KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) Reviews

We use Quest KACE Systems Management for everything. It does everything from soup to nuts. It does inventory control, and not just of computers that check; we also do inventory of other hard IT assets, like big-screen monitors, printers, laptops, et cetera.

We also use it for software inventory, license inventory, and for server management. We use it for end-user workstation patching, for Windows and Dell EMC patches, as well as other critical software updates, such as Adobe Acrobat. 

In addition, we use it for ticket queues and ticket management. We've got queues for multiple departments on this machine, including our people services queue, facilities, IT, and web development queues. It's our ticket system. 

We also push out software and software updates with it all the time. 

Up until about a month ago, it was on-prem, but we just migrated up to Azure in the cloud.

The ease of use has definitely affected the time-to value of the solution for us. We're not having to put up deployment servers or patch-management servers. My staff is not having to run from machine to machine to do software installations. That can be automated this way. We also don't have to have a separate ticket queue system. We're saving money left and right by all of these features being well implemented and integrated into this one solution.

The single pane of glass has everything you need for endpoint management of all devices. You have your main pane and you have tabs on the left. If you say, "I want to do software distribution," you click on that tab and you do your work. If you want to do inventory, you click on that tab and you do your stuff there. Not having to jump from screen to screen makes things a bit faster, a bit more efficient, and it saves a bit of time. I don't have to change screens to find multiple bits of information. It has a well-designed web app as well. If I need to, I can have multiple tabs open for viewing different panes. If I need to compare two machines, I can just open two tabs and compare them.

Looking back, it has saved me, personally, a good 10 hours per week, out of 40. That's significant. As far as my team is concerned, with four people working a total of 160 hours per week, KACE has saved them close to a third of that time by not having to jump from system to system to get the information they need.

It has also definitely increased IT productivity. We can take on more tickets and we can take on more problems from other people. We can work towards higher-end solutions and not worry about tripping over the system that does the implementations.

All of the use cases I mentioned are among its most valuable features. It's central to our IT management and our IT systems. Without this solution, we would be dead in the water. The most critical are the ticket queues, because so many departments rely on them, and patch management/software distribution.

It's also extremely easy to use. The documentation could be perhaps a little bit smoother in places. It can be a little choppy. But as far as being able to go into the machine and work with it goes, once you get the hang of it, it's simple. It is a very simple interface. That said, I've been using it since 1990-something, so I'm really used to it.

The updating and configuring to get things the way you need them in your environment are not as convenient as in some solutions. For example, Microsoft Windows has group policies, which are fine if all your machines are on the same network all the time. But in these wonderful days of COVID, where everybody's working remotely, nobody is in the office all the time. And certainly, the entire office is not on-site anymore with all computers on-site. That means that group policies fall apart. The KACE solution has had to step in and fill that niche for us.

The problem is that it's harder to directly emulate a lot of the stuff that the group policies do, using the KACE solution. With regular group policies, you just specify the various settings you want to change on the workstations, and then you specify the workstations and—while it's kind of an ugly mess—it does it. Whereas on KACE, you really have to know what you're doing with scripting to effectively script those exact same changes.

I would also like to see more convenient settings for Windows and, possibly, Mac systems, more in line with Windows Group Policies. I'd like that kind of granularity with that kind of ease of access and ease of control. Group policies are out the window now with everybody working remotely. I don't personally want to spend the time or effort investing in Microsoft Intune, when the KACE solution is perfectly capable of doing all of those things.

I've been using the KACE SMA, which was previously called the KBOX 1000, since the 1990s; pretty much since version 1 came out.

It's rock-solid. I've never had a stability problem with KACE.

I've never really had to scale it. It does have scalability built-in and I could have multiple repositories across the nation connected to this one machine if I wanted to. But I haven't had to because that use case doesn't make sense for us.

But we're always looking to utilize it more. We first look to KACE when evaluating any solution that might require third-party involvement. We ask ourselves if KACE can do it.

We use their regular tech support and that tech support is beyond savvy. Their tech support is stellar. They're instantly responsive and they know their stuff. They know exactly what they're doing, and I've thrown some weird questions at them, at some really weird times of day. The person I get on the other end has always said, "Yeah. No problem. Hang on a sec. Here's your answer."

I don't have to explain something three times to 18 different people. I really just explain it once, usually over a chat session. They'll tell me, "Oh, well look at this, and look at this, and try those out. If those don't work, try this." It's great. I wish I had that kind of tech support with other vendors.

The move to Azure has been as smooth as silk. It's been great. Once we figured it out, it only took about an hour to an hour and a half. But there were some steps along the way that weren't terribly clear, meaning it ended up taking about five or six hours.

The things that made it complicated were the types of things that you can't really correct while you're in the middle of doing a migration. The machine's IP address was hard-coded into the configuration. That may be great, but you can't unset that when you're in the middle of the migration. We had already started to migrate the data over and then realized, "Oh, once it comes up, it's going to have a fixed IP address on a completely different subnet. It's not going to know where it is or how to get to it, and we're not going to be able to get to it. So we had to back out the entire thing and start over again with an unspecified IP. There were similar technical glitches, little things like that. If we had thought about them a little bit beforehand, or if there were documentation saying, "Hey, you might want to de-provision the IP address before you do this," we would have been in better shape.

I tend to do most of the maintenance on it. A colleague/subordinate of mine does it sometimes as well. Maintenance consists of making sure the backup files get put somewhere that is reliably safe, and applying patches when it needs them. But the patches are infrequent, and Quest is addressing automated backups in the next release. So soon, that won't even be an issue.

Return on investment will probably take a good year or two, simply because there's a lot of ramp-up. While you can get the system up and running in a day, you're not going to have enough useful data and you will not have had time to fully ramp up all of the features of the machine within that day.

For example, if you do a lot of patch management, you have to have your complete inventory of machines in there to see what patches are necessary and to tell the system, "I want everybody to be running these patches, not those patches." So there is a lot of stuff that you need to get in there, and that takes time and experience.

