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BMC TrueSight Server Automation vs BigFix comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Intune
Sponsored
Ranking in Configuration Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
254
Ranking in other categories
Remote Access (1st), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (1st), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (1st)
BigFix
Ranking in Configuration Management
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
96
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (22nd), Patch Management (2nd), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (4th)
BMC TrueSight Server Automa...
Ranking in Configuration Management
13th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 10.3%, up from 9.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BigFix is 9.2%, up from 7.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BMC TrueSight Server Automation is 3.0%, up from 2.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Configuration Management
 

Q&A Highlights

FR
Feb 14, 2020
 

Featured Reviews

Joseph Merusi - PeerSpot reviewer
Everything has worked better since we started using it
Sometimes the syncing is inconsistent. I'm confident that the devices are checking in every eight hours, but sometimes the devices aren't picking up the settings as quickly as I would expect. Some features haven't been updated in a while, and Microsoft doesn't seem interested in developing them. Unless you talk to an engineer, you don't know whether there will be an update. There are communication issues, so you might start working with a feature without knowing if it will be deprecated six months from now. Some reporting areas still need development. For example, I noticed that the reporting for driver updates is still confusing.
Bella Yakoby - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers third-party patching feature, good scalability, and enhance endpoint management capabilities
From the perspective of the team that's handling the environment, it's not so user-friendly compared to other solutions, the competitors. We hire new teams from time to time, and they are complaining, look, although BigFix is very robust and cross-platform, it's not so fun to work with. The user interface for the technical teams is not so advanced. It's not so intuitive compared to SCCM, compared to ManageEngine. And this is the fact that they have, with the teams, because they have the rejection. The look and feel of the system are old-fashioned. For new employees, it's less easy to find someone I don't need to educate on how to work with BigFix. Although it's easy, it's not as intuitive as the other solutions, and the functionality of the other solutions is less advanced. Let's summarize: The user interface has to be changed from the perspective of the teams that are managing the product. It's old school.
JonathanShilling - PeerSpot reviewer
Able to access server info and file systems directly through TSSA but system can be sluggish
Resource management on the base servers could be improved. We're using a site that's supposed to cover all of our affiliates. I don't know what is causing the problem but we've had to increase RAM and CPU processing in order to alleviate some of the sluggishness during patching. I find the solution to be rather cumbersome. It's supposed to be able to support 50,000 or 100,000 servers. We only have 5,000 servers and during our patch processes, it gets very sluggish. We wanted to automate our patching, and not be stuck monitoring patches for three-quarters of every month. We have a main site and then multiple repeaters at each of the affiliate locations. Theoretically, patches are supposed to be delivered to the repeaters and your affiliates are supposed to pull the patches from those repeaters. We've noticed that doesn't always work and it pulls transfer patches from the main site rather than going to the repeater. TrueSight brought some standardization across the affiliates, however, it has also increased workloads and has made some things more complex. The requirement to have a local account with no password (password is random in TSSA, but not able to be changed through Windows) has caused some grief with our security team, and many complaints across affiliates. There are several features that appear to be very good but they don't always work as expected.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Maturity makes it a stable product."
"It is a stable solution."
"We use a local Active Directory, but we weren't able to manage all our on-site systems without a solution like Intune, and we needed to deploy software like VPNs and other things. It's seamless now to to this through Intune."
"The most valuable feature is the policy CSPs."
"The Microsoft Windows Autopilot and Defender policies are the most valuable features of this solution."
"I like that we can implement conditional access."
"For our office workers who are not based in Norway, when we order the PC, we can do some of the settings for them. These are standardized settings. We can set them up exactly as they are in Norway so that they're the same."
"Intune makes our organization more secure and flexible. We can onboard new employees faster and more securely. We are a governmental organization with strict regulations, and Intune helps us comply with those requirements."
"It is for multiple use cases. A lot of people are looking at it just for security, and that's really endpoint security. The endpoint management part of it in terms of being able to constantly do patching for Windows, Unix, macOS, Cloud, Raspberry, VMware, and all Linux flavors is important, and they are very good at that. They have support for virtually every OS on the market."
"The most valuable aspect of BigFix is its ability to patch desktops. While we have complete control over servers and can easily push patches to them, desktops pose a greater risk for leaks and vulnerabilities if patches are not installed in a timely manner. By using BigFix, we have significantly improved our ability to patch desktops, whether they are laptops, desktops, or other mobile devices used by end-users."
"It covers multiple operating systems and helps with patch management."
"In terms of vulnerability management, it gives tough competition by providing a single management console with multiple benefits."
"The architecture for patching and the 100% correct reporting makes BigFix stand apart from other solutions."
"BigFix helped us to identify the compliance of devices and has also improved the way that we manage our software inventory for reporting to vendors."
"The BigFix features that have proven most effective include inventory, software delivery, software distribution, software catalog, and both software and hardware management."
"I would advise someone considering this product to go for it. It's easy to use, cheaper than the value, and there is tons and tons of support from the BigFix community. With almost every challenge we have someone who has encountered it, and you will have a solution right away."
"Server Automation's best feature is automated patching. It also helps us automate compliance and report generation. We can even integrate TrueSight Server Automation with a vulnerability management solution to remedy vulnerabilities by applying patches, deploying scripts, or changing registry entries."
"The solution is stable."
"As this solution provides strong support and has multiple use cases, it is worth the cost."
"BMC Bladelogic Automation can be used across many OS platforms, providing us flexibility for deployments."
"The most important feature is the schedulings."
"Scalability is good."
"You can easily get the patching link. Patches can be deployed easily with a single click, making deployment straightforward. This eliminates the need for constant monitoring. You can deploy the necessary patches with one click, ensuring everything is signed correctly, and all issues are resolved."
"It gives us more speed to deliver services and applications, and we rely on security."
 

