What is our primary use case?
It is basically an endpoint management solution. It is used for endpoint configuration and life cycle management of an endpoint. It helps you to manage the entire cycle of a machine, which includes patch management, security updates, configuration settings, and user configuration settings. It helps you with application delivery, application patching, and application removal. It provides you with all of that. It also gives you the keys to log onto the machine remotely and run commands via PowerShell script or a remote command capability.
It is a pretty in-depth product. It supports macOS and Linux. They also offer MDM now. So, you can do mobile device management, and they've got new plugins for security modeling for identifying caesar-based vulnerabilities and patch remediation. They give you configuration management tools to allow you to see if your web services are configured properly or even configured at all. It does network scanning and network vulnerability assessments, port audits, software audits, software metering, and software licensing. It is pretty in-depth.
In terms of its version, there is an ongoing update with the product. I started with version 7 or 8, and it is probably at version 11 now. They are on-prem and cloud versions of it.
How has it helped my organization?
It is pretty intuitive when it comes to where and how you need to do things. A lot of already preconfigured templates and settings are available to you. It is beneficial where you don't have to go through or do post configuration. A lot of applications have a tendency of being very end-user-heavy. For example, with System Center Config Manager, which is a Microsoft product, if you're not an engineer and you don't understand that product, you're probably not going anywhere with it, whereas with ManageEngine, you can bring some junior-level tech support. Because it does have scalability, you can assign roles to users whether they are junior help desk support engineers or senior engineers. You can also have reporting and inventory metrics that are only available to management. It provides a role-based granularity to all these key capabilities, and it makes it very easy for even non-technical people to run a program. It is based on web technologies, and a browser is all you need to really use to get to it. Obviously, you'd want to secure that web access down, but you do have role capabilities.
What is most valuable?
Its cross-platform capabilities and the ability to do both OS-level patching and third-party patching are valuable. It is difficult to find a software product that will do all that for you out of the box, and you don't have to do any configuration other than your initial setup. Once you do that, there is a very minimalistic approach to getting it operational. You can have it up and running within a 20-minute time span.
Their pre-configuration and ability to keep it simple for the end user, including the admin side, is helpful. It is not a very difficult program to bring on. It doesn't require a lot of technical skill to run. As long as you understand the technology that you're working with, you don't have to learn this program.
It has enterprise-level capabilities. They do offer a distributed version. If you need to really build it out, you could build it across the globe, or you could just run it in a small shop with 200 users or less. It is a pretty robust product.
What needs improvement?
Their support channel could be better. They're an India-based company. They're based out of India. So, here in the States, support can be difficult when you're dealing with time zone requirements. A more global support channel would be a wise choice for them.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using this solution for about 12 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
There have been issues in the past. I've been using the product for about 12 years, if not longer. At one time, they delivered an agent that ate up your CPU and your memory. The agent is auto-install on your machine. So, out of nowhere, your entire network went down because of agent deployment. They turned around and fixed that pretty quickly. I'd probably call that their biggest flaw.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is quite scalable. Our environment is not very large, but I've seen large deployments. We have about 1,000 machines and 1,500 users, but it is possible if you want to scale it out through the enterprise. I've seen it in multi-site environments with more than 10,000 users.
For 1,500 users, in a well-trained and well-capable environment, you would probably have four people to manage your entire environment with that app.
How are customer service and support?
They should have a more global support channel.
How was the initial setup?
It is very straightforward. The more complex part is doing security hardening and configuration on the server, which includes setting up certificates, starting on two-factor, and running through all security configurations to make sure it is secure. You obviously want your server to be as secure as possible because it could be a huge hole in your environment if someone were to take control of that server or application.
What was our ROI?
I don't have the metrics, but in my personal experience with the app, our return on investment is pretty high considering the number of human resources we would have needed to do all that it can do.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
There are multiple flavors of the app. They have a distributed version for enterprises. It depends on your size. They price it on a per machine basis. 250 or 500 is probably their least amount.
What other advice do I have?
I focus primarily on security and hardening, and they've made leaps and bounds in that as well as mobile device management and cross-platform capability in terms of working with multiple vendors and multiple devices. They seem to fit the bill there.
The MDM is incorporated in the Desktop Central, and they also offer an OS deployment module. ManageEngine has a lot of modules. Desktop Central is probably made from two or three separate products. They all are combined and collaborated into what Desktop Central is. Their analyzer tools pull from different apps to build functionality into some of the bigger core applications, such as DTC or Endpoint now. It is called Endpoint Management.
I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.