Licensing is very straightforward. They don't overcomplicate it. This is not a Cisco product where you have to have 30 different licenses just to open the box. It's pretty much set-and-forget. You pay an annual license. Licensing is based, in part, on number of seats, but they're very flexible and they're willing to work with you. 

The cost is in the mid to upper range, but the ROI exceeds the outside cost, especially once you've had the system for a while. And that's all the more true since they now offer it as a cloud-based solution. You can either buy their cloud-based solution or you can host it on your own cloud solution, which is what we've chosen to do because we already own the license for it.

If you already own the license for it, it doesn't matter if you're using their old hardware or if you want to migrate your stuff up to the cloud—you own the license. If you want to migrate up to the cloud, they say, "Yeah, no problem. Here's a preconfigured image with all the software installed on it already. All you have to do is create the environment for it in Azure, move this in there and then move your backups, your data, from your old system to this one." Provided you don't mess yourself up like we did a few times, it just flows right in.

In my last company, I was the one who purchased KACE. I was the one who reviewed it, vetted it, and brought it in to replace something like six or seven different technologies that were all fighting with each other.

Back in the 1990s, I was reviewing other products, to get away from these technologies I was fighting with. This solution popped up that does soup to nuts. It does everything. I thought, "Okay, that makes me nervous. Jack of all trades, master of none." But I got a review unit in and it actually did what I wanted it to do, and it didn't mess with me. It didn't fight me every step of the way.

I've had to use competitive solutions for other vendors. I used ServiceNow for a long time, which is a solution I detest. It has a nonsensical, overcomplicated interface, it's difficult to use, difficult to manage, and doesn't do half the stuff that I want it to do. It doesn't integrate or scale well. ServiceNow is a disaster, as far as I'm concerned.

I've used Jira, which is so-so. I'm not a big fan of Jira, but I think pretty much everybody has a love-hate relationship with it. I do still use that with one of our vendors.

The big pros of Quest KACE Systems Management are its simple interface, and simple, direct management. It's very easy to maintain and manage the device, and it's easy to get it up and running. You can have it up and running in an hour, and have it really up and running in a day, easily. The other solutions are so complex, overcomplicated, and overwrought that it takes forever.

Training users on how to use KACE is really simple. "See the big button that says 'File a Ticket'? That's the one you click." And they get that. The other systems are not necessarily that straightforward. KACE is also eminently configurable. If I don't like the terminology on a certain screen for a particular department, I can change it. I can make the people services queue look distinctly different from the IT queue, and have it behave differently. There is so much that this solution does that I just absolutely adore.

With KACE's inventory management, I can tell whose machines are getting patched regularly and whose machines are not getting patched regularly, and I can actually remedy that. I can tell who is running older versions of software and I can remedy that quickly, as well. I can push out new versions of antiviral software, security software, or web browsers. I can push out pretty much any piece of software I choose, without a lot of hassle. It's actually very straightforward, provided that the software conforms to industry norms for software distribution, with standard MSIs and standard DMGs.

Compliance is not really a big deal for us. We're not beholden to audits and the like. But if we were, KACE would certainly help. In my last company, I was beholden to audits, and I used the reporting and compliance management frequently. All the other features I mentioned are important for compliance, because you can't do compliance management without them. You can't hold yourself liable for software licensing if you don't have the software licensing built into the system and no way to reconcile it. The same is true for hardware and hardware licensing, as well as patch management. It's all tied together.

On a scale of one to 10, KACE goes up to 11.

Our main purpose is to image the computers we have on campus, using the Systems Deployment Appliance. After we get that set up, our second purpose is to use the Systems Management Appliance to keep an inventory of, and send scripts to, all the computers that we have on campus.

KACE has definitely significantly affected the time it takes to solve problems. In the past, we were spending way too much time solving minor issues, whereas with KACE we can do it on the fly. I'm solving problems quickly, in as little as 15 minutes, and then we're able to push out the resolution across campus. In the past, even if we had figured out something that quickly, it would still have taken us weeks at a time to push everything out.

As far as PCs go, and running Windows, the solution handles everything. I even have a Linux machine that I've imaged with KACE. I don't handle the Mac side of devices but I know there was a different solution that our Mac guy has used. It definitely makes it easier for us to keep inventory because, without it, our environment would be the Wild West. It would just be impossible to keep track of everything. The way I have it set up—and especially recently with COVID, we've had lots of people taking computers off-campus—I'm still able to keep everything together, even though we have computers all over the place. If we didn't have something like this, that would be an impossible task.

In terms of the amount of time KACE saves us, it's weeks of work on a monthly basis. We're able to do things in a day that used to take us about a month to do. It has also increased IT productivity because it takes less manpower to get the same amount of work done. Once a month, a classroom would go down, with some 25 computers in it. We would have to send a group of people out to take care of it. Now, we can do that work in a day, with one person. The other people who used to have to take care of that kind of issue can do other things that we need done.

The most valuable feature is the imaging of computers through the SDA. In the past, someone actually put images on CDs and walked around campus to image all the computers. We have around 3,000 computers on campus, and doing that with one disk, over and over, was very time-consuming. Being able to do that quickly is important because, on our academic side, we are re-imaging computers every summer, so that they have all the current updates. That means installing all the software on what amounts to about 1,500 computers. 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.

It provides us with asset management, compliance, software asset management, mobile device management to an extent, and patch management. The combination of these abilities is extremely important. I'm able to download new patches pretty quickly and I send them out every week to all the computers on campus. That means we're constantly keeping everything up to date, and that helps, especially with the number of threats out there. Having everything up to date and being able to do it as quickly as we can is extremely important.

