KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) Reviews

The primary use of this product is for our user support (help desk).

Kace has helped us integrate all of our IT needs from inventory to imaging. Having this appliance to do everything automatically and push out software is a plus. Summer tasks are so much easier with imaging across the network that requires almost zero technicians intervention.

Managing 3,000+ computers across our campus from one single solution has made our life (and work) so easy. We are able to respond to the needs of our users always and can look into the history of the devices or the KB created to self-serve our users.

Our computer Inventory became more accurate, and computers were rolled out faster. Our techs adapted quickly to the new service desk, and the users can now check the status of their ticket by login into the user portal. 

As we plan computer rotations, having an accurate inventory is a key to identifying computers that are end-of-life or out of warranty. KACE can provide all of the necessary information by simply running customized reports that in turn can be provided to individuals or departments, either on-demand or on an automatic schedule.

Asset management, inventory, reporting, and service desk features work together and they are very valued in our daily operations.

When a user creates a ticket, users are in a continuous loop of communication via the service desk, user portal, or email. We are now able to set tier levels and involve other areas within IT, networking, sysadmin, VOIP, or managerial for approvals.

The service desk can be configured and customized to better serve our environment. If necessary, additional queues can be added.

There is always room for improvement. An example will be the implementation of granulated permission to run Scripts. We often find it unnecessary (and dangerous) that all technicians can see/run all the scripts created by our institution. Ideally, a Manager could assign some scripts to certain levels of support. 

However, the system does most of what we need at this moment.                                          

KACE has a website, "Use Your Voice," where users can make suggestions to improve the product or add new features. This offers a great way to improve the system.                      

KACE recently added Windows Feature Update patching to SMA. That was a considerable improvement to keep end-points secure, as many users were asking for it. 

SMA was implemented in our institution in late 2008.

The stability is great, initially was running on a physical server, and recently migrated to a VM, both environments are very well-built.

Support was always provided a fast and accurate response to our questions, issues, or even helping us implementing new system upgrades

n/a

The setup was straight foward, and a dedicated support team was on the line while we implemented and set up the system. KACE included a follow-up online training to guide us and have the appliance up and running within the first hour.

We've seen ROI in less than 6 months.

We also looked into TrackIT.

We primarily use this solution for the help desk, but we also utilize the scripting portion of it to automate things that would otherwise take us a long time to do manually. We're just now trying to start using the asset management portion of it as well, tying users to various equipment.

In addition to these things, we use some of the reporting and some of the file synchronization features.

An example of automation is pushing patches out to users. For example, I just finished creating a bunch of patch schedules.

All of the features that this product offers play an important role in our company.

We have a K1000 and it offers a single pane of glass for endpoint management. It would be nice to have a K2000 because it would then include image updates for hard drives, which our version does not. Otherwise, as far as endpoint management is concerned, it is complete.

We have utilized the IT assets but have been largely unsuccessful in using the modules for licensing and warranty.

When it comes to updating and configuring everything the way we need to have it done in our environment, it takes care of 90% of the work. It would be nice if it had a packager for software when we're dealing with executable files because not everything has a managed installer, unfortunately. It means that we have to trick it into doing what we need to do sometimes. For the most part, it does what we require.

The most valuable feature for us is the helpdesk. Just being in the IT industry in general, we have to have something to track what we're doing day in and day out, whether it be a project or end-user support. It helps us keep all that together in one place. The help desk is what everybody in our department uses it for the most.

The scripting is a very valuable feature, as it saves us time on pushing certain things out to the users, such as software and patches. The patches definitely need some help.

When you get to patch management, it's complicated. I have had to call technical support about it several times. The labels can get kind of confusing as well. I know that there are a lot of them and if I spend more time in it I'd probably understand it better, but anytime I have to create a label for something, I just get lost in a rabbit hole.

We tried the licensing a few times, but we never got it to work properly. It's always really buggy. It is a similar situation with the warranty information; it doesn't always pull that information accurately. It would be helpful to have those pieces addressed because we can't use them. It's been a few years since we touched it, so they may have been addressed by now, but every time we updated, we would go and test it and it just wasn't keeping track correctly.

