Software Configuration Management in Mixed RiskEnvironments

Software Configuration Mangement is becoming more important so that organizations can save time by preventing downtime by standardizing the configurations of the computers for end users. The ANP model was used in this study to simulate a variety of mission critical computers mixed in with non mission critical computers to determine the best conditions for deploying software configurations based on the maximum amount of risk, availability of IT staff for support should something go wrong, and the potential downtime that may result. In the future it is hoped that this decision model will be implemented as a feature in future software so that users can input their qualitative weights and criteria in order to determine whether it is safe to deploy software configurations.