the U.S. Army, Canon Business Solutions, Lehigh University and the University of Tennessee. Pricing starts at $19 per seat for 10 to 99 users and scales down to $8.60 per seat for 5,000 users. The price also includes 12 months of program updates, driver updates and bug fixes.

Big Bang was spun off from the developers of Ghost in 1997. Originally, the company planned to set up a tech support and sales team for the newly launched imaging software product. When Ghost was acquired by Symantec in 1998, Big Bang was used for continued tech support and all Internet-based leads. Big Bang also developed training programs for Ghost, which Symantec later sold to its user base as training materials.

New Zealand-based Binary Research International (BRI), Big Bang's parent company and the major distributor of UIU, is always on the lookout for software developers that want to go to market but have no distribution channel. It likes to call itself a talent scout—it finds a new product, creates a partner relationship, sets up a shared revenue stream and then negotiates some equity so that when the software sells it gets a cut of the proceeds.