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. This experience is uniform across multiple devices that we've tried over the years. I've read the reviews on the app store and all of the different messages being sent to the developers about how this needs to be fixed, and nothing ever happens. This is an area that could use some improvement, for sure.

It needs to have better Unix crontab options for patch management. We want to have the ability to use expressions because we would like to do our patches every two weeks. As it is now, with the way it's formatted, it won't allow us to do that. Essentially, we need more customization as far as the schedules are concerned.

We had a report where there were some custom fields in KACE, and we would be able to fill those out and utilize them for reporting. In one of the updates, those fields were removed. They were custom-built and they still exist in KACE, but from what I understood from the release notes and from speaking with a support rep, those fields are no longer available in reporting. Without being able to report them, it defeats the whole purpose of having fields there in the first place.

We are still able to do some customization in the reports, but the custom one, two, three, and four fields in the user details are in the appliance, but we can't find them on a table anywhere inside of the database.

Another thing that we would like is to have at least a limited degree of write permissions for the databases. It would make it a lot easier for reporting or even certain things that can't be exported, to have at least some kind of write control to the databases. I understand, as a company, why they don't want to give that ability to some people because of the can of worms that it opens, but it would just be really helpful to be able to automate some things, rather than have to go in and update the stuff field by field.

For example, the help desk configuration, where you have your categories and subcategories, and you can go in there and assign users. We have more than 100 of those line by line. Anytime we get a new help desk person or we make a change to who the owner is of a certain category, we have to go in there and manually set it, each and every one of them, and it takes hours to do.

Essentially, we would like to have more control over it and assume responsibility for problems should they occur. If we break something then it's our own fault.

Since we upgraded to version 10.0, all of our reports are broken. I haven't yet called in about that to find out what the problem is. At this point, we get a bunch of unknowns and question marks whenever we pull a KACE report off of our report server. It may not be a serious issue.

I have been using Quest KACE Systems Management for almost seven years. At the company, it has been in use since before I started.

The stability is great. We've only had it crash once, and that was because of a power outage. Otherwise, it's been awesome.

It used to be slow at some points, but over the years, through the updates, it's gotten a lot more responsive. There are still a few things here and there that take a little bit longer than I think they should to load, but it's not worth mentioning.

For the most part, this product grows with our needs. Back in the day, when we first got it, it was owned by Dell. All of our equipment is from Dell, including our servers and our laptops and computers, our workstations. It fits together very nicely.

All of our end-users use it, if they need to put in a help desk request. As far as the daily use of it, the ins and outs, I'm the administrator and I make sure that all the updates are done. I check on the patch schedules.

In IT, there are three of us. Aside from me, we have an IT admin that uses it to track his projects, as well as some tickets that get assigned to him for reporting requests.

On top of tracking these items, he uses some of the scripting functionality, when it's server-related. As an example, last week, he used it to handle changes that we had made regarding a print server. We changed our print server over to a new one, and he utilized scripting to remove the old server and add the new one. That's what he mainly uses it for.

Our IT director doesn't really use it for much of anything, other than his project-tracking and being able to look at everybody's queues, like mine and my IT admin's, just to see where we're at during the day in more of a supervisory role.

My experience with technical support goes back a long way and the service has changed over time. Overall, it's been a mix, based on luck of the draw. It depends on who I get on the phone. Some people know exactly what they're talking about, and some people don't, and we have to go through several emails or several phone calls just to try and figure it out.

Whenever you call in and you request a callback and the representatives say, "Okay, yes, we'll have a technician call you within the next couple of hours," it's about a 50/50 shot whether they actually call you back or not. Sometimes, they just send you an email instead of calling you. This can be a problem because I have all my emails filtered, so, if I'm looking for something important, I can get to it quicker. However, if I'm expecting a call from KACE support, I'm not going to be looking for that email. That's been a frustrating experience.

Over the years, it's gotten a little better, but it's still the same thing with the emails and the time it takes for them to get back to you. Or, if they just don't happen to be there the next day and somebody else has to take that ticket, that is another thing that can be frustrating. There is room for improvement there, as well.

We did not use another solution prior to this one.

It was implemented before I arrived but I have been involved in the upgrade process ever since I joined the company. It is straightforward most of the time but there can be some complexity and it can vary. For example, getting the backups done can be complex, as can things be when changing from version to version. However, for the most part, it has been as easy as just pressing a button and doing an update.

