KACE

Easy to log issues

Avantages:

I use this software as a user to submit tickets and bugs to support and IT and have no issues as a user. I'm able to send an email to the internal IT email address and it opens a ticket for me.

Inconvénients:

Sometimes I know IT has issues using this to push software within our org, but I don't know much about that

Excellent tool for mid-size organizations.

Commentaires: We have been able to create labels and queries to organize all of our devices into groups, buildings, rooms, etc. We've also been able to script a lot of mundane tasks that would normally have required a great deal of "sneaker-net" and thusly a lot of wasted time. We've also been able to get our imaging process down to a level where our Tier 1 personnel can perform it, and image entire groups of PC's without having to physically touch them.

Avantages:

I've been using KACE (SMA and SDA) for the past 6+ years. I've been able to build it up to handle patching, scripting, imaging, reporting, and labelling/querying to my particular use cases. It is easy to learn and easy to implement, and although not very graphical, it does mostly allow you to do whatever you need to do in order to manage your organization. I feel it is in the "sweet spot" of management tools, for organizations that are too large to manage manually, but small enough that they don't need the likes of SCCM/Big Fix/etc. Customer service and tech support have always been wonderful, there have been several occasions when support helped me through a problem, and even admitted that the problem was on their side, and their communication was always fantastic.

Inconvénients:

About the only role where I feel KACE is lacking is self-service software distribution. Getting the user to click on the tray icon is a bit clunky, and I'd rather see a browser link to more of a GUI page (like a web page) of software self-service installs that the end-user can perform. Because of this, we've moved towards Chocolatey for our software package management and distribution.

Bloated and confusing

Avantages:

The product is mature and fully featured. Has many bells and whistles. The marking/sales team will always tell you that it can do anything you throw at it. Patching is the biggest workload we throw at it, and it seems to work OK most of the time. Many of the other modules are indeed very useful and fully-functional. Keep reading for the gotchas...

Inconvénients:

There is no unity between the different modules, other than the color scheme of the UI. Each modules has its own complexities, and just because you learned how to use one doesn't mean you now know how to use them all. It takes a significant amount of work to configure the appliance to be useful and functional. Training the team to use it is a monumental task, since the trainer has to be learning as they teach.

The best tool for IT assets inventory and patch management

Commentaires: Amazing application for IT asset and patch management.

Avantages:

Wonderful report for each node and compliance, patch management, inventory, and software tracking.We can upgrade Dell physical server firmware too.

Inconvénients:

Compare to SCCM few options not available

You Get What You Pay For

Avantages:

Reporting is robust and informative. Inventory automatically includes warranty status for Dell products. It’s probably the cheapest option in this space.

Inconvénients:

Page load times will be very high (30+ seconds) unless it’s running on a server with an SSD. It's not possible to view the patching history for a specific computer, only the most recent patching attempt.