First, I have to say that I have no experience with servers or infrastructure whatsoever. Here's the situation, basically I have a huge number of client machines that I want to quickly deploy software to. These clients run Windows and are connected to a main server (running Windows Server, but we can change to other OS if need be).
I would like to know if there's a way to use a software on the server that can remotely and silently install applications (Adobe Reader, Flash Player, Microsoft Office, Skype, etc) on the clients. Beyond that I would also need to send the install commands to the server via some internet protocol.
Let's say, via HTTP I send the name of the client (PC0001), the software to be installed ("skype") and some authentication information to the software, these instructions trigger the process of silently installing Skype on that client machine.
There are tools that can be used to accomplish this? What are they?