When I first started using the SDA, I used their default system image setup. But I do have a custom image that I created myself and, over time, I've been gradually going in that direction. It just took me some time to figure it out, but now that I have it figured out, it's super simple for me to set everything up the way I want it. It's been a great help to get everything set up that way for my environment. Obviously, everybody's environment is going to be different.

We also use the MDM functionality a little bit. We don't have any Android devices in our environment, but we do have a bunch of iPads that we were using the MDM for. It was easy to get those endpoints into the MDM for asset management. Originally, it was really easy to image them with KACE and then push all the software to those devices, even the iPads. But I think Apple is trying to push MDMs out of their environment. They want everything done the way they decide.

It's pretty easy to use. I didn't have too many issues in terms of setting everything up; that was pretty intuitive. From time to time there are hiccups with updates and I've had to contact their tech support. Something like that probably happens once a year. But overall, it's very easy to use.

Also, it took a little bit of time to figure out how to use the KACE Service Desk. I like the way that I'm able to customize it. But when it comes to how our techs are able to use it, it's not as functional as our current solution, which is BMC FootPrints Service Desk. I would like it to replace our current solution, and the only reason I haven't replaced it is that there's more functionality in our current solution.

I have been using KACE Systems Management for about five years.

It seems pretty stable. I haven't really had any issues, except for one time, when I was building the KACE boot environment. They had to add a hot-fix to it but that happened once in the last five years.

It's being used on every single computer that we have on campus, and we use it every single day, because we're always imaging or re-imaging computers. 

As of now, there is no plan to increase our use, but I would imagine that as things come back to normal, if we have more students coming to campus, we will add more computers and we will increase our use at that time.

Their technical support has been good so far. If there's an emergency, something that we need fixed right away, they usually get back to us within an hour. They've been very helpful.

We did not have a previous solution.

The initial setup seemed complex at first. But as I spent more time with it, it was actually pretty easy to set it up. It is one of those things that, when you look at it, you realize there are so many things that you can do with it. It was a little overwhelming. But it didn't take that long to get the hang of everything and get into it. On a scale of one to 10, it was about a five as far as complexity goes.

It took a month or two to deploy. It took a little bit of time to get it set up the way that we wanted it. But now that we have it set up, it has been relatively easy to maintain that setup. The more I work with it, the easier it gets when I have to make a major change.

As for preparation ahead of setup, we just had to set up a server for it to be installed on. There wasn't much preparation.

I do most of the main maintenance on it and I have one other person who helps me from time to time. There isn't a lot of work there.

We used a reseller to help with the deployment. I talked with them a little and didn't have any issues with them.

Don't scale up too quickly, because there was a period of time where we bought a bunch of licenses but we weren't using that many. When we finally needed more licenses, we lucked into a time when they had a discount on licenses, so we bought more at that time. So hold off for those times when the cost comes down a little bit.

There were a few options out there that had some of the things we were looking for, such as the SDA and SMA, but KACE had more of what we were looking for. Some solutions had half of it and some others had the other half, but as far as having all of it goes, KACE was the best option.

As far as the SDA goes, definitely look at the options for customizing your own images. I had problems with my images as far as the built-in system imaging went. But once I switched over to customizing my own images, I had fewer issues with imaging computers. And when it comes to the SMA, definitely take advantage of asset management and its scripting capabilities. They have significantly helped me and our organization.

It is a virtual device. We use it for our everyday systems management and software deployment. It is implemented on all of our devices as an inventory and asset management tracking system. Our help desk system is utilized through it, and we do software distribution and deployments from it. We do all of those things on a daily basis.

We just updated to the beta version 12 on our test prep unit. We're on 11.1 on our active production device.

It has been very helpful in terms of management. The speed at which we're able to address help tickets is invaluable. We are able to maintain a history of problems and reference that information. That's been a huge piece.

Software distribution was what we initially purchased the product for, and it immediately paid for itself in time saved. We were looking to implement a new version of Office at the time, and we were anticipating a 6 to 12 weeks process to do the upgrade on all of our machines. With the device, we were able to complete that process in under a week. We saved a huge amount of time. At the time, I was the only tech who would have been doing the job. So, it would have been six weeks or so of my time. It has saved my hourly wage at the time for six weeks. We now have three people. Our roles are all the same. We're all IT technicians.

It has increased IT productivity. It has improved the speed for addressing end-user needs, distributing and updating software, and dealing with software vulnerabilities through patching. We could do these things much faster through the product.

It provides patch management, IT asset management, software asset management, and compliance. It also provides mobile device management, but we don't use it. The combination of all these things is really important for us. The patch management would be top of the list of those items. Asset management would be second, and software asset management would be third on that list. Compliance would be the last one.

It is really good for updating and configuring everything the way we need it to be in our environment. On a scale of one to ten, it is about an eight or a nine.

Its System Deployment Appliance (SDA) is wonderful for automating deployments. It is very quick and fairly easy to move forward with deployments. It makes deployments much smoother and quicker.

Pretty much all of the features are valuable. The inventory is very helpful to be able to keep track of our devices. The deployments make it easy to deploy new software packages or upgrade packages. The help desk is also a great tool for tracking problems and problem tickets.

It is very easy to set up and very easy to use on a daily basis. There is a lot of stuff to learn in terms of how do you do something and the things that it can do. It is just a matter of taking the time to learn all the functionalities and all of the nuances of how to use it, but it is pretty intuitive to use.

There isn't a lot they need to improve with the solution itself at this point. It is pretty close to providing a single pane of glass for everything that we need for endpoint management specifically on all devices. There is very little that it doesn't provide for us, and for those, we have to go to other methods. There are some of the patching solutions that it doesn't take care of for us. So, we have to do those manually on the devices, and that's really the biggest thing. It doesn't do patching really well for non-Microsoft applications. The major application updates, particularly Windows updates, don't function nearly as well, but, for the vast majority of things, it does just fine. If they could improve in this aspect, that'd be great, but I don't know if they're going to be able to do that.

