BigFix Reviews

Currently, we've got four big customers, and one is in mining. It's certainly for endpoint management, especially for patch compliance. That's normally our first use case. It's for Windows and Linux patch and patch compliance measurement. That's the biggest use case that we do. 

The main use for day-to-day operations is patching, and we are averaging 95 to 98% patch compliance, meaning we deployed almost 8,000. We put upgrades now in Africa, which is small. however, has 8,000 to 10,000 endpoints, and we have two people doing that, and it takes us about half a day a month.

The second use case is when we do compliance, and we replacing Microsoft DPOs, it makes it much easier to implement. On the compliance level, we always do level compliance due to the fact that BigFix has got the CIS, and we use the CIS standards for the checklist. 

Another company that we work with is in the energy sector. They are an energy company in Africa, and one of the things that we did was we helped them to migrate from Windows 7 to Windows 10 as one of the components of BigFix is Lifecycle OS Deployment. In that case, we helped them and they successfully migrated almost three and a half thousand Windows 7 and Windows 10 machines in three months. We used the BigFix OSD processor. 

Some of those countries, like Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Angola, didn't even have a network. We did the upgrade fully with memory sticks. We gave them USB thumb drives or memory sticks, and everything was on there, and they took that and actually went and the machines were upgraded that way.

The big drive at the end of the day is money-saving. You can accomplish a lot even if you have a very low-level resource and no access to other skilled resources. You give someone a thumb drive and he can plug it in, boot the machine, and 20 or 30 minutes later, the machine is fully completed from a pre-defined standard.

We used the solution to get control over licensing. We were able to avert a drop at the end of a three-year contract and in the process saved the client about $5 million in penalties.

The patch compliance is very good.

It's very easy to upgrade solutions, even in low-technology environments.

The stability is perfect.

The roll-out is super-easy.

The solution is unbelievably scalable.

We're not restricted on/off-network, and we don't have to be a member of a domain. You can be on a workgroup, laptop, Mac, et cetera.

Historically, the company used to belong to IBM, and there was competition between MaaS360 and BigFix components. They neglected the mobile portion, or the mobile device management portion of BigFix. It has been sold. IBM sold it two years ago to HCL of India. 

Therefore, that's one thing that's lacking - the mobile side. They don't have a proper mobile device management capability. They're working on it, however, that's the one thing that needs improvement so that you can have full unified endpoint management.

The ability to handle removable media encryption on the removable media label, et cetera, is lacking due to the fact that you cannot really control your USB device. Of course, recently, we had a use case where we had to lock down the USB devices, but there were, for instance, certain machines that were on a very specific model of USB drives that had a license key. This customer was using licensed software, and the license was on the USB stick. Now, the USB stick must be in the machine the whole time in order to use the application.

The solution needs to bring back the granular control of the USB devices that they offered a year or four years ago. That way, you can say "these devices are allowed" or "these devices are not allowed". That's the one major thing, in my opinion, that they could rethink, USB device control for removable media.

They're doing a lot of work on remote control. They are working on making it very, very simple. However, ti's not quite there yet.

I've been using the solution for five years at this point.

The stability on this solution is rock solid. I will put money up against it. BigFix is absolutely unbelievably stable. We never had any data corruption of any kind while using it.

You can do 250,000 endpoints with a machine that's got 32 bits of RAM and about 300 GB of disc space. That's the one thing about BigFix that makes it unique. The way you can easily scale is great. That's a biggie. Scalability is absolutely amazing.

I'm a little bit out of that department now, however, in Africa, in which that market is small, we've got between 20 or 30 customers. The big ones we have about 10,000 endpoints that we manage for them, and we are three people. There is only one team lead and two junior techs and we manage all the endpoints for them. Some of those endpoints are on the internet. Even if you're not on a corporate network, we can still monitor your environment on the same site. We can even give instructions in case of emergency to say, "Download this patch," or "Apply this patch," or "Change this compliance status," et cetera, with a GPO Microsoft directory.

The technical support, when the solution moved from IBM to HCL, improved dramatically. The technical documentation, the quality of the upgrades, et cetera, is really, really fantastic. I'm very glad IBM sold the product off to HCL as the quality of the product and everything surrounding it, including technical support, has improved dramatically. It's very good. We're quite satisfied.

