Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) Reviews

The use case is for organization server patching, and we also use the asset management in a smaller capacity.

For what I use it for, the solution provides a single pane of glass with everything I need for endpoint management of all devices. For the most part, it lowers the amount of time required for manual intervention. It gives me more time to work on other projects instead of consistently worrying about patching. Per week or per month, it's saving me a good five hours.

One of the most valuable features is that it natively patches third-party applications and not just a core operating system.

It's relatively easy to use and most of it is pretty intuitive. They've made things a little more involved now with the agent token that needs to be used. That means installing it from a server, from the share, is not quite as simple as it used to be, but once you know how to do it, and that it's something that has to occur, it's really not a problem.

It enables IT asset management, compliance, software asset management, mobile device management, and patch management, although we don't utilize the MDM. That's mainly due to our security requirements. But the IT asset tracking is a big segment.

And the software asset management has been a big help, even when it comes to license true-ups. I can use it to find out how many Tivoli we have, and boom, there's the number. Even if it's reporting a number that might be a little higher than what it actually is, because it's looking for one component, it gives you a good first first-hand look. As a result, we know there's something out there and this confirms we've got five of them. And you can actually click on the information about the software and it shows, for example, that these five servers are where it's being reported. If you really want, you can log in to them and validate. We have used that quite a bit.

Another segment that has really helped out is where you go in and actually use the distributions. We might have a situation where we need something installed on all 237 servers by tomorrow. I'll just go in and do a managed installation and have KACE push it out. So far, that's been pretty successful. I wish it had a little bit more ability to allow me to put something in there without saying, "Okay, we're already aware of this software. What file do you want to use?" It would be nice if it let me type it in and prompted me, when needed, saying, "We've already found that. Do you want to use this one? Yes or no?" But it hasn't kept me from accomplishing what I intended. Overall, the distribution is a pretty nice feature.

My biggest complaint is that almost every time they send out a new version, it fixes something and breaks another. Something that wasn't working in the last version now works, but something else stops; or they'll remove some dashboard that I really found to be nice and replace it with something totally different that I could care less about.

Another example of this would be that there is a set of agents where the communication between the agents and KACE is very consistent, and the patch numbers are very good. And then there will be a new agent which they say fixes this, this, and this. But then, all of a sudden, my patch numbers go down and the communication isn't as good, or they're timing-out more.

An additional instance of this is that it used to be, when you were patching, you would see how many succeeded and how many failed. You would also see which patches had failed and had reached the maximum number of attempts. Connected with that, there used to be a "reset tries" feature and that was nice because you could actually reset the attempts and KACE would try those patches the next time. Now, although "reset tries," is still there, it's grayed out. It doesn't function.

It affects usability because every time you upgrade, you don't really know what you may be getting yourself into. I wish they'd be a little more consistent and make sure it's only getting better, rather than their saying, "We had 15 known issues in the last version. In this new version, we're offering these new things, but we've still got 15 known issues."

The installs are generally very easy. You just say, "Okay, go ahead, upgrade," and they seem to run fairly smoothly with no problems. It's just that after you've done them, you have to see what is working and what's not working.

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

On the whole, the stability is good. Once it's up and running, it just pretty much runs. There aren't really system crashes or anything of that nature. It's a solid system that really does not encounter failures of the system itself.

Scalability is available. I have not experimented much with some of the options. For example, you can have a system at this site and have another site that doesn't have an entire KACE, but just a file share where KACE can put patches as well. Instead of servers at that site going all the way to your primary site, they just pull the patches from that local repository. Theoretically, that helps. So it can be scalable if you so choose.

In our environment we manage 237 servers. 

Their technical support is good. They're very prompt. Quest has been very quick in responding to any support cases or questions. And most of the time, the answer is very straightforward and easily executed or easily understood.

Positive

We did use something that KACE replaced, but I don't even remember what it was.

SCCM is what we use for workstations, but not for server patching. We do have WSUS (Windows Server Update Services) running as a backup in case we want to use Windows Update. We do have other options available, but for servers, KACE is the primary patching system.

I was involved in the initial setup and I found it to be relatively easy. It was pretty intuitive and straightforward.

Bringing it online to the point that I could log in took 45 minutes to an hour, and that included making sure I had DNS records so that the URL was resolving, and putting in the IPS and gateways, et cetera. All of a sudden, boom, it was up and running. 

After that, it was a matter of making sure that patches are actually downloading properly, and that the agent installs are checking in and everything is working properly. So getting it all tuned and set the way we wanted took two or three months, but the initial "it's technically functioning" was just two or three days.

We have realized a return on our investment with the solution. We are more stringent than the NSA as far as security goes. We run weekly security scans on our systems and we're consistently bringing in third-party organizations to do red-team tests where they'll try to hack in and do a lot of things to test us. Since Quest KACE Systems Management patches not just the operating system, but can also patch third-party things like Java and Wireshark if an update is detected, overall it handles everything that's detected. If possible, it will attempt to patch it.