The end-user training could also be better. I did talk to them the other day at a seminar about the training availability for end-users.

I believe we've been using KACE since 2003.

It is very stable.

It is very scalable. We've grown, and we've probably doubled our end-point devices since we started using this system. 

In terms of end-users, we've got about 1,200 system users in the city who use the help desk. There are 10 or 12 of us in IT that utilize the inventory, asset management, and software distribution side of things for IT management of those end-devices. It is being used very well, and we don't have any plans to increase its usage.

Their support has been really good. We don't need support very often because the system is so stable. It is usually a matter of not knowing how to do something when we end up getting support, but that has been pretty rare.

We did not have anything.

It was really straightforward. It took half a day. Our implementation strategy was to just get it up and running.

We did it with KACE directly.

It paid for itself within the first month we had it. So, the return on investment was incredible.

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. 

We compared it to Microsoft's SCCM. At the time, that was the only one we compared it to. The SCCM product in our mind was really intended for a large complex environment with thousands or tens of thousands of computers and multiple servers. At the time, we were several hundred computers. So, we were looking for something that was really built around that environment and for use of a smaller entity. Quest KACE was built around that, and it just worked out really well for us. It was a whole lot cheaper, as well.

I would advise just looking at the size of the environment in the end in terms of where you're going to end up. You have to make sense of the environment.

I would also advise others to take the time to learn about the system. There is a lot that it can do. We've had it going on 20 years. There is still stuff that we don't really know how to use or don't utilize to the capacity that we could. That's just because we have never taken the time or had the time to learn all of the pieces and parts and how to do different things within it. My recommendation would be to learn as much as you possibly can out of the box. Learn as much as you can and as quickly as you can to be able to utilize it because you'll never regret it.

From what I have seen, it is hands down a 10 out of 10.

We have several use cases for KACE and a lot of them are related to the helpdesk. For example, they provide assistance with modifying the helpdesk, client distribution, and maybe a tad bit in scripting on how to use it.

I've used the KACE tickets a lot.

This solution provides us with compliance management. We used it for security updates including Windows security, Dell, and other products. Another feature that we use is patch management. In fact, we patch other products all the time using KACE. I have Windows and Dell updates running bi-weekly, whereas other products are done weekly. Microsoft servers are an example of something that we regularly patch.

The combination of the features is important, although I'm just happy that it all works. It's fairly easy to use once you figure it out.

The system helps a lot when it comes to updating and configuring everything the way we need it to be in our environment. In particular, their support engineers are really good, although the system usually configures and updates mostly on its own. 

Price to using KACE, we were using emails. Now that we have a ticketing system, everything is monitored and everything is saved. For example, with the service desk portion, it's a lot easier to track because of the OSV files. They take up a lot of storage and as such, they get stored in archives. This means that it's hard to find those emails, so it's difficult to see what people said. Something we would look for is how we resolved an issue by following steps X, Y, and Z. This information is all available in the description of the ticket and by using KACE, we can find it easily. As far as the service desk operations go, this solution has been A one.

Using this solution saves us lots of time, especially when it comes to performing updates. We only have one on-premises server, and we have somebody that updates it, but prior to using KACE, there were lots of errors that would occur. For example, one update superseded another. Now, it is put on the automated run with a smart ticket and the server is always up to date. I estimate that we're saving at least 40 hours per month, based on the fact that we have 170 computers. It takes a long time to push all of the software updates to every one of them.

When we consider patching and software application updates, our productivity has increased by at least 80%. This has been major for us, especially with COVID and since people started working from home. It's been tougher to manage everybody but with KACE, it's made the job a lot easier. For example, the KACE agent looks at the client and it updates everything automatically.

The system gives us visibility with respect to whether a user is online, or the last time they were online. While online, it also gives us real-time status updates.

The only feature that we aren't using yet is asset management, and that is something that we are working on.

This solution is easy to use. None of it is very difficult, although I had to learn it from the ground up and it wasn't very easy when I first started with it. However, progressively, as I put in tickets and began using the service desk, the Quest help, and the technical support, they showed me how it works. Usually, after they showed me one time, I was able to understand what I needed to do. Eventually, it was really easy to use.

The inventory is really good, where it automatically updates catalogs. When I check on things, it's right there, and it even has zero-day patches. When you fine-tune it and set up the automation, it makes life much easier.

The patch management security is also A one.

It would be nice if the asset management capability was a little more intuitive.

The software asset management functionality is an area that needs to be improved. It could be more automated because when connections need to be made, such as when I connected Adobe and my malware remover, the process was pretty much manual.  For example, I have to tell it which and how many licenses we have, and I have to keep updating it. KACE has what they call Smart Labels and they are supposed to automatically detect things, but it seems that they don't detect anything. I put all of the information in, and it still won't do it. It makes you wonder why you're putting the information into the system in the first place.

I have not been able to connect to Active Directory, which is a ticket that I've had open for several months. It looks like the problem may be on our side. I've been working with the firewall team, which is a third-party vendor, and even their developers can't figure it out. Each vendor is pointing fingers at the other. I just want it to work.

I have been using Quest KACE Systems Management for approximately two years.

I like the stability a lot. It doesn't crash. We've had a few hiccups but it's definitely not worse than some of our vendors. The downtime is near 0%. Some of our vendors have a lot of downtime.

Scalability-wise, this product is great.

When we first implemented KACE, we had approximately 80 computers that we needed to install it on. We now have 170 computers.

We will continue to use this solution going forward. Every time we stage a computer, we make sure that we put KACE on it. Once we do that, we pretty much don't have to worry anymore. We're setting up more PCs and we're going to be hitting the 200 mark, probably at the end of the year. We have been hiring a lot of people and I expect it will continue.

There are three people who use KACE but I am the primary one. I'm the only person that makes changes and monitors the system regularly.

The technical support is pretty good but we still have cases pending. There is one case that we have had open for several months and I'm not the happiest about that, but for everything else, the assistance has been pretty spot on. It's hard to complain about the support.