The initial setup is not complex at all. It's very straightforward.

BigFix does license per server and per workstation. The cost depends on how many servers or work stations you are dealing with, and which tier of service you use.

BigFix consists of four modules. You get what we call the Platform Edition, which you get for free. The patch service is maybe $0.50 per workstation per month. Then there's the basic server cost, which is about $1.50 per server per month. You also get into Lifecycle which does power management, OSD remote control, and those types of things, and that might be about 10 times the price - which works out to about $13 per server and, maybe $5 per workstation per month.

It's all pretty customizable and you can just get the bare minimum or trade-up for a bit more.

We've looked at Microsoft SCCM, among others. At the end of the day, we looked for something fit for a really small company. We looked for something that can be simple, easy to deploy, and that was one of the reasons we chose BigFix. 

The main drive around BigFix was the fact that you don't need a lot of people to run it. That was one of the reasons we chose BigFix because it was small, or you can easily implement it on a very big scale, and one person can actually manage a lot of customers remotely. That was the reason we picked it. It was the only one that actually met those criteria at that point in time. 

I'm not using the latest version of the solution. I'm actually using the version before the latest.

I would advise that, before you buy the solution, you do a POC. You can do a 48-hour challenge where, if you start at 9 AM, you will be able to give patch compliance by 12 noon (for 1,000 endpoints). You've got three hours to install the product, get it up and running, deploy the agents, et cetera. Basically, take some time to test drive the product.

Overall, I'd rate the solution ten out of ten. I think it's a phenomenal product.

We use the HCL BigFix solution to provide patch-, software- and OS-image distribution services for our customers. In addition endpoint solution avcurat software, ILMT and hardware inventory. Since BigFix is base on the principle of pull, not push the administrators can afford precise information in real time about the status of distribution of patches and software.

The BigFix console deliver an excellent overview of all endpoints, and tasks and fixlets to be done. You do not need to click through an endless numbers of wysiwigs, one by one - With BigFix you can create dynamics group with thousands of endoints, selected by an excact numbers of criteria. When you need to do many tasks and distribute many patches at once, BigFix gives you the opurutnity to create baselinesr where you ochestras tasks to be fone to be performed in a specific order.

BigFix is base on the principle if something is relevant or not. The systems works more or less like an complex database the sends small messeges to endpoint and ask them to report back to the server. If a given condition is true, them it's relevant and server will ask the client to something It's simple as that. Therefore, BigFix is extrempower solution when it supports more than 90 diffferent OS. The system can manage whatever you you want!

"The heart of the Fixlet technology is the Relevance language that allows authors to interrogate the hardware and software properties of your managed clients using Inspectors. With the Relevance language, you can write expressions describing virtually any aspect of the client environment. Some Fixlets are simply designed to return Relevance information to the servers, but most of them suggest actions that can patch or update the client computer. The actions, in turn, also take advantage of Relevance expressions. Fixlet messages and Relevance expressions by themselves can only notify the user or the administrator. Actions, on the other hand, are specifically designed to modify the client, so there is a clear dividing line between a Relevance expression and its associated action - typically a human is required to deploy the action."

The support of other 3rd party ssytems could be better. ServiceNow is supported by BigFix - But there is a lot of other systems that BigFix could support and vice versa and make it even more powerful. With all the inventory information avout the osftware and hardware in the network of the organization - The BigFix database could be a very valuable source for other maniufactors and porviders of software and hardware.

I have been working with Bigfix for almost ten years where I use the it distribute patches and software for my customers. After a while, the Windows 7 and later Windows 10 clienent become very stable. From what I have learn, IBM and HCL who owned thd product, do an wxtra quality chack of the patches before the release them. Sometimes the team behind Bigfix discover need of patches that become recommended by Microsoft many years later.

The stability is great! We have not experienced any issues. 