I would say that overall, it is 75% straightforward.

The help desk is super simple to use and we saw our return on investment a long time ago, just in man hours alone.

We used to use a spreadsheet to track all of the things that came through IT, and that is cumbersome. It takes 20 times longer to do. You have to make sure that somebody else doesn't have the spreadsheet open. There are only so many ways that you can put in different columns and rows to get all the information you need, especially when you have to do updates. It was really clumsy the way it was done in Excel.

Another example of where it saves us time is with the scripting, whenever we have to do an update to our transportation management system. It is the biggest piece of software that we have, it's the most complex, and there's a lot of moving pieces to it. We used to actually have to go to each individual computer in the company, of which there are 100 or more, and manually update the different pieces. Now, we can do it with the click of a button in scripting, and then just go around to the few people that it may not have hit properly and manually do it there. It saves a lot of time.

We pay annually for technical support.

I looked at Spiceworks at one point just to see what their solution was like. We didn't fully implement it. Rather, I added a couple of computers on it. It was mostly for watching the network and I didn't evaluate it to the point where I could compare it with KACE.

My advice for anybody who is implementing this solution is to be ready for a lot to come at you at once because it does so many things. It's a blessing and a curse at the same time. Also, if you're going to go with a solution from KACE, I would suggest the K2000 rather than the K1000, just because it has more.

We do not plan on changing solutions anytime soon.

I would rate this solution a six out of ten.

We were originally using a physical appliance and now we have migrated to a virtual appliance. We migrated to the virtual appliance three years ago.

Our primary use case is for managed installations and the software that we deploy. Our offices are scattered throughout the state and we have 103 locations that are remote. We use KACE to inventory those items. We use KACE to push updates, third-party products, and third-party software to them.

We gather inventory from them, it lets us know how many machines out there have 16 gigs of memory and who's running low in this space. Any new software that we get that the company purchases, that is how we deploy out to the masses. We do that so that we don't have to travel the state over and over again, we can do all this stuff remotely.

We also have a lot of reports that are being generated from the information that KACE has so that we can take that back to our accounting department. We can provide reports on the location of newly purchased laptops. It shows us if they're still being used and who they are assigned to.

The ease of being able to distribute software to a thousand machines from one location with just a few clicks is the most valuable feature.

KACE is super easy to use. You have to change your mental process on how to think of something and look at it as how KACE has designed it. But once you can figure out what KACE is thinking, then it is really easy to use. We've been using it so long that we don't have to write much new stuff for it. We are able to use the old scripting jobs or deployments that we had. We're able to take those and modify them with new software and then push it out that way. I learn something new every day in it. There's a lot of stuff that I probably don't know that it can do. I'm always playing with and discovering new things.

It's 90% on a single pane.

We use the Systems Deployment Appliance. It's our bread and butter. Every machine that gets imaged here in this building and out through the whole state goes through the SDA. We rely on it completely. There is no manual process of getting a laptop out of a box, plugging it up, turning it on, and waiting for Windows to start. If you were to go to Best Buy and buy a brand new laptop, you would spend the next two to three hours just setting it up. We don't do that. We get a laptop, plug it into the network, connect it to the SDA, and within about three clicks, we're done.

It takes around 30 minutes to configure our laptops. We image machines, image laptops five to 10 of them at a time. It's really great to just line them all up and power them on, hit enter, enter, enter, and then walk away. That part's great.

KACE saves us time. We've been using it for so long now it's become part of our routine. 

It has also increased the team's productivity. We've been able to create standards where we know that no matter what type of laptop it is, we can image it the same way. It has the same setup for every user kind of thing. We know we can guarantee that everybody across the state is running the same version of Microsoft Office or products like that. It has continuity. It's made it to where we are efficient across the board from high-level VP level down to standard user level. Our equipment and the way that our equipment functions is standard. It's across the board.

It makes it to where the six guys that are on our team here can step up and do the same job. We know what to look for. We know the learning curve for it. We all know what it does and how it works. If we hired a new person, they could come in and pick it up very fast and be up and going extremely quickly. We've cut the learning curve down tremendously.

