[OT] Network deployment

Dear list,

this is probably offtopic. But does anyone know how to implement network-wide deployment of software? What I would basically like to achieve is what Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition provides:
It installs some files on the target machine, write some registry entries, installs and starts a service

Are there tools/ frameworks available for doing such things?

regs,

Stephan

you could write a (silent) NSIS script that is scheduled to run, say, ever hour, and when it does run, it uses nsisdl to connect to a web server and download and install whatever.

by the way, what's with the "Dear List"?