The scalability is excellent!. The BigFix solution is organized like a pyramid with the main master server at top. From there BigFix use relays to distribute Fixlets and Tasks to the clients. You can organize your hierarchy to fit your organization. The number of endpoints should not pass 5000 clients pr. relay before you set up a new relay. The funnie matter of fact is that a relay can use workstation with a lot of disk space - It does need to be a Windows-server, it can also be a Linux server or a workstation. From my point of view, this is really remarkable, because how many endpoint management systems can handle everything from a small office with 10 computers to multitenant conglormerat with 300 000 endpoints with only one, yes 1 server? Waht you need at your backroom is a SQL-server that is able to handle all the data...

Technical support is above average, and in fact, I would say that they have superb support.

Like many other small IT-companies, I patch the clients manually or by Windows Update. When you get a lot of clients to be patched, it's impossible to do it manually. You need a tool to do the job and you need documentation what you have done and when. If patch goes wrong, you must be able to identify that one very wuick and removed before it do to much damage. With BigFix, you get control and you know excactly the status of patches. If you use tools like Microsoft InTune to do the patch job, it's like sending Voyager 2 to Pluto - It felles like the patch is lost in space and you never know if it will ever send information back home what happends. With BigFix, more than 90% of you patches will dsitrbuted at first try and report back home that they found a safe harbour.

The documentation is good. Follow the recommended configuration by HCL and you will be up and running very soon. It's pretty easy to set up with some knowledge. Be aware that DNS-isssues can be a challenge if the server is not visible at Internet by a public IP during the initial setup. The configuration at firewall can a challenge especially to get SQL-server vissible for the BigFix-server.

We mananged to do it by our self. 

Very high. In a short time, you will get your expenses paid back very shortly.

The licens price of the HCL BigFix is very fair. The challenge is the license of the MS SQL server. If you can handle DB2 - The DB2 database server that is included with BigFix is free to use. Because the MS SQL -server express cannot be used unless demo purposes, I recommend and SPLA license for the MS SQL server wich gives you the oppuritiny to connect an unlimited numbers of clients to the BigFix server. 

Other systems like Microsoft SCCM has been considered. The systems is too complex and require too many resources compared with BigFix. The BigFix server with the SQL server included could be running and on a singel portable workstation and mange the patch-management of ogf thousands of endpoint. How many SCCM do you need to do that? With Bigfix you can manage a small office with 10 clients as well as enterprise evirement with 250 000 endpoint with only one BigFix-server. 

BigFix is value for money - You get a simple, robust, dynamic and very powerful solution for a very reasonable price. Don't for get the hidden cost compared to other tool - How many ports do you need to configure by very expensive network assistant when running SCCM? With BigFix it's enough to open only one port. With BigFix you have a multitenant solution that make is possible for you as an service provider to use BigFix to manage many customers at the same time with same server, without setting up trust between different networks. Because BigFix has it's own secure comminication between the server and the clients.

We use BigFix for deploying applications for updating, setting up configurations, making modifications, or customizing Windows. For example, what are the applications that need to run, and what configure is needed.

The most valuable point is when you deploy an application, you have to make sure that the application has been deployed to all computers and that is working perfectly. This solution works well at deployments. 

Other solutions can have failures, such as ManageEngine, and you have to deploy the application again. In BigFix, once the computer has communicated with the BigFix server, the agent workstation, you can be sure that the application will be deployed and delivered properly.

Sometimes the workstations communicate back to the BigFix server two or three days in a week or something similar. Sometimes there can be a delay reporting back to the server for a variety of reasons, such as users turning their computer off when they go home. When the user comes back and turns the computer back on BigFix needs to synchronize and sometimes it can take some time, approximately one week. The communication between the agent and the server should be faster, there is room for improvement in this area.

I have been using BigFix for approximately two years.

BigFix is reliable and stable, it is perfect.

Performance-wise is the best. When you have to do deployments you are sure that all the workstations will receive it, even though that there is sometimes a delay in reporting back to the server. The only time the deployment would not work is if the computer is decommissioned or not available.

BigFix is simple to scale, we are using the solution regularly. We use it every other week whenever we have meetings, we rely on it.

We have approximately 10 technicians and 3,000 users who receive a patch or use the solution in some way.

We have not had any big issues that would need the support. However, we did have some minor issues and the support was good and responsive.

I have used ManageEngine previously.