I would like for there to be improvement when it comes to Microsoft and Windows updates. It has the ability to do it but the control of it is not there like I have in the Windows Server Update Services. The way KACE does it is still very granular. You don't really see the process like it is in the Windows Server Update Services. I think that would be one of the biggest things that I would like to see KACE really put some work into and really make that a big enhancement. 

I have been using KACE for seven to eight years. 

It's very stable. The upgrades and patches that they come out with only seem to enhance the product. They're not trying to fix something that's broken. It always seems like when there is a new version, it's always something that is enhancing.

We have one SDA and one SMA and it works for all 1200 of our devices that we have listed. I don't think we would ever need to scale out to anything larger than that.

When it comes to opening a service ticket or a support ticket through KACE with Quest, it's one of those that I don't cringe at. I don't mind it because I know I'm going to get somebody that's going to help me. They go above and beyond to help, unlike other companies like Microsoft or something. It's a pain to open a ticket with them because you feel like you have to sit at your phone and can't move and can't leave waiting for them. It's the complete opposite for Quest. I really like how KACE operates on the support side of things. We use their premium support.

I can open a ticket through the appliance itself or I can sign onto the Quest support website and submit a ticket that way. I know that in a very short amount of time, I'm either going to get contacted that they're working on it or we'll actually have a support technician calling me directly. I get real people. One of the biggest benefits is you get a real person. A real person who is willing and knowledgeable about the problem that you're calling about.

Having this excellent support hasn't influenced us to purchase additional products. But it has been an influence on never, not even considering, picking a different product for SMA or SDA. It's a given that it will be here and it will be here for a long time.

The initial setup was straightforward. When we got the original physical machines, it was taken out of the box, we plugged it into the rack, and got it set up. Within a day or so we had it up and running and had machines in there doing inventory already.

We had professional services assist us with the deployment. I can't remember if they actually came on-site or if we did it remotely. 

Our experience with Quest support has always been great. Any of our interactions with them have always been spot on.

The biggest thing that I've discovered from it, is to give a picture of our entire environment. In one location, I can see how many laptops we have, how many desktops we have, how many people we have assigned, and to what software we have it deployed. I can give versions. I can give so much detail on devices that I don't normally see or I don't normally touch, that are anywhere from five miles down the road to 300 miles down the road. I have the ability to see them, change them, update them, and move them. That's where the biggest bang for it comes in.

From an admin point of view, it would make an administrator's life a lot easier to be able to have that vision across their environments and know what's out there and where you stand in that environment. To know if the machines are up to date or if they falling behind, and different things like that. 

I would rate KACE a solid nine out of ten. Nothing is perfect, I think that there's always room for improvement but it would be a strong nine.

We use it to deploy software, push updates to the software, and manage our endpoints, desktops, and laptop computers. We are currently managing over 4,000 endpoints.

We are patching our software with KACE.

We have a virtual appliance.

We have a better handle on knowing exactly where our computers are and who is logging into them. We also have a better solution on what equipment is obsolete and needs to be replaced. We are also probably more compliant with upgrading our software or keeping our software patched so we have less vulnerabilities.

The solution has increased our IT productivity. I have seen a big increase from management to do reporting. It takes us a lot less time to identify systems that need to be upgraded. It is very efficient when we have to upgrade settings on the computer because my folks don't have to walk around and do that. 

KACE collects all the inventory of everything on a computer and everything about a computer, like warranty information. Software control and inventory is its most valuable feature. We use it all the time for that because we have a large geographic area with limited staff. It allows us to do things from a central location.

The solution provides us a single pane of glass with everything that we need for endpoint management of all devices. It definitely has made our endpoint management process much easier.

For the basic functions, it is very easy to use, e.g., looking up computers and seeing what is on them. For the software deployment and scripting, it is more difficult. I only have experienced people on my team do that type of work. If there was a way to simplify the interface for more technical tasks, that would be more useful.

We had a system that we had to upgrade manually this past week. It was a good portion of the systems. Unfortunately, due to the type of software it was, I couldn't do it with KACE, even though we tried. So, my folks had to manually touch each one of the computers, and it cost us hours in lost productivity.

