A useful additon to the e-smith software would be a wizard on the e-smith CD-ROM that sets up Windows clients to communicate with the server (a bit like the @Home installation program, but also like the ICS Client disk in Win2KPro). The wizard would install TCP-IP and connect to the e-smith server to make sure it exists, then configure Windows, Internet Explorer etc. accordingly.
The Compaq NeoServer has a CD that does this job - it would be something like that.