What is our primary use case?
We use it for desktop and server security and critical updates, and for imaging Windows client machines, which would be Windows 10. That's our primary usage for that. We generate reports from it, showing the status of our infrastructure, our device infrastructure, I should say, for clients.
One of the big uses is also for endpoint protection updates. We use endpoint protection for anti-virus and anti-malware and that's all managed centrally.
How has it helped my organization?
We run security updates for endpoint protection daily. Any zero day threats that arise we're covered for those, assuming Microsoft has recognized there was an issue to patch for them. Generally, it's no more than 24 hours after something becomes available that we will have it deployed.
What is most valuable?
I like the automated features of it that let you schedule those updates and the ability of the product to focus on the specific updates, specific platforms, and products that we're interested in keeping up to date.
What needs improvement?
They could definitely update some of the documentation associated with the product. We have a couple of issues with syncing with the Microsoft updates on servers. We don't completely understand what's happening. It's a little bit hard to get a handle on it, doing the research on our own.
Most of the documentation is online, however, there are some gaps there. The product documentation still refers back to the 2012 Server. We're pretty much in 2022. There's a ten-year gap there.
I work in a K-12 educational environment. Over the last 18 to 24 months, we've been back and forth between everybody being offsite, with the ability to manage devices over the public internet. A lot of times, particularly in this timeframe, student devices, teachers' devices have not been on site. Yet, we still need to ensure that those are being updated and protected. This may have already been considered in the mobile platform, however, it's something to consider here.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using the solution for seven years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability has been very reliable. We run a virtualized instance of the 2012 server that we have it deployed on, as that's what the documentation describes. In the course of seven years, we've only had to recover it once or twice when an update has gone sideways. We've always been able to do that. We've been pretty comfortable with it. We're careful about that.
If we're doing an update, we'll close the system before we do an update, and definitely do a backup of it and test immediately after the update. We can see if there are any issues and then roll back if necessary, until Microsoft fixes whatever part of the update that might have broken.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We're a fairly small organization. We only have a few thousand endpoints. That said, my understanding of it is that it has pretty massive scalability. The number of users that interact with it is just a handful. They are the admins and our IT department.
It's operating 24 hours a day and it's got a critical role doing those security updates. I would say it's used extensively.
How are customer service and support?
It's been pretty rare that we would reach out to Microsoft. We're an enterprise customer, however, we don't pay for support for products. We can get support in a pinch, but typically what we found with them is that there's a pretty hefty charge to do that, over and above what we pay for the subscription services. We typically rely on the community around the product and on peers that also use the product.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Prior to my arrival, the company was using Ghost and Windows Deployment Services, WDS, however, WDS was subsumed into System Center and Ghost just no longer really served our needs.
How was the initial setup?
I didn't do the initial setup myself, however, I was working for the same organization when it was set up.
During the setup, we wound up reaching out to a lot of peers for their experience and what they ran into in setting it up and getting it configured properly. We chose that route since we work in education K-12 and there's quite a community around that. We had pretty good success with that. We did not go out specifically and sign up for training for it.
That said, the documentation hasn't changed much since it was initially set up with the availability of documentation.
It took us a few weeks to set it up, configure it, make it ready to run, and verify that it was functionally performing the way we thought it should.
I wouldn't say that it's maintenance-heavy. It was largely one person doing the setup with some assistance from myself. Now we have one technician typically looking at the reports on a daily basis. They check for anything that we need to be aware of, or that comes up, and also work with our system admin for updating images if we're updating images for new Windows devices. It's not really maintenance-heavy in our instance.
What about the implementation team?
We handled the implementation in-house, however, we did ask for advice from our peers.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It's rolled into our enterprise subscription. The entire subscription is around $25,000 a year, however, that covers all the products that we use.
What other advice do I have?
We're pretty much right up to date with the product. We may be one recent update behind, however, we're not far behind with it. We keep it up-to-date for safety and bug-prevention reasons.
I would advise training would be a big plus for anybody that's going to deploy this at any sizeable scale. There's an awful lot to the product, and even over and above what we use now, there are additions. People can use it in a mobile sense, more of a mobile platform that's cloud-oriented. With so many pieces, training would be well worth it.
I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten. The documentation could be updated, however, it's overall a strong solution.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