The correlation between assets and inventory needs improvement. The KACE appliance does both asset tracking and inventory, and the link between those two is very sparse and difficult to operate. So, I asked them if they could link those two more seamlessly. I gave that information to KACE a couple of years ago.

I have been using it for over 10 years.

It has been very stable. It just runs. We haven't had to reboot or do any work on the virtual side in months.

It does regular upgrades, which are manual. You need to upgrade your appliance manually. We are one iteration back right now, so we will have to upgrade the appliance. This doesn't happen that often. We don't typically upgrade every time an update comes out. We do it as needed or before it gets too old.

We haven't had to scale it. We only have one appliance. However, when we have gone through several upgrade purchases to add more nodes and systems to it, we buy a license, then apply that to the appliance. Then, our systems can just check in.

We put the solution on every computer in our environment. So, we don't have plans to increase usage, except when we buy more stuff. KACE goes on every computer that we have. It is required for our organization. If we bought 5,000 more computers, then we would buy 5,000 more licenses. That is just the standard that we use.

We have Quest support. I assume we buy the highest level. Here's the thing about their support: It is good and bad. Their support is excellent once you get to the right person on the right team, I find that the subject-matter experts in their area of KACE are extremely helpful. They guide and help me figure out the things that I can't do. However, it takes a little while to get through their support system to get to that right person. The issues with KACE are minor compared to the benefits provided by the organization.

The initial setup was complex. It is a Linux-based virtual server, where the customer cannot get into the back-end, so you can only follow their prompts. Then, there are specific things that have to be done in their implementation and upgrade phases that have to be done in a certain order or steps. If you don't get those steps right, the system doesn't work. I think that either simplifying that process or providing really good step-by-step documentation would be helpful.

Simultaneously, we were having a problem with the appliance, which caused us to migrate to virtual.

Our implementation strategy at that time went through our change control process. It was to back up the old system, take those backups offline, implement the new system, and then restore from the backups. There are two parts to that which need to be done: 

1. Bring the system up and test with the test group. 
2. Deploy that system for the rest of our network.

We originally had it on an appliance. I was the one who did the virtual upgrade. It was very complex to get it first setup. However, Quest was very helpful in getting that done. I would not have been able to do it without some of their help. The migration took days (close to a week).

It has saved us a lot of time. I couldn't quantify it because we have been using it for so long. It would be hard to remember what it was like before using it. I would imagine it is enough personnel hours that when we have lost people due to attrition, if we didn't have it, then we would have been pretty sunk.

As a government agency, our accounting doesn't look at depreciation or ROI. We just don't. I have seen the return on the investment personally, because I can see the folks who work for me don't have to work as hard or have to travel as much to get things done. I could see where, in a private company, you could turn that into dollars and cents. We just don't monetize that. However, if I worked for a private company, I would absolutely be counting the hours saved and how much that turns into money.

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.

We have another solution for patching endpoints on the operating system. KACE would probably do a great job at it. We just already have something else in our environment. Most companies probably do. For example, if you have a Microsoft environment, then you would probably use a Microsoft solution. Or, if you are in a Linux environment, then you would probably use a Linux brand.

We have a separate system for imaging and deploying our computers. I wouldn't mind trying the solution's Systems Deployment Appliance (SDA). It might be something that I will look at in the future.

We evaluated what we could do with Microsoft solutions because we have Active Directory. We haven't really evaluated any other third-party solutions because we have been happy with KACE and don't see a need to shop elsewhere.

Microsoft has some easier solutions because they are already built into the Active Directory system, because the operating systems are already talking on the back-end. KACE does things that are easier to implement because it is a single dashboard that allows me better control. We don't use KACE for operating system updates because that is built into Microsoft Active Directory, but Microsoft Active Directory does not provide anything for third-party software updates, like Adobe products. So, we kind of use KACE for what it is good at and use the other one for what it is good at.

Absolutely leverage the software update catalog that you can put together and implement. Brush up on your batch scripting because that is very important. Those are the main things that really helped us. 

The software distribution takes some research to figure out how to do. You will just have to spend some time learning how to do it.

Our mobile devices are managed separately.

I would rate this solution as an eight out of 10.

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.

We use it for asset management for PCs and servers, and for doing updates. We also use it for monitoring all of our systems to keep them compliant with Windows updates or server updates. In addition, we use it to deploy and to uninstall software, and we use the Service Desk.