Sometimes, I figure it out myself after opening a ticket but usually, they can get the job done. They are much more responsive than most vendors. I don't know if they have SLAs but if they do, then I would say that they're meeting them. They usually contact me either the day of, if it's early enough, or the next day, which is nice.

If I speak with any one of them, it doesn't matter. I've worked with multiple support engineers from KACE and they all seem to know what they're doing.

Usually, I have to contact them for the higher-level stuff. For example, I didn't know about how security certificates worked because I had never used one before.

The vendor has Premier support available, although we do not use it right now. We haven't looked into it yet but because we're growing and don't have enough IT people, Premier support might be ideal. For example, I have read that they help with VBS scripting, and I don't know it, so that would help me to learn it a little bit faster. Also, they save certain things for Premiere support. I had asked the service desk if I can change the category of a service ticket and they told me that I could, but it was a custom option. For that kind of thing, you need to have Premium support. I plan to call the vendor and get a quote for the service. That said, for everything that's not custom, they help a lot.

Overall, they're very proficient and they're very knowledgeable about the product.

We were using Datto RMM before, and KACE is much easier to use. I wasn't the most familiar with the old solution but with KACE, I can do things beyond monitoring. For example, I can do distributions or use security updates. With Datto, I basically used it to see what PC people were on.

Before I was hired, an IT company used to manage our infrastructure and they were the ones using Datto. We moved away from the IT company, which is why we switched.

We have not used any of the freeware products that are available or tried SCCM to achieve the same functionality.

It was definitely complex but that is because I'd never seen anything like it before. It wouldn't be a fair assessment to say that it was the most difficult thing, but it was a lot of information and I'd never used smart labels before. I was very confused at the beginning.

But, after I put in tickets, they did take the time to go back over it with me. After they showed me maybe once or twice, I understood what a smart label does. From that point on, it was very easy to create smart labels and automate the system.

It takes perhaps five minutes to install KACE on one computer. The longest part is pulling it down from the server. Once it's copied to the local machine, it only takes a minute or 90 seconds to install.

We completed the deployment in-house.

The pricing is great. It's billed annually and it's very reasonable.

My manager was already very familiar with this solution, which is why it was chosen. We didn't evaluate other options.

I have seen other monitoring tools that you use with a PC, where they are part of the assets. With this one, you have to run a custom script and you have to do a lot of custom stuff. When you do custom work, you have to pay more money, obviously. It means that there is an extra cost but other than that, it's pretty good.

KACE provides capabilities for mobile device management, although we don't use the feature. We also don't really use the monitoring system at this point.

My advice for anybody who is looking to implement KACE is that it's fairly easy to use and once you learn it, it's a very simple product. It's not simple in function, but the ease of use is there and you can very quickly learn what you need to do to get things done.

Also, if you know a little bit more about VBS, you get stuff done a lot quicker. 

Overall, it's a great product, I'm really happy with it, and I feel like it gets the job done.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

My company had bought some new machines. We used the tool to do some basic settings to ship every machine the same way and undertake the Windows deployment. We did the scripted installation. The tool helped us deploy custom software for specific departments. We also did Windows updates with the product. 

We like the tool's most features. It is a straightforward tool that is easy to use. 

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. 

I have been working with the solution for 10-15 years. 

I would rate the product's stability an eight out of ten. 

The tool is perfectly scalable. 

When we setup the product, a technical engineer from Dell supported us. I am not sure if there is the same level of support these days. 

The product is reasonably priced. 

I would rate the product an eight out of ten. I find the product very useful and helpful. The tool has everything like Mobile Device Management that is needed to service a company. The tool has communities where you can seek help. You can visit their support site for technical support. You can also avail support through settings. 

We have used it as a help-desk ticketing system, a software deployment platform, a patch management platform, and a hardware inventory platform.

KACE is incredibly wide in terms of what it will do for you. In certain cases, it's too much for my small businesses. Most of the companies that I support are anywhere from ten to fifty people. Whereas, KACE is such a large piece of software. It has its advantages as well as disadvantages for my businesses. It's just too big.

I think KACE could be designed a little bit more intuitively in terms of administration. Their knowledge-based articles are very good. But one of the things Microsoft does well is that they bake in a lot of the instructions and make the UI design a little bit more intuitive. So if you're flowing through something, the need to go back to the manual with Microsoft and it is not as heavy as it is with KACE. It is not necessarily always a good thing, but I would say KACE feels like an old-school piece of software. You need to make sure you've got the manual open while you're utilizing it.

Now I am trying to get the right size solution for my small businesses.

I have been using this solution for around eighteen months, probably. We just upgraded to version thirteen from eleven.

They are nice and stable. I would rate it nine out of ten.

I can't say I have had many experiences in making it scalable. With my businesses, I have never had to grow from fifty to a thousand employees.

I have used their technical support before. They are good. You pay a lot of money for their support and updates, but they do assist you when necessary. I have had positive experiences with them.

For the size of the company that I typically support, it's hard for me to say yes. I think I'm trying to kill a fly with a shotgun while utilizing KACE.

Coming from a small business standpoint, they're really expensive for the number of users. But that's not necessarily a knock against them. They're producing a piece of software for a particular segment. I just do not think they necessarily designed their virtual appliance and their support for a ten-person company. They are expensive, but are they unjustifiably expensive? I can't say that.

In my opinion, what KACE does better than Intune is third-party patch management. I think that Microsoft Intune and KACE both have the same technical functionality. But Microsoft Intune takes quite a bit of scripting in third-party management. Intune is always a lot cheaper and offers a lot of their packages as well. You have to consider what you need and what you are paying for. I would say that's the big difference between the two so far for my particular use.

