BigFix Reviews

The most valuable features of the BigFix solution are integration with a single agent and that the customer can deploy the Inventory module, the Lifecycle Management module, or the newly announced BigFix Detect Security module. That's really valuable because it allows for a very thin infrastructure on the end point, that the customer can exploit for multiple purposes.

It represents to a customer a very strong and quick ROI, so the investment and value becomes very positive early on. There is a higher level of security and awareness, along with a very high level of control at the end points.

The one feature that I would have like to see included (I know it is coming in the next release), is the block function of the newly announced BigFix Detect module.

In my opinion, the products are on the right track and we've had great success with them.

Stability has not been an issue at all.

There have been no scalability issues.

The most important factor while choosing a vendor is how much profit we can make after selling the solution. Secondly, how successful could I make the solution in the marketplace. The third factor would be the level of support from the provider.

Just do it!

I believe that the agent on the endpoint is very powerful. It can do a lot. It can patch, it can get information on the asset, and it's just a very powerful tool.

It helps maintain our environment, so all of our systems are patched and up to date. It also helps provide security settings to the endpoints as well. We can also push out applications and different settings.

They're actually adding some of the features that I wanted, such as detecting, which allows us to fix things remotely. If there's a security issue, we could actually stop the security issue in its tracks. I think they need to polish up a little bit, and it seems like IBM is now finally starting to invest money into the solution. I think that's going to help its brand name.

The product is very scalable, but it can also be very complex. If you don't set things up right then you could have problems. You just need to know what you're doing.

Technical support has sometimes been very good, and sometimes it's been not so good. It just depends. I would say that in tier one sometimes they know, sometimes they don't, but then once you go up to tier two or tier three they're definitely experts in their field.

Previously we were using the Microsoft solution, Windows Software Update Services. That's a very all or none solution which is not as granular. Regarding BigFix, I like that I can push out updates to systems within their patch window and make sure that they're complete and done within that patch window.

The setup could be simple or it could be complex. It depends on your environment.

I like the overall usage of it. It's easy to use, gives you great visibility into your envionment, customization of your reports, and the community of users that you can pull experience and knowledge from. So that's one of the main advantages for using BigFix.

It has definitely improved our patch process, being able to create compliance reports and hand those to management, executives and so on, and making the overall procedure of managing assets, managing end points, patching endpoints, etc. It has just made everything pretty easy.

It's not perfect, but it's close. There are some things here or there, for instance if you get down to the small details, such as if you could deploy and action it a different way, or you selected multiple endpoints and then from there, selected a right-click and deployed something from it, instead of the normal way etc.

If you could select one particular endpoint, look in the applicable fixlets, and then deploy an action from there, it would be helpful.

Of course there are many ways to achieve these aims, and you can't satisfy every possible little change here or there for everybody, these are just things that we've talked about or thrown out there in our environment.

I have been using the solution for almost two years already.

We haven't encountered any issues with stability.

We haven't encountered any issues with scalability.

I've used technical support quite often at times, when either having a small issue, or just trying to set something up new and different, and I've always had great experiences with support. They always either call me back, or email me back, or set up a WebEx to work through an issue. So I've had great experiences with support.

I haven't used a previous solution as such. I worked at a previous company, moved to the current company I am employed at now, and saw the process and how different it was.

Coming from a company that utilized BigFix, I knew that there was a better way here, and I pushed hard to get BigFix implemented. They went on my recommendation, spent the money, and we have it in place. It's been in place for almost two years now.

Regarding installation, I needed help from either support or our actual business partner or vendor. As I was just an operator previously, I never had to set it up from scratch. Actually it was pretty easy. Of course I had help, I had support, but it was nothing that was too difficult to do. Everything went seamlessly, went smoothly, and like I say we have been thoroughly enjoying it for the time we've had it.

Just do it.

Patch management: We've gone from hideous to amazing.

The most valuable feature is the extensibility of the tool. We're able to implement solutions through available APIs and custom solutions. We're able to provide services quickly. We're able to provide services completely.

A lot of my suggestions have already been submitted through RFEs; some of them involve inspector enhancements in the end point. We've got enhancement requests on the BigFix Inventory side. I know that it's not quite as mature a product as BigFix is.

I think the current tool is fairly robust. We have ways of breaking it, though.