The cost of KACE has been relatively low compared to other systems. Even if those systems have the same cost, they do not do as much of the third-party patching that KACE natively does. With a cost of less than $4,500 a year, it's been very good.

The pricing model is fair and fine. I wouldn't change anything about that.

We looked at SCCM and Qualys.

One of the reasons we went with KACE was cost. 

Another was that it patches third-party applications natively. Certain systems tend to need native operating system patching only. You can download something like a Java update and then "package it" for installation. But with KACE you can say, "If you find it and it's critical, recommended, not superseded, and it's detected on our system, download it and patch it." It's nice that it's doing third-party apps and not just the operating system.

If you're considering KACE for a large environment, come up with smart labels and patching schedules that are going to fit the number of systems that you have. The scheduling really comes into play, especially now with Windows having bundled patches. As a result, you're downloading a 1 or 1.2-gigabyte file to update the server, versus between three and seven 2 or 3 or 5 megabyte files. When there were multiple files, even if two of them didn't get uploaded, the other three did. If this one large file times out, it just does not patch. So scheduling the time to stage those and deploy on a different day is really important.

I wish we had the ability to use the mobile asset tracking and bar coding. Those are things that have been a real void in our organization. At least we are utilizing KACE for the servers and we manually input barcodes or serial numbers. Having the option to use a KACE app to input that information is nice and would save a lot of time. 

We have KACE SMA and KACE SDA. The SMA is to image all of our desktops. There are 3,000 desktops, and we use KACE SMA for Windows imaging and security patching and updates. We're using KACE SDA for our software library, so our client base can go to the software library and install software from there. We're using the support component and the trouble ticket system.

It increases security. We can target any machine or any device that is connected to it and update security if there is a vulnerability that comes out, especially this day of cyber attack. If we're notified by a vendor of vulnerabilities, we can push out an update within minutes. It has really increased the security of the network.

It is easy to use and pretty intuitive. It is pretty much a GUI interface. Its ease of use has affected the time to value because we can get our staff quickly up to speed on all of the components and how to support it best. Because it has a graphical user interface and is easy to use, it really decreases the training time and increases our efficiency in implementing things.

It provides a single pane of glass for everything that we need for endpoint management of all our devices, which has made things more secure. It gives us full visibility into every endpoint device that has the KACE agent on it.

It saves a lot of time. It has probably saved us a good month of person-time a year. It also saved a lot of training and a lot of lost productivity, not only for the technical staff but also for the staff, students, and faculty.

We also use KACE SDA, and it is fantastic for automating our deployments. We can literally push out an image to all 3,000 desktops at the same time and have everything imaged and done within three hours.

All of the features are valuable. We find everything we're using very valuable because they increase security and efficiency.

It is excellent in terms of updating and configuring everything the way we need. For anything more complex, we do professional service engagements, and they're exceptional. For anything less complex, we just need to ask questions. Their support division is extremely good too.

If we have any issues, we've had great success with their professional services team and their support team. Their technical support is excellent. They're very responsive and fast. Within an hour of initiating a support request, we've got somebody on it.

The only pain point I have is with their salespeople. They call too often. They're too aggressive in trying to upsell. We know what we need, and we know if we want to expand. I don't mind quarterly calls from them, but sometimes, it is weekly. They need to get their sales team under control. The main goal of their support people and professional services is to make sure they deliver the service, and they deliver it well, whereas their salespeople are so interested in making a sale that they're wasting my time. 

We did look at MDM, and I was misguided by their salespeople. When I talked to their tactical people, I found out that I hadn't been given the full picture on MDM, and it wouldn't have been what we wanted if we had moved forward with it. I really value their technical services, their professional services, and their support services, but their sales team needs to really up their game and not phone every week.

I have been using this solution for three years.

It is extremely stable. We've never had any downtime. There has never been any unexpected downtime with the KBOX, SDA, or SMA. They just seem to be extremely robust.

We're asking for it to be scalable for up to 10,000 end-user devices. When we purchased it, it was for 3,000 with scalability of up to 10,000. We haven't tried to scale up that much yet, but they say we're sized appropriately for that.

We use Quest's Premier Support for KACE solutions. The biggest value of having Premier Support is the response time. Their response time is phenomenal. We've never created a support ticket that they haven't responded to within an hour and resolved. They're professionals. Their support team is extremely knowledgeable. 

Their Premier Support has added value to our overall investment in the Quest solution. Their responsiveness and their technical skillsets are amazing.