Do a lot of research and make sure it fits your use case. If you're a small business, the likelihood of it being worth it to you in my opinion is minimal. If you've got a large environment where you can dedicate technical resources for managing the KACE system, onboarding and offboarding users monthly, and supporting a good number of devices and applications then maybe it works. But for a small business, is the juice worth the squeeze? I don't know.

I would like to rate the solution nine out of ten.

We use all of the SMA's functionality. We use it for inventory and for asset management. We don't really do file distribution because we use Desktop Authority Management Suite for that. We heavily use the scripting and we deploy updates using the security within. We also heavily use the support help desk section and the reporting.

We're on a legacy on-premises deployment. We're hoping to move to a cloud version in the not too distant future, but that's not on the schedule currently. Our on-premises KACE solution is a dedicated KACE SMA Appliance that was purchased from them. I don't even know if you can purchase that anymore, but it's kicking.

When it comes to the reporting for finance, it definitely helps a lot because we just run a report. It saves hours of trying to export workstation numbers out of Active Directory, and then create the Excel spreadsheets. With KACE you just run a report. I look at a couple things and, if the fields are blank I look at that, and it saves hours of time between me and finance.

It also provides us with a single pane of glass with everything we need for endpoint management of all devices. It's excellent. It enables us to analyze if there's a problematic piece of software and to upgrade it. I've even done custom fields within the software section so that it grabs the boot order from the BIOS, for example. That way, anybody needing to re-image a device can look and make sure that the boot order is correct in order for them to network-image the device. The inventory section is utilized by everyone who supports anything in IT.

It provides us with IT asset management, compliance, software asset management, and patch management. We don't use it for mobile device management. That combination of uses definitely makes it easier. For updating and configuring everything the way we need it in our environment, it's integral. It makes those processes really easy, for sure.

The help desk, first and foremost is the reason that we went to it, as well as the asset management. We have meta-reports for that, reports that we send to finance on the assets and where they are, throughout the organization. I would say those are the two big ones for the organization. We have 600 employees across the organization and everybody uses the help desk, at least.

On a personal level, the scripting and the reporting are extremely valuable to me as a systems administrator. When people are asking me questions about what devices are in management, or what devices have a certain version of a certain piece of software installed, it's super-easy for me to jump into the SQL reporting, send them the information, and have confidence that it's got some good information for them to utilize around the decisions that they're making.

The scripting and the software distribution make my life a lot easier too, because if, all of a sudden, Adobe has a vulnerability and we need to do a security patch, it makes it super-easy to do something like that, to update everything in our organization, all in one shot.

It's very easy to use. We've just been asked to create three new queues, because smaller departments within bigger departments want to use this product, due to its ease of use.

And the Systems Deployment Appliance is magical when it comes to automating deployment. Before we had KACE, we had a replication machine that would hold the master hard drive and five other hard drives, and we would manually image machines. With the deployment of KACE our lives are so much easier. Not only can we have multiple images, specific to end-users' uses, but we have a plethora of post-installation tasks to install or configure the system, tasks that can be re-used for each system. You just have one basic base image, and then you use the post-install tasks to customize everything else. It is amazing. We can send an image to 50 machines in our central operations, remotely. We don't even have to be at the same location.

I also utilize it after each Windows "patch Tuesday." I have a schedule that I have customized so that after each "patch Tuesday" it gets deployed to all of my servers. That way, I'm not manually patching my 100-plus servers. That is another amazing thing that I love about it.

I would sure like them to be able to copy and paste out of OneNote. That drives me nuts. You can't copy from OneNote into KACE. I've brought that up many times.

We've just had a major upgrade and I haven't had a chance to dig into things too much, as far as the improvements and the latest upgrades. So I can't really speak to what else might be missing.

There is a great resource for improvements that people would like to see, because Quest hosts a forum in IT Ninja where you can vote for features you'd like. When a lot of people vote on something, they roll it into their next update. There are so many good suggestions about things to add. One that I see right now is a Microsoft Outlook plug-in. There's always room for improvement, but the product that they have right now is so great, already, as it is.

I've been using Quest KACE Systems Management since I started with the company. I also used it at my previous job. The company has had KACE for about eight to 10 years. We started using SMA as a ticketing system six or seven years ago. We've been using it for quite a while and we have 26 queues throughout the organization.

It's very stable. In the 10 years, it's been down twice, and it was back up quickly. When we called support they were able to connect to it and it was fixed.

If there are any impacting outages, support is right on it. They're really good about that. I think I got locked out of the SDA for some unknown reason at one point, and support was right on it. I had it back up and going within the hour.

It supports a huge network for us and I would assume that that network has grown exponentially over the time that we've had it. There have been no implications as far as network use. It just works.

We really heavily utilize everything already. Moving to the cloud is probably the only thing that we can do differently, other than implementing the mobile device management or the file distribution. We have other solutions for those things. There isn't really anything else to expand or improve or to utilize within it because we really are using it all.

The support is good. Anytime we contact them they're always very helpful. The response time is good and they're knowledgeable.

Active Directory would have been the main solution for asset management. For a ticketing system, we used Track-It!, but it wasn't that good at all.

For the initial setups of service queues, and for setups of users, as well as for mail setup and the different control panel stuff, it's really straightforward. As far as setup of the appliance itself goes, it would be different than what we did because I believe it's mostly cloud-based appliances now, unless you're going specifically for on-premises. I don't even know if they're doing on-premises anymore.

I would guess—because I wasn't here when they stood it up—that we would have had support in setting it up because it is a KACE appliance.

When it comes to maintenance, I'm the only one required. I just did a major appliance upgrade and it may have taken half an hour. My colleague jumped in to make sure I didn't mess up any of her queues and we were good. It was done. It was super-easy.