In my usage, I have found BigFix is more professional than ManageEngine. The reason that I'm saying this is when you deploy an application, you are sure and you are guaranteed that all workstations will receive it. However, for the ManageEngine, for some reason, you will find it may fail for 13 workstations. You might have to redeploy again, otherwise, you have to do it manually.

One of the positives of ManageEngine is it can be easy for users to deploy an application compared to BigFix.

The deployment process of BigFix was straightforward. You need to have a small number of programming skills or scripting skills to complete it. If you have skills, it is very easy to deploy. For somebody who's experienced, and has knowledge of some programming or scripting skills, it's very easy.

There were approximately three people, the vendors, and our technical teams that did the implementation.

BigFix requires specific maintenance, whenever there is a new release we manage it.

You are charged per server and per workstation when using BigFix. ManageEngine is a lot cheaper than BigFix. There are some additional costs, such as support.

I recommend BigFix as long as they have the budget. If they don't have that much money, they can use ManageEngine, which is satisfying for small and medium companies. For example, companies that have 250 computers. I have used ManageEngine at companies that had multiple locations. You can use some ManageEngine on one central location and then deploy it to all your branch offices.

I rate BigFix a nine out of ten.

We use the latest version.

Upon our evaluation of other products we found that most solutions provide the same technological functions and features. But, BigFix has two advantages over these. The first is that its price is competitive. The second is that we found the implementation partner to be very supportive in terms of explaining and training the in-house resources and deploying the solution. 

The architecture is also lightweight.

The reporting and dashboard parts have room for improvement. When it comes to the dashboard it should include certain customized reports. The requirements may vary from one automation to another and it would be nice to see the reports in their own style. As such, there should be more reports included and a greater ability to customize them. 

I cannot say I am aware of all the functions of BigFix. I believe it has antivirus capabilities and others of which I am not knowledgeable. For the moment, we use the antivirus capabilities of Trend Micro although, going forward, I would like to evaluate those of BigFix. Should these turn out to be lightweight and more effective than those of Trend Micro then I would definitely consider replacing them so that I may have all the functions contained within a single console. 

We have been using BigFix for the past two years.

The solution is stable. 

Scalability is another factor which must be taken into account at the design stage, keeping in mind the endpoints and how one wishes for them to grow. The endpoints will govern how one provisions the infrastructure. Since the license is only subscription-based, if a person provisions his infrastructure correctly, he may scale up easily. 

The initial setup was easy. 

Yet, there are many other criteria which must be taken into account because there is a need for the distributed network. As such, it is important to understand the bandwidth that it will consume when it comes to pushing the latest updates. This means that the solution must be designed in such a way that the implementation would not choke the bandwidth or consume much of it or other activities, as the appliances it contains would also be consuming the same bandwidth. 

We are not talking about putting a separate network or network connectivity for pushing the patches. We usually use the same connectivity. We see that the designing stage is of critical importance and, if done correctly, the implementation will follow more easily. 

We utilized an implementation partner who we found to be supportive and explanatory when it came to training the in-house resources and to deploying the solution. 

The license is subscription-based. 

I would recommend the solution to others. This said, it is important to understand one's architecture and to have a knowledge of how one's endpoints are scattered and what the deployment and network architecture will look like. Once this is clarified, the solution would provide a good option. The same can be said for any product. The design of the implementation of the solution is of especial importance. 

We are using BigFix 10. We have been using this solution for app management and even for BP management. We use it for continuous improvement in terms of security and enhancements. We use it for AWS, Azure, Google, and other applications. 

It supports most of the applications, software, and OS. We don't need to go around and look for many tools. Most of the applications are completely supported, and it is much better than Qualys and Tenable. It also works pretty fast.

It is pretty secure, and it gives extensive vulnerability features as compared to other applications. It supports multiple languages, and the security checks are pretty high as compared to other tools in the market. 

It is a one-stop tool that allows you to do everything. It supports reporting, vulnerability management, patch management, and configuration. All things can be done in one tool.

It is a very user-friendly solution with a very good interface.

The reporting structure could be a little more simplistic. Currently, it throws too many vulnerabilities. Some of them are not needed because they are only informational and limitations, and they are not of much help. It doesn't need to show us these things.

