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KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) vs OpenText ZENworks Configuration Management vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)2.6%
NinjaOne10.4%
Kaseya VSA10.0%
Other77.0%
Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM)
Configuration Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
OpenText ZENworks Configuration Management1.8%
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform9.8%
HashiCorp Terraform8.1%
Other80.3%
Configuration Management
Configuration Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform9.8%
HashiCorp Terraform8.1%
Microsoft Configuration Manager7.2%
Other74.9%
Configuration Management
 

Featured Reviews

AdityaJain - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Administrator at EbixCash
Centralized software deployment has simplified endpoint control but needs stronger security alerts
What I like best about KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) is that it allows pushing custom-made applications to all computers that have KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) endpoint installed. This makes it easier for the organization to push patches and updates. If I need to push EDR updates, I can use KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA), as it automatically updates the EDR on that endpoint, and that is a great feature. Overall, KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) helps streamline my processes by allowing me to check the uptime and downtime of machines, whether they are connected to the internet or not, and how long a machine has been switched off. I can also gather hardware details and software inventory from it. I can show a live demonstration if a video conference can be arranged. Incident resolution capabilities with KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) have improved operational efficiency for system administrators, as it makes it easier to track machines with KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA), gather their IP addresses, and push several updates, patches, or software deployments at once. I can design compliances as per my requirements, such as ensuring passwords are reset after 45 days.
it_user1272306 - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Technology Officer at DoITWise
Helpful impact analysis and the discovery capability is quite good
This tool works hand-in-hand with RPA technology. RPA will allow you to control your servers by deploying the server automation agent. You don't have the discovery, but then you can deploy the policies that maintain the authorized versus current state. On top of that, you can use server automation to deploy patches or remediate configuration issues on the operating system. My advice to anybody who is implementing this solution is to ensure that the process is set up properly, first. Once the process is set up, the tool will do the rest for you. Overall, this is a comprehensive tool that works well, and I wouldn't touch it other than to enhance the UI and make containerization work without the CDF. I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.
Manas Kashyap - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Dev Ops Engineer at 11 East Capital
Automation has transformed server patching and has reduced months of work to minutes
The best features that Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform offers is that it does not require any additional resources inside the servers. Python is the only requirement, and since Python is already present inside the servers, we can run it from our location and it automatically deploys things and does the work for us. The minimal requirements and easy deployment have definitely impacted my daily work and my team's efficiency. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is one of the best features that we depend on. We have evaluated other options, but Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform was the best choice because it has saved us a tremendous amount of time. We do not need to manually intervene in the servers or install third-party software to maintain these things. It is very easy to write playbooks for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. Ansible Galaxy contains many playbooks that are readily available and ready to be used. It is highly configurable with Jinja templating, making it easy to maintain. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform has positively impacted my organization. Previously, we needed to go into the servers and maintain them manually, which used to take a lot of time. For 200 to 300 servers, the maintenance took about one to two months. New patches would arrive and we would have to repeat the process. Now, it is a one-night work or a 10 to 15 minutes task. We write a playbook, maintain an inventory, and roll out the updates and it starts working for us. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform uses conditional clauses and has rollback options, functioning like a standard coding language that is simple to use. There is definitely a reduction in errors with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform because we have playbooks written with all the necessary clauses and rollback options. Manual work automatically creates more errors, whereas in automation, we have written sets that we do not forget every time we run it. We have protected written sets that we execute consistently.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This solution makes it easy to control assets and upgrade all types of software."
"Quest KACE has provided us with a managed environment that surpasses all expectations."
"The most valuable feature is the imaging of computers through the SDA... Being able to do that so quickly with the SDA, and to then use the SMA for reinstalling software, has been huge for our productivity."
"We couldn't ask for more."
"It is excellent in terms of updating and configuring everything the way we need. For anything more complex, we do professional service engagements, and they're exceptional. For anything less complex, we just need to ask questions. Their support division is extremely good too."
"It also does patch management. At the moment, I'm rolling out a new feature update, 20.8.2, and it's a great challenge because we have to deploy it to 1,200 computers in the home office. We want to do it without interrupting production, but KACE is reliable and it's easy to adapt it to my needs for how and when to deploy the feature update."
"The initial setup is relatively easy."
"I am impressed by the service desk ticketing and asset management."
"We use it for managing our desktops; we have 350,000 desktops and it allows us to manage and control them relatively easily."
"The most valuable feature is the impact analysis."
"Helps me perform changes in connected infrastructure thanks to the discovery features."
"Overall, this is a comprehensive tool that works well, and I wouldn't touch it other than to enhance the UI and make containerization work without the CDF."
"Automatic Spiral Discovery: This feature enables deep and dynamic configuration and change management."
"It is very extensible. There are many plugins and modules out there that everybody helps create to interact with different cloud providers as well."
"The beauty of Ansible is the easy ramp-up to get started."
"Ansible Tower offers use a UI where we can see all the pushes that have gone into the server."
"The automation manager is very good."
"The Organizations feature, where I can give clear silos and hand them over to different teams, that's amazing; everybody says that it's their own Tower. It's like they have their own Tower out there."
"The improvement is going to come in that we are going to be able to maintain configuration management, through the use of both Puppet and Ansible."
"It allows control over thousands of servers, whether virtual or physical."
"One of the most valuable features is that Ansible is agentless. It does not have dependencies, other than Python, which is very generic in terms of dependencies for all systems and for any environment. Being agentless, Ansible is very convenient for everything."
 