Cons

"It's only good for a Microsoft environment."
"It would be awesome if Microsoft opened their API so we could filter more properties. If we have to do anything outside of Intune that requires a third-party solution to talk back to it, we're very limited in what we can do. Trust your people. We promise not to break your stuff. Open it up just a tiny bit wider."
"I also hope the cost of Remote Help will decrease because it's a much-needed Intune function."
"The interoperability or communication with a different platform can be better. It is a two-way street. It is not only about Microsoft. The other platforms also have to be willing to share some information, but that absolutely can be improved."
"It needs certificate provisioning for S/MIME purposes."
"There is room for improvement, particularly in terms of compatibility, extending beyond the well-known major brands."
"There is room for improvement in server patch management and allowing direct uploads of EXE applications instead of needing to convert them to Intune format, which would save time."
"At this time, I do not have any areas for improvement. I have heard about some downtime, but I am not in the local IT team."
"I'd definitely like to see additional feature parody in the web UI versus the console. There are certain things that you can only do in the console and they're very cumbersome to do, like secure parameters, for example. That's definitely something that has a wide degree of utility but it needs to be easier to surface. At this particular juncture between the transition, between the legacy console and the web UI, it's hard to justify dealing with the cumbersome aspects of the legacy console when theoretically everything's been through the web UI."
"I would eventually like to see a SaaS offering, a cloud-hosted BigFix instance where we only have to put a relay in our environment."
"I'd like to see better API integration with BigFix. We have some tremendous API capability inside of CyFIR and the ability to take textual search results, for example, and bring that back into the BigFix dashboard. This would be of extreme interest to us and our customers."
"Its pricing should be improved. It is too costly."
"One aspect that could be improved is the speed of the console. Sometimes it can be slow, which is something that needs to be addressed."
"Around the scalability concern, I would like to see the ability to run teamed, clustered, or hierarchical root servers, in order to provide a more robust, high availability system. The single monolithic root server model does somewhat bother me."
"License management isn't quite as easy as it should be to deal with the licensing. You need to take the server down to import the new licenses which I find to be annoying."
"BigFix should improve its compatibility with other platforms, such as Linux."
"Scaling the environment during setup at larger organizations with 10,000 employees gets complicated."
"Another area for improvement is group scheduling if I'm trying to do all the servers. For example, if I want to do all the 2012 Servers - since the patches are the same for all of them - I can't do so."
"Provisioning needs to be more user-friendly. We were using BladeLogic for provisioning, but due to a lot of issues and complications, we had to stop using provisioning with this tool."
"We would like to see this solution handle more multitasking."
"There is no other functionality available to patch the containers that we need to include."
"More use cases can be automated. The user interface of BMC TrueSight Server Automation could benefit from enhancements, as it currently lacks refinement."
"The setup of this suite is very complicated. It needs to be simplified."
"I would like to see a better methodology for handling REST calls and integration into the APIs. They add new APIs as they add functions, but they've missed some from older components which they still haven't added in. Some of the APIs are there but the CLI calls are not there."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Intune's pricing is competitive. For example, the license of Blackberry's Enterprise Mobility Suite was costly, but Intune is affordable. It is included as an additional feature when you buy security enhancements for your organization. For example, let's say I have fifty users in my organization and all of them are using Microsoft cloud services, like Teams, Office 365, and OneDrive."