Their Premier Support had an influence in purchasing additional licenses or additional products from Quest. We decided to customize the support desk component because the first implementation of just the standard SMA stuff was so good. We also implemented a Request for Change and a custom Request for Service based on how greatly satisfied we were with the KBOX, their support, and their professional services. If it wasn't for all of those three things, we wouldn't have looked at expanding.

We used Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT). It just wasn't scalable enough for us, and it also wasn't customizable enough for us.

We used SCCM as well. It is much more complex, and it takes a lot of end-user training. That's why we decided to go with KACE.

After using other products, we want to stay with KACE. Earlier, we had a separate Request for Change application and a separate support system. We merged all those into KACE. It saved us a lot of money and a lot of time, and everything is central for our client base. They go to one spot in the self-service user portal, and everything is right there. This consolidation has probably saved us a couple hundred thousand a year. It is hard for us to do money points because anything that's Microsoft, such as MDT, SCCM, we get free through the Department of National Defense Microsoft Enterprise agreement. For us, there are no costs.

It was straightforward, but we did engage professional services.

In terms of the implementation strategy, we wanted the support component configured for all of our different support queues. We were asking for customizations, and it took about two weeks for the professional services person to implement them based on our requirements, but out of the box, everything is easy. We just had a bunch of customizations made.

We engaged professional services.

We have seen a return on investment. It is the fact that my IT staff can come quickly up to speed on the KACE appliance. It doesn't require a lot of in-depth training. It is fast to implement and get people trained on and able to support. It is also fast to get end-users using the self-service portal.

Based on other solutions that we had implemented, its pricing seems to be quite competitive. It is not inexpensive, but it is also not more expensive than any other solution. They have the standard licensing fees and support fees.

We evaluated several other solutions, including support desk solutions, and we settled on KACE just because of their ability to customize what we need. Their professional service is excellent, and so is their support, so we decided to go with KACE.

We found other municipal companies in the area that were using it, and we went and met with them to get their use cases and their experience. If anyone is looking into using it, I would recommend talking to people who have implemented it and seeing if it's going to meet their needs. I highly recommended it as a chosen solution, just for the fact that it's end-to-end. It's extremely robust and reliable, and their professional services and their support teams are stellar.

I would rate Quest KACE Systems Management a 10 out of 10.

We use it for a lot of things. We use it to deploy software, configure Windows via scripts, and to deploy some certificates for our customers. We are a call center and we have a lot of large companies as clients, so we need to deploy several kinds of software, such as Office 365 and applications from our customers themselves. We use a scripting framework from our consultants and that works great.

KACE SMA is the main software I'm using. I'm responsible for the KACE solution, and if there are any questions related to it, my colleagues come to me.

We have local KACE Appliances with VMware workstations, computers, servers, and we are using OVF files.

It saves a lot of time because, in the past, before we used KACE, when we installed a new version of a given software, we had to go to each computer individually and install it manually. Now we just set the labels and the software goes by itself. It also saves a lot of money because we have time to do other jobs.

We have seven locations. In the past, if we had to deploy new software or install user PCs, we had to drive with a large number of people to get the work done quickly. Now, we can deploy the software from one desktop. One person can do it and that saves a lot of time. It makes a lot of things easier. It has had a huge impact.

Another example of a benefit is that I developed a script because my CEO wanted to know how many computers are connected to our home office network from the outside. Every hour I run the script to import the information to an external SQL Server Express with a report engine. With the KACE, you can use information for other reports.

The most valuable feature is the software deployment. That's the main thing we use, daily, all day long.

It's also very intuitive and easy to handle. It's clearly structured. For example, we are still using Microsoft Intune as our MDM software. With Intune, you get lost very quickly, but with KACE SMA, it's clearly structured and easy to understand.

We handle our local computers within the company with it. We handle our home-office computers as well. We have about 3,000 computers in SMA and, currently, about 1,200 computers are in our home office with it. Everything goes, everything's possible, without problems. We couldn't ask for more. We are able to manage all of the devices in the solution's single pane of glass. We see our computers there.

It also does patch management. At the moment, I'm rolling out a new feature update, 20.8.2, and it's a great challenge because we have to deploy it to 1,200 computers in the home office. We want to do it without interrupting production, but KACE is reliable and it's easy to adapt it to my needs for how and when to deploy the feature update.

Another feature we use is the Systems Deployment Appliance. If we install new computers, we run a script within the SDA at the end of the installation and that installs the required software for the computer, depending on which department it is part of. "Customer A" needs this set of software and we have a system image for it. And for "Customer B" we have another image with other software. We just have to start the computer, choose the required image, and everything is done automatically. There is no need to configure it. We just deploy Windows and, when that's done, shut it down, bring it to the location, connect it, and it works. Some software needs some manual configuration because it's not scriptable, but about 95 percent is automated.