Compared to the tools that I would have to use daily, it saves me hours every day. That is a huge return on investment, in and of itself. I'm sure that would be echoed throughout our company. Obviously, doing the reporting and the updates and all the rest of it, I'm a heavy user. I probably can't even put a number on how many hours are saved, hours that I would otherwise have to spend scripting and distributing some other way that just would not be as streamlined or easy. I script anything that has to be done more than a couple of times. That way, other teams don't have to come to me to ask the question. They don't have to try to manually fidget with things. They just run the script and it's fixed.

If you think of it in terms of time, and how it saves us hours every week, just for me and my colleague, as heavy users, a low estimate would be that it saves us eight hours each a month. That's 16 hours a month just between the two of us and we're just two of 600 people in the organization. That's a lot of money.

Even when it comes to the end-user in our organization who opens up a ticket, there is a difference between what they had to do before, when we used Track-It!, and before that when we used an email group, and what they have to do now. It has saved both the end-user, as well as the technician on the other side, a lot of time. They can respond to a ticket through Outlook. They can go through the ticket itself, they can add screenshots and attachments. It is very versatile for both sides. We're saving a lot of time with that.

The pricing and licensing are good. It's worth it. It's a core software on our system. Every single person uses KACE. Even for asset management, we have KACE Endpoint Management on each one of our devices as well. People use the help desk and we use it to track and deploy things. It's integral.

There are no costs in addition to their standard licensing fees.

We haven't had to evaluate anything else. It works great. We've got good support. The end users like it, the technicians like it. If you're happy with something, why go somewhere else?

They've got really good demos, so someone who is interested in it can watch a demo or use the trial version, and they'll know right away that it's something that they're going to like.

There is also a lot of really great, documented support throughout the IT Ninja community and KACE's own documentation. In both cases, there are all of the resources that a competent systems administrator could ever need to figure out how to do anything within SMA. Or they could ask somebody without even going to KACE's support, and that support, itself, is a whole other line of help.

The biggest lesson I've learned from using it is that it's really easy but its capabilities are totally customizable. There are tons of extra things you can dig in and do, once you get your feet wet. Once you've established yourself within the appliance, there are tons of ways that you can start utilizing it even more, such as the custom fields and the reporting, to save more time and create more efficiencies. It's a great tool for those sorts of things.

It's a great product. We really like using it. There are always improvements that can be made, but unless something doesn't work, everything that I do with it seems to be good.

I would give it a 10 out of 10 because I've never dealt with anything better in terms of the time it saves me and the ease in doing some of the things that I would otherwise have to spend a lot more time doing. I just really appreciate the system. I haven't come up against anything that I can't use it as a solution for, whether it's deploying imaging, managing, upgrading, or reporting. It's a powerhouse for me in my role. For what it offers me, it's a 10.

I use this solution for software packages, security updates, upgrades, and asset management.

The Microsoft SCCM environment is much more robust than KACE, but obviously, Microsoft equipment or Microsoft software is very expensive, so we have decided to take a cheaper alternative. It was a Dell product and we have a Dell computer base, so it was easier. There is ease of use, and its pricing was a driving factor.

Sometimes the information is not as real time as it's supposed to be. In that scenario, they have to work with Microsoft and figure it out, because I think that's the challenge that we always come across. The information we get isn't always 100% accurate.

There could be a dynamic environment where you can select what products you're using, whether it's Dell or IBM or HPE, and it creates its own repository. When there's not much internet usage, it downloads those critical patches or firmware updates so you can push it. 

I think that kind of thing will make it much better, because I think Microsoft products are only geared toward Microsoft. I think because KACE is not a Dell product anymore, it can work as a vendor independent or vendor agnostic approach where you can select which products that you are using, which models that you are using, and based on that, it can tell you there is an update or firmware upgrade that's available for this particular product or this particular model. If I forget to research what's available on the internet and the latest firmware upgrade, the tool itself could go every night and fetch whatever is the important update or upgrades that is available, download it, and tell the admin, "In your environment, these are the things that you can upgrade." Some of the work can be automated.

I have been using this solution for about 10 years.

I would rate this solution 8 out 10.

We have to do a lot of things manually, which I don't like in a tool because  automation is the key to everything. The less human interaction that a tool can provide, the better the product will be.

We use the solution for managing our fleet of approximately 1,500 devices. This includes Windows patch management and version control, scripting deployment to workstations as well as managed software deployment to groups and individuals. 

It is also used for creating reports for software use, patching records, and auditing the workstation fleet. We like being able to create custom reports based on any number of internal fields, and the ability to have custom inventory fields too. With it, we can deploy complex software solutions in a controlled manner.

Quest KACE has provided us with a managed environment that surpasses all expectations. The information available via KACE is up to date, critical to our normal operations, and has become the go-to tool of our IT teams for extended support. In our classroom environment, it has saved a lot of time in software deployment.

Having a full report of our estate, which version of Windows is running, whether the device is encrypted, is running the latest AV solution, when the support runs until, et cetera, has been vital. It allows us to maintain a service desk that has all of the most up-to-date information on all workstations.

Full auditing of the Windows estate is the most valuable aspect for us. We are aware this solution can do Apple and Linux-based integration too, however, we simply haven't had the time to explore this so far. 

The managed software deployment is great. We like ensuring a single managed solution can be deployed - rather than having to do a custom install, which is time consuming and error-prone.

Scripting deployment for configuration, removal, or reporting is helpful as well. This has allowed us to ensure we are currently using our workstations and they are correctly implemented for end-users.

The solution needs to add:

• Automated software deployment, rather than manually having to create uninstall packages and running this against a number of manually entered devices. 
• Driver feeds for devices outside of Dell ownership.
• The ability to push out managed feature updates from Microsoft in a more seamless way.
• The ability to integrate quickly with workstations to push out tests/patches.

There is a Resolve issue whereby some workstations no longer report/check-in after a recent update. This is now an open case with Quest Support.

There is a Resolve issue whereby we cannot migrate between VMware hosts.

We have been Quest KACE customers for approximately five years now. We have used the K1000 for device management and K2000 for asset deployment.