"It is cheap, but as compared to Google, it is costly. Google is cheaper, but quality-wise, Microsoft Intune is better."
"The Intune license model is costly."
"I rate Intune five out of 10 for pricing. It's expensive."
"It's affordable. It's cheaper if you have an Office 365, E5, or E3 subscription because everything is there."
"I am not that aware of the pricing, but as compared to other MDM solutions, Microsoft is providing a lot of things at the organizational level. So, it is quite reasonable as compared to other MDM solutions."
"The tool is cheaper than our company's other MDM tools."
"It is reasonable for the features it has."
"The license is subscription-based."
"The price of BigFix could be lower. However, I am always seeking a lower price."
"The price of the solution is high. There are not any additional fees from the standard license."
"There's not much big cost. We only have to pay the agents' cost for the server, and for the systems."
"We have a subscription-based contract with BigFix."
"I can estimate the reduced cost of servers maintenance to approximatively $500,000."
"Compliance, inventory, and licensing are really pricey. They should lower the price. It discourages users from getting onboard."
"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."
"We're looking at less than $100,000 USD for this solution."
"Licensing is a bit pricey. Be mindful about the components that you need and buy as appropriate."
"The product is expensive."
"The solution is quite expensive compared to other vendors."
"The product's pricing depends on the number of servers."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
20%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
46%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
36%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Wholesaler/Distributor
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does Microsoft Intune compare with VMware Workspace One?
Microsoft Intune is a great tool for managing a mobile device fleet while keeping access control. The solution makes ...
What are the pros and cons of Microsoft Intune?
Microsoft Intune is a great configuration management tool and has a lot of good things going for it. Here are some of...
How does Google Cloud Identity compare with Microsoft Intune?
Microsoft Intune offers not only an easy-to-deploy data protection and productivity management solution, but also ...
What do you like most about BigFix?
The most valuable features of the solution are Windows patching and the hardware and software inventory.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BigFix?
The pricing is competitive, but not the most competitive.
What needs improvement with BigFix?
Implementing a business solution with BigFix has some issues, primarily concerning the time required for distribution...
What do you like most about BMC TrueSight Server Automation?
The product's valuable feature is its ability to conduct patching for multiple servers simultaneously.
What needs improvement with BMC TrueSight Server Automation?
More use cases can be automated. The user interface of BMC TrueSight Server Automation could benefit from enhancement...
 

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager
Tivoli Endpoint Manager
TrueSight Server Automation, BladeLogic Server Automation, BladeLogic Automation Suite
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway
US Foods, Penn State, St Vincent's Health US Foods, Sabadell Bank, SunTrust, Australia Sydney, Stemac, Capgemini, WNS Global Services, Jebsen & Jessen, CenterBeam, Strauss, Christian Hospital Centre, Brit Insurance, Career Education Corporation
State of Michigan, Fujitsu FSAS, Transamerica Life Insurance Company, SAP
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC TrueSight Server Automation vs. BigFix and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.