What do you use for 3rd party patch management? I need to keep things like Adobe Reader, Flash Player and Java Runtime updated on a regular basis. I use WSUS for Windows updates and thought about creating an MSI file for each update then pushing it out with Group Policy, but this is a lot of hard work.

Try GFI LANguard

You should also take a look at http://www.shavlik.com and http://www.kaseya.co.uk/features/patch-management.aspx

If you're already using WSUS you may want to have a look at EminentWare - http://www.eminentware.com/index.html - as this extends WSUS or SCCM to include 3rd party patch management. They provide pre-created & tested “WSUS Ready” or “SCCM Ready” patches for applications including Adobe Reader, Mozilla Firefox, Sun Java, and Apple QuickTime.

Thanks to you all for the tips and links. I'll check them out and see which works best.

For many administrators, for third to manage patches and updates are no longer an option but a requirement. In a large organization (one thousand or more seats), the management of patches for each machine, whether a desktop or server that is not something you can do it by hand - not even at the neighbourhood level.