The stability is great - it simply never fails!

Scalability is very good. We've been able to expand several times, expanding the number of devices covered with ease. We have also utilised the cloud-based MDM solutions, however, this isn't something we've maintained a licence for due to internal staffing resources.

We have successfully moved away from a hardware-based solution and moved into a virtualised VMWare estate. This has allowed us to integrate the backups of this product within our organisational estate, plus allowed us to migrate the services across various parts of our network, without having to physically change the location of the hardware. This is a great solution for us and removed any hardware blockers that were in place previously and to take advantage of the virtualisation advantages without any major changes to our client estate.

We previously used Acronis to do very basic duplicate systems.

The solution is very easy to get set up and push out clients to our workstations for deployment. It is now used as our only solution to image and deploy workstations!

As with many platforms, the more you can put in, the better the solution will function. The time taken to deploy complex packages can be time-consuming, but this is outside of the KACE environment directly.

Licencing has been quite simple throughout. We have successfully expanded our support numerous times, including additional features and devices.

We did not previously evaluate other options. 

We use it for the asset management of all our computers, servers, desktops, and laptops that are internal and external. We have multiple offices who use it to deploy some of our software. It is the system that we use for our help desk when people have issues.

We were using a physical server with a physical device up until the end of last year. Now, it is a virtual device but we are still hosting it internally.

It gets everybody on the same standard, standardizing software and versions. That is one of the key things to it. Everybody has the same version of stuff. It helps with reporting by seeing who doesn't have that same version and the help desk side of having one place for people to put in their help or technical support requests. 

It has one place where we can look at the history. For example, if several people are having the problem, we can go look at how we solved the problem last time. So, it provides us with historic data.

There is one place for a lot of different things. If somebody has a problem with their computer, they will put in a ticket. From there, we will know who it is and the assets assigned to them, because there is one place to go look for what we are talking about and with whom we are talking. Just having one place for everything is really convenient. For example, we are able to deploy software to hundreds of computers. We don't need to go to each individual device.

It seems to do what we need it to do. It is pretty intuitive.

In regards to managing computers, our help desk, and handling help desk tickets, it is a single pane of glass for what we need. This includes the reporting and our asset management, e.g., when we loan things out. This is one of the key reasons that we are keeping it. It is not six different systems.

We use it for IT asset management, software asset management, and patch management. These features are all very important for us. Without each one of them, it would be problematic. It is easier to use them all in one place. We do not need to jump to different systems or technologies to do things because we could do it from this solution.

The customization of the interface needs improvement for things like end user tickets. While the functionality is good, some of that UI stuff does need improvement. Though, I don't receive a lot of complaints about it.

Some of the reporting could be a little more intuitive. This is something that could be worked on.

You really need to take the training. There is a learning curve when using it because it is just different from other things. 

There are some newer things coming out where it won't cover quite as much with some of the Microsoft Azure stuff.

I have been using it for at least eight years.

The stability is good. There were some people who were hesitant to go onto the VM, but we did have a physical appliance. We haven't had any issues with it, hardware-wise or software-wise. There have been the occasional questions, but it is reliable as far I am concerned.

It has scaled for us. We are not using thousands of machines, but we are definitely double what we were, and it wasn't even noticeable.

We have hundreds of people putting tickets in. There are six help desk admins who are using it to administer and handle help desk tickets

We have a support contract with them. If there is a critical issue, I can call them and talk to somebody. 

The technical support has been pretty good. We haven't had any huge issues. There have been a few questions here and there over the years. When I have needed stuff, e.g., if there is a big upgrade, I will definitely reach out and call them to get a little background on what is going on and what to expect when we do it. They have been receptive to that. They have gotten back to us quickly.

When we switched over to the VM, we had some issues at first. We called them. We definitely were able to talk to somebody right away. 

They have been receptive and helpful. The people that I have talked to have been very helpful and knowledgeable. They have understood the issues and got through them quickly, which is definitely a positive.

I would rate technical support as nine out of 10 because there is always room for improvement.

Positive

We used Track-It! for some of our components previously, which definitely didn't do everything. In that case, it was just for asset management, not even for the help desk stuff. We switched to Quest KACE for what it offered and all the capabilities of what it did.

We watched quite a few demos, then we did a mini demo onsite where we applied it to a handful of computers for testing.

The initial setup was straightforward. It was well-documented. It was one of the better solutions that I have had to implement.

The deployment took about a week, then we did another week of monitoring. If we would have pushed it, then we probably could have been done in a couple days.

When we bought it, there was an implementation period. We were one-on-one with somebody who walked us through the setup process. A little after that, we customized some stuff a bit more for our environment.

It definitely saves us all kinds of time and value.

For a software solution in the past doing this stuff, it would probably take us a week to get software deployed everywhere. Now, we are able to do it in a couple nights with just a variety of things, e.g., people not restarting computers. It saves us well over half the time because we are not having to touch individual things or micromanage them.

It definitely frees up time. We are not doing redundant things on multiple machines, which frees us up to do other stuff. It makes us more responsive and able to come up with solutions faster when fixing some people's problems.

We definitely looked at a few options. When we got it, one of the key things was the pricing. It was good compared to some of the other solutions. Some of the other solutions were just astronomical in price compared with KACE and didn't necessarily have the ease of use either. So, we chose Quest KACE for its easy-to-use features and cost.

Quest KACE's ease of use is good, and it has gotten better. It was never bad. Compared to other solutions that we looked at, Quest KACE was nicer and easier to use, but there was definitely a learning curve. 

We are still using it. We are not even thinking about using anything else, e.g., Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (formerly System Center) which is way easier to use. 

I would recommend watching demos and getting hands-on demonstrations.

We are in talks about getting the solution's Systems Deployment Appliance (SDA). It is on our wish list.

I would rate the solution overall as eight out of 10. The reporting and UI could be improved. Some of the other solutions are a little more user-friendly.