Its pricing should be improved. It is too costly.

Its stability is very good. It is a standard tool, and it is also one of the leading tools in the market.

It supports most of the applications. It is pretty good in terms of scalability.

In our organization, we don't have more than 10 users. We use this tool on client-specific applications, and it is purchased by the client, and that's why we don't have many users in our organization.

We have plans to increase its usage, but it depends on the budget. If most of the application owners agree to the budget, we can probably use it extensively.

We get pretty good support on this. We can call them, and we also can connect with them through chat centers.

It was straightforward, but it took some time for us to settle down and get started. There were a lot of things to learn online. The deployment took about two to three months.

It is too costly. It is one of the best tools, but because of pricing, not all clients support it. 

Its licensing is on a yearly basis.

It was directly purchased by the client, and that's why we didn't look for or evaluate a different product. It was also better than most of the tools.

I would highly recommend this solution and advise everybody to use it in their organization.

I would rate BigFix a nine out of 10. I am super happy with it. It works well and surpasses what you expect.

We are an MSP, and we use this solution for our customers as well as for our company. 

I use BigFix for everything. I use it for patch management, software distribution, OS deployment, server automation, and inventory and asset management.

BigFix is a great product. The flexibility of putting together your own relevance and retrieving custom data from any one of your agents is a valuable feature. It is one of my favorite features because if a boss asks me, "How many of these devices do we have?", I can put together a report in two seconds.

The only thing that I don't like about BigFix is that it does not support other devices such as printer firmware, router firmware, and things like that. I will be happy if I can control everything and get everything else in there, even if it is just a line item.

They can do some enhancements to the Web UI. I am trying to get customers to be able to manage their environment by using Web UI, and it would be good if we can delete endpoints by using Web UI. We should also be able to generate Excel content or data tables from the Web UI without having to go to the console. It is small stuff, and it drives me crazy that I have to go to another console to do these things.

I have been using this solution for years.

It is a pretty stable product. There are problems only if you mess up during the installation. If you do it right, then everything is fine.

It is scalable. It is able to handle up to 250,000 devices. So, you should be fine with anything under that. 

I work with all kinds of customers. I have small customers with 30 endpoints, and I also have a couple of big customers with 30,000 or 40,000 endpoints.

It has been great since it became HCL.

I know how to use them all. I have used Asterisk and other solutions, but I got used to BigFix. BigFix is pretty straightforward.

Its initial setup is straightforward.

I would advise taking some of the training so that you can use the product to the fullest potential. It is a huge and flexible product, and you can take advantage of a lot of stuff if you know how to do it. If you don't know, you're never going to take advantage of it.

I would rate BigFix a ten out of ten.

We are using BigFix for Windows patching, querying the configuration management, and reports.

The most valuable feature of BigFix is the reporting tool and patching Windows.

BigFix should improve its compatibility with other platforms, such as Linux.

I have been using BigFix for approximately two years.

I have experienced good stability while using BigFix in Windows. However, it is not good with Linux.

BigFix has been scalable.

We have approximately 30 users who use the solution.

If the support is available for Linux, we would like to increase our usage.

Sometimes we need to have support, and there is a toll-free number we can use to connect to their help team. We rarely face any issues.

The installation is straightforward.

Our internal software team does the implementation and support of the solution.

We have a subscription-based contract with BigFix.

I would recommend this solution to others. It is a very good tool for Windows and for reporting.

I rate BigFix an eight out of ten.

We are using BigFix for software distribution, managing the network for our clients, and for updates.

The interface is easy to use, and it's not complicated to create tasks.

It offers all of the features that we require.

It's not an easy question as it provides all of the things we need. It meets our requirements.

We are resellers. We provide solutions to our clients.

I have been using BigFix for one year, but the company has been using it for approximately seven years.

It's a stable solution. We have not had any issues.

We have not had any support cases with technical support.

In my previous profession, we used SCCM from Microsoft, and I am familiar with NetApp Storage and Windows.

The price is reasonable, but our customers find it expensive.

It's a good solution. We have sold many solutions for clients. We don't have any project running at this time but expect that to change in the coming months.

I would rate BigFix a ten out of ten.