We're using Quest's K1000, which is the asset manager, and we're using the K2000, which is the deployment appliance.

The way it helps us is the easy organization and visibility that it gives into the software versions that are on our assets. It doesn't necessarily provide the solution but it provides us with high visibility into where we're at on all our assets. We can then address the different deployments to get things up to date pretty quickly.

The most valuable feature is the ability to monitor updates—the software versions—on machines so that we can keep everything compliant. We're very highly monitored because we are a financial institution. We have audits all the time and they look for vulnerabilities. So we try to keep everything to the latest software versions and firmware versions. We use KACE to monitor those.

The K1000 doesn't communicate well with some clients without SMB. There are some issues with getting things to image correctly because they rely on SMB, and SMB is a protocol that is being removed due to security reasons. Organizations are trying to rely less and less on SMB. I know Quest is aware of it. They've talked about having a new version that wouldn't rely on SMB for connection to the clients, but they haven't gotten there yet.

I've been using the Quest KACE Systems Management for four years. We're using 12.01.49 and we've been on it for about a month. We update pretty much every time updates become available.

The KACE solution is solid. We haven't had any issues with functionality.

It's definitely easy to scale out. We've had to add licenses as our environment has grown. We haven't had any problems there. We haven't hit our heads on any capacity issues.

We're using it to the capacity that we need to. We do most of our software deployment through it and we do about 150 to 200 tickets a month through the Service Desk.

Any time I've had to deal with their technical support, they've responded quickly and they're pretty thorough in getting things resolved.

For example, about six months ago, one of the updates didn't deploy correctly. I was doing it on a Saturday because I didn't want to interrupt production. It didn't go well, and a gentleman from Quest support jumped on and he went through it that day and we got it resolved. He knew what code needed to be executed manually and he worked through the problem and had us up within a couple of hours.

Positive

The initial setup is pretty involved because you have to set up Service Desk and you've got to set up all your environment labels for the different assets. As a part of purchasing the appliance, you do get to buy some services to help you get it set up in your environment, and that was a great purchase. They assisted us a lot in getting the Service Desk, and some of our labeling and environment, set up to get us going.

Between the two appliances, the deployment took pretty close to a week.

In terms of an implementation strategy, the first part was to get the Service Desk up and running on the K1000. Then we went to the K2000 with imaging and deployment through that.

We have about 85 to 90 people using the Service Desk, and we have five people in our IT department who administer the system. While they don't do so full-time, we have three people who do the admin work on the KACE appliance. One is responsible for software deployment, and the other two do most of the updates, as well as the monitoring of updates and vulnerabilities on computers, and pushing the patches through KACE. And we have four people who monitor the Service Desk in KACE. One is a basic Service Desk individual and the other three are systems admins who overlap and help out.

At the time when we bought it, it was a Dell product. Since then, Dell sold it to Quest. Dell provided a third party to help with the installation.

The solution has saved us a ton of time in several areas. We spend tremendously less time—probably 80 percent less—on updating now, versus before we had KACE.

I was using Microsoft SCCM in my previous environment and I replaced it with KACE. When I came to this new environment we put KACE in. Compared to SCCM, it's a lot better. With SCCM, when I was trying to push updates or get the stuff to function, the way it was designed it was more difficult. Usually, if I set up a script with KACE, it doesn't take long to get it to run successfully. Whether it's scripting or installing, it seems to be much smoother with the KACE product. The improvements are in deploying Windows and server updates automatically, on schedule.

We got rid of SCCM because we got out of our Microsoft licensing agreement at the time, and it was covered under that. And it just wasn't effective for us. We had a lot of issues with it.

There were a couple of us in IT who had used KACE in previous environments and we liked it, so we made the recommendation and moved forward with it.

Its ease of use is an eight out of 10. Some things can be a little difficult to find, but support's always there to help if we can't figure something out.

For both appliances, the K1000 and the K2000, make sure that you purchase the support for the deployment and get Quest's assistance in getting it set up properly for your environment. With the K2000, we got it set up with their support and then one of our technicians went in and started changing things and really set it in the wrong direction. Their support will help you start out on a firm foundation.