We're pushing the limits of the tool. We've got over 250,000 devices in our environment; probably one of the larger customers. There are a few that are larger. But we're also doing a lot with the tool that I think other customers aren't. We're doing software distribution as well as patch management. We're also doing inventory and software usage analysis. I don't know of too many other customers that are doing that.

Technical support depends on who you get. I deal with some amazing support folks, and then I've dealt with some less-than-amazing support folks.

Our previous tool was the predecessor to BigFix, Tivoli Configuration Manager. We were entitled to migrate from TCM to BigFix, so it was kind of a no-brainer.

I was involved in the initial setup. It was very straightforward. The implementation was pretty easy.

BigFix was on our short list before they were IBM. We decided against them because they were a small company, even though their solution was better than some of their competitors. Management knew it was too much of a risk to go with BigFix. When they finally became IBM, again, it was a no-brainer because they were on the top of our list of vendors satisfying the feature requirements and now they had the backing of IBM, so it made sense.

We looked at Alteryx. We looked at Microsoft SCCM. SCCM was a big competitor.

I don’t have that many criteria when selecting a vendor.

The advice that I would give depends on the problem that you are trying to solve. I spoke with a number of people at an IBM conference (users looking for a high-end endpoint security software who were potentially going to install BigFix), and they had nothing but good things to say about the tool and the people supporting it.

It's a well-developed tool, supported by people who are passionate about it.

It gives us one tool that allows us to patch our systems, so we don't have multiple tools to patch our systems. We have one tool that allows us to patch multiple platforms, as well as inventory and provide insights on all of those different platforms. Also, we're currently using it for automation, so it's helping us innovate in all of those platforms, for us to look for new things and also address problems in real time. We're using it more as a platform more than we are as a tool.

I think the most valuable feature is its flexibility and the fact that there's one agent that allows you to do a lot of different things. We use it for compliance, primarily patching. Also, it becomes our master source collector for most of our information. We take that information and feed dashboards. It also helps us make decisions, so some of that has to do with compliance, as what our targets are; what we need to address, such as vulnerability leaks and that type of thing.

We also use it for inventory, like our source data. It feeds a lot of our dashboards. We actually take data from all over our company from other source systems and combine that with our BigFix data. It gives us insights on different areas that we need to target and challenges that we have that we wouldn't normally see just with one tool. We basically use it as our master source and then, from that, it helps us provide a source of truth.

I would like to see more multithreading, which I understand comes, clustering and we may end up doing some container-related work with Bluemix and lead some of that effort to allow us to scale on demand. Because there are times when you have a zero day and with our size and scale – we have a very large relay environment – it'd be nice to be able to scale on demand but as an enterprise, see it as one relay instead of several hundred. We'd like to be able to see everything be more integrated in the universe of BigFix with other tools. It seems like that's the direction it's going, in their original vision of having a single-agent type of approach, but we'd also like to remove some of the complexity by having more clustering and DR capabilities built in to the tool.

We have had scalability issues because we bend the laws of the physics for the tool. For some of our reporting needs, we've had to go and take our databases and put it in big data, only because we have so many different environments that we don't have one single pane of glass way of taking all of our environments and comparing it all together. We have to take the data outside and then still leverage the tool inside to give us all of the feeds, so that we can have one enterprise view across all of our different instances. That's just because of the number of machines that we have. It doesn't allow us to just take advantage of one environment.

I have used technical support. In fact, I at one point managed the technical side for the same customer. I was part of the strategic outsourcing, so I was with the customer, then I supported the customer on the IBM side and then I came back to the customer's side to help them innovate using that same tool and the same support team I used to manage. So, it was full circle.

I am happy with the support team. Actually, there are some challenges from time to time, only because our needs are a little bit more complex because of how complex an organization and how large we are. Our needs are a little bit more than the average company. We've been able to work through those challenges and become more on the innovative leader side of the tool, which also helps us to get better support because now we're going from the bleeding edge of trying to get our organization to address problems to leading the industry charge, hopefully. Maybe next year with what we're trying to do with BigFix, we might be able to present some of our findings.

I was not actually involved in the initial setup because we've had it for over ten years, but I've helped transform it from being a tool into a platform. The technical part of that transformation was not very complex. It was more of the internal challenges, getting support, and more the political side was a little more difficult than the technical side.