Cons

"There should be a mini toolbox, like the competitors of KACE have, with the small features for KACE administrators. That would make their lives easier. If you are troubleshooting a specific endpoint, remote control is available as is Wake-on-LAN. But if you want to execute some commands, you have to use a third-party tool, the PS tool. If they would integrate those small things, it would make KACE more powerful."
"We had issues with the tool's support. We are a Dutch firm and everything has to be in Dutch. We were not able to do the alerts. You were required to tweak them a lot to get them in the language that you preferred. The solution's support depended on the person that you got online. Sometimes, the response was fast and other times you needed to wait a long time. The support also depended on the levels of support that you had requested."
"The K1000 doesn't communicate well with some clients without SMB."
"What could be improved is the possibility to use replicas in a secure way outside our network in order to maintain the machines that never connect to our corporate network."
"I have complaints about smart label adaptation and because of this, I recommend a 24 to 48 hour bake-in period."
"It could be designed a little bit more intuitively in terms of administration."
"The setup process was not good with the Dell people. We had horrible training and the setup was not right on a bunch of stuff."
"The KACE Go Mobile App crashes a lot, and it always has. I would love to see that get fixed because it's very convenient when it does work properly, but most of the time it does not."
"The native UI should be simplified because it is outdated and a little bit over-complicated."
"The infrastructure itself is stable, but the agent has a lot of problems."
"It needs dashboards."
"In Community, there's a lot of effort towards testing, standardizing, and testing for module development to role development, which is why Molecule is now becoming real. Same thing with Zuul, which we are starting to implement. Zulu tests out modules from third-party sources, like ourselves, and verifies that the modules work before they are committed to the code. Currently, Ansible can't do this with all the modules out there."
"The product could do a better job at building infrastructure."
"Ansible is great, but there are not many modules. You can do about 80% to 90% of things by using commands, but more modules should be added."
"They should think of this product as an end-to-end solution and begin to develop it that way."
"Improvements should be made in terms of execution speed, which is, I believe, the most lacking feature. Aside from that, re-triggering a failed task is another useful feature."
"The solution should add a nice self-service portal."
"It doesn't work well with large-scale infra."
"When compared to Terraform, the execution speed of Ansible is very slow due to the way it executes things."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are a university. So, we have a very good price for the system. I think the price for the system is worth it because of the security patch management. The security patch management is very important for us. The price is very good for KACE SMA, the functionality you get, and the patch management."
"The pricing and licensing are good. It's worth it."
"The pricing is fair."
"We buy consulting fees from Software Factory, then we pay extra for it."
"n terms of pricing and licensing, my advice is that you need to assess what you need and then look at what they offer. It's easy to get caught up in the things that you want, but don't really need."
"Based on other solutions that we had implemented, its pricing seems to be quite competitive. It is not inexpensive, but it is also not more expensive than any other solution. They have the standard licensing fees and support fees."
"Its pricing model is good for what it offers. Nobody here gives me a hard time about renewing the contract every year. It might be a little cost prohibitive for a smaller company who has to stand up a virtual environment as well as have virtual environment licensing and the hardware. If you have a smaller environment, it might be cost prohibitive. If you only have a couple of hundred computers, you might be more willing to do those manually. In our environment, the cost savings of having KACE far outweigh the licensing costs. We are okay with its pricing model."
"Their pricing is per end-point device. There is an initial cost for the license for the server, which is pretty low, and then there is a per end-point device license, which is also fairly low. So, the pricing is still reasonable."
"This is a really good tool for the money."
"I am using the community edition of the solution which is free."
"Ansible is a lot more competitive than any of the others. Its setup was also straightforward. In fact, we just implemented Ansible on OpenShift, so that is how we are running the Ansible Automation Platform now."
"Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is an expensive solution. There may be additional fees to use advanced features."
"It’s an open-source tool."
"If you only need to use Ansible, it's free for any end-user, but when you require Ansible Tower, you need to pay per Ansible Tower server."
"We have to be mindful of how we use Ansible because of the licensing model. I am not saying that it is unfair or we do not find value in it. Because we are trying to automate so many different things, we have to be mindful of what we are doing and how we are doing it because we are trying to stay in compliance with it."
"The cost is high, but it still works well."
"Everything is generally fair. No one ever likes to pay a lot of money, but we are getting the value. We also get support with it. It has been fair and worthwhile."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
10%
University
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
University
30%
Construction Company
9%
Government
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise16
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise52
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Quest KACE Systems Management?
In terms of cost-effectiveness, considering a situation where I want to deploy KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA...
What needs improvement with Quest KACE Systems Management?
For improvements in KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA), I would want to see it become a standalone software agen...
What is your primary use case for Quest KACE Systems Management?
I have deployed KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) around 230 plus PCs, and I use it to push Windows updates and...
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What is the difference between Red Hat Satellite and Ansible?
Red Hat Satellite has proven to be a worthwhile investment for me. Both its patch management and license management h...
How does Ansible compare to Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (SCCM)?
Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager takes knowledge and research to properly configure. The length of time that ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform was very simple. There ...
 

Also Known As

Dell KACE Systems Management
Micro Focus ZENworks Configuration Management, HPE CMS, HPE Configuration Management, Micro Focus Configuration Management
Ansible, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Subscription on AWS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Waypoint, Mattos Filho, Meetic, Gems Education, Green Clinic HealthSystem, Service King
Tech Mahindra, NNIT, ASIC
HootSuite Media, Inc., Cloud Physics, Narrative, BinckBank
Find out what your peers are saying about NinjaOne, Kaseya, TeamViewer and others in Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM). Updated: July 2026.
909,153 professionals have used our research since 2012.