What do you want to see from OS Deployment software?

I’ve been going over some research in the server management space. A lot of research firms lump visionapp Server Management (vSM) with products that just do OS deployment, such as Ghost and Acronis. But some of the research has surprised me.

For instance, the research experts say that there’s no market for OS deployment tools for companies with under 500 managed nodes (servers + workstations). Yet in a recent survey, over half of the companies with under 250 workstations were using more than one OS deployment tool in their company!

I must confess that I don’t get the reason for this. Are OS deployment tools “purpose-built” — in other words, are some software titles better for certain deployments, and other software titles better for other deployments? I can leap to all sorts of conclusions over what this means — that no software out there is adequate for any one customer’s OS deployment needs, or that this software is based on specific user preferences, or that this software is so inexpensive that customers can afford to have more than one solution — but it’s all conjecture. And the research firms don’t have the answers.

So, if you use more than one OS deployment tool — why?