Understand where your focus is going to be. Then, based on your focus, start moving in that direction and then, don't get so myopic with your focus that you don't see the capabilities it can provide, where it can become a universal tool to help you solve a lot of problems and potential endpoint security risks. You don't want to compete in your organization with other tools that provide the same capabilities. Consolidate your efforts into BigFix and get rid of those competing tools. Put the money into the support, the services and the innovation it provides.

Openness and honesty are the most important criteria I look for in a vendor. What are the shortcomings of the tool? What are some of the challenges that others have had with the tool and how have you been able to overcome those challenges?

For me, Inventory Services is heavily used in our environment. The patch management suite, I would say is the second, and very important for us to ensure that we are maintaining our PCI and SOX compliance for the company I work with. In addition to that, we have server automation that we use, security and compliance module, lifecycle management, and OSD. So all of those things are really important for us.

Clearly, with Inventory Services, the speed is really key. In retail, we need answers very, very quickly. Other competitor products (which we do have in house) just don't compare.

Web reports. The interface for web reports is still pretty basic, and really hasn't changed in the seven years that we've had the product, so that would be one thing that would be really nice.

I really don't know that there's really much more that can be added that's already not currently in the pipeline, or currently exists.

It's been stable. I've used the product for seven years and I haven't had an issue that has brought things down. So it's been very stable.

Scalability is also really great. We have a very small client base in comparison to what we could potentially do, so scalability is wonderful.

In the seven years, I think I've submitted maybe four to five problems. That's it. Response time has always been good.

When we're selecting a solution, we want a vendor that we can trust, that is on top of it, on point, and thorough.

I would say I would give it a nine. Only because as I stated earlier, web reports, if that were to improve, I'd give it a ten. There's always room for improvement.

Really understand what your environment is like. Make sure that your network team is engaged with all of that.

The most valuable feature of BigFix is the ability to manage all the clients that we have in our environment. So, every PC that we have has to come in and BigFix aids in all that so that we can record it, add software to it and also inventory it. So, just having that ability to see everything and inventory everything helps everybody from the technical aspect, to know what's on the PC; especially when it needs to be reimaged.

One of the improvements is the patching process and being able to get security patches out. We have 50,000 PCs in our environment and are able to patch those PCs in a relatively quick timeline.

Dynamic messaging needs improvement because one of the things that we deal with a lot is the messaging when pushing releases out. I know that there is a message we can display, but it's post-installation. On the post-installation, we have to either check on the PC or reboot the PC. We just want to be able to have a static message and to be able to take an action at any time, as well.

Documentation is always key. I like simple documents and also being on a team with a small amount of people. There is a lot that can be done with the product, and it needs good documentation to where you can see how the different pieces of the product interact with each other and what they can and can't do; but on a layman’s level.

It is very stable. We haven't had any issues on any downtime that inhibits our ability to get things out, so it's been pretty stable.

It seems to be very scalable. We went from roughly 24-25,000 assets to 50,000 PCs in five years. So, we're looking to grow and it seems like it's very capable to handle what we have in store.

Support is very awesome. Every time we have needed something from technical support, they have been on top of everything with a very quick turnaround in the issues that we've had with the product.

We were using an old IBM solution framework solution and some custom scripts that we had built around the framework solution to do our software distribution. When BigFix came along, we went right into the BigFix framework.

When choosing a vendor, one thing that is always critical is, how much does it cost? It needs to be cost effective. Support is also one of the things that we look for. We have a small team so when we are looking at vendors, we want to know if they provide any training. Also, can any kind of training dollars be rolled into the product or can experts come on site to train? We also want to hear customer feedback about how the company or the product are doing at another company's site that is similar to ours.

I was not involved in the initial setup. A coworker of mine actually set it up and got it going, and I came in on the back end. Right now, I'm actually going to be taking that over.

The setup was straightforward. I don't think it was too complex. I know that we have some complexities with the way some things are set up in our environment, but the product itself is pretty straightforward.

If they are able to get it into the environment and run some type of proof of concept and be able to kick the tires a little bit, that would be the best way go with any product.

Easy to use. Dynamic to the needs of the company.

There is limited support or assistance when creating new deployment tasks.

New tasks require significant time investment; however, once the tasks are in place it makes upgrading or installing software extremely easy. The software is dynamic enough that there is very little that you cannot manage remotely.