KACE.uservoice.com is a platform where users can post suggestions for improving the software. A lot of ideas that have ended up in the development of KACE have come from this. For example, in version 10.2 KACE implemented the possibility of reducing the network speed of the KACE agent. You can set it so that it takes whatever network speed you want or you can set it to 5 Mb, to save network speed. You set it for all the computers, but it would be preferable to separate between VPN connections in our home office and the local area. It would be great to be able to set separate speeds for different VLANs. I posted this idea on Uservoice.

I've been using Quest KACE Systems Management for five or six years.

There have been no problems. It has never crashed. If I hadn't had to update it, it would just run.

Scaling it is easy. Last year I increased the memory because we got a lot of new computers in our company and we added some new locations. I saw it was getting a little bit slower, but I added some more memory and it was easy to scale. If you need more RAM or more CPUs, just add them and the KACE will say, "Okay, I'll take them."

Currently, we don't have plans to increase our usage.

We use their standard technical support and our experience with them has been great. Every time I have asked them something it has been perfect. I get quick answers, especially from one of the Quest technicians in Cologne, Germany.

Before I came to the IT department, we used software from CA. It was a pain. But we switched because of the price. Also, the support wasn't that good from CA, as far as I remember. That was before my time. I moved to my current position after we shut down the CA software deployment.

The initial setup is very easy. Before we upgraded to the current version—from 10.2 to 11.0—I tried it here on my local virtual machine. It took about five minutes and the SMA was running. That was how long it took from starting the virtual machine until the moment I got to the login screen. The information from Quest itself in the support area of their webpage, and on YouTube, is very effective and informative. It's easy.

It takes a little more configuration after logging in, because you have to deploy the KACE agent and create a token. To get everything working, the grids, the configuration, with Active Directory, it might take about half a day until you can say, "Okay, the KACE is working. I've downloaded the test catalog. The KACE agent is deploying on the computers and the computers are coming into the database."

My team consists of three people, including me. One person is mainly taking care of the software installations. He's looking at whether there are any new versions. I am taking care of the feature updates and software deployment, and the third person is my apprentice.

Users of SMA in our company include our service desk, our client and service first-level support. A total of about 20 people from our IT department.

The initial setup was done with our consultant, Stephan Sporrer, from OFF LIMITS IT. At that time it took five days, but at that time we also scripted all the software installations we have. He also taught us how to use it.

Setup took longer the first time because he had to teach us the whole system. Now, if I had to set up a whole new environment, it would take half a day because I know how it works.

The pricing and licensing are absolutely fair.

As far as I know there are no other costs that come with using it. It's just the licenses for the KACE based on the number of computers. Our VMware servers already existed, so there were no other costs for us.

In the future, we are looking at implementing a proof of concept for the KACE MDM, so our iPhones would be manageable with KACE SMA as well. Quest MDM is very intuitive and easy to handle. There is no comparison to Intune. If you don't work with Intune eight hours a day, every day, you get lost. In the KACE product, it's simple and easy. It's very easy for me to train new colleagues to use the KACE MDM, SMA, and SDA.

KACE MDM is also much cheaper than Intune. I calculated the savings with KACE MDM over a three-year period and they came to about €25,000, just on the licenses. That's a lot of money. And the time saved can't be measured. In the next month there will be more work with it because we have to upgrade all our iPhones. After that it will be easier because we can automate a lot of things with the policies, with restrictions and packages within the KACE MDM. When a new phone comes in we will bring it into the MDM, and the software will be automatically deployed. This will save a lot of time because Intune requires you to do a lot more steps. It's too complex for us.

We didn't evaluate any options other than KACE. The supplier of all our computers suggested KACE and that's how we came to it.

The biggest lesson I have learned from using KACE SMA is to never deploy software to many computers at one time. A few times in the past I killed the network with it. It's not good if you deploy a new Office 365 installation to about 700 computers at one time.

We're running Salesforce, which is older than the KACE, as our ticketing system. Because that ticketing system already exists, our CEO doesn't want to change it. They're planning to connect Salesforce with the SMA to grab the information from the computers. That way, my colleagues at the service desk will just have to type in the computer to see all the information that is stored in the KACE SMA. That's something that is currently planned but not implemented yet.

We use the KACE solution for endpoint management, since our posture is based on endpoints. We have almost 2,000 endpoints.

We have two KACE boxes. It's not a virtual appliance, it is a physical appliance.

It's not only saving time but increasing IT productivity. If you have a KACE box, you're going to save a lot. Having KACE is a blessing for IT administrators for endpoint management. They can do a lot of work remotely, as well as troubleshooting, mass deployment, and mass uninstallation. KACE is very intelligent and it has its own uninstaller.

An example of how KACE helped is that there was a McAfee service-provider who was visiting us to do a McAfee upgrade for our antivirus system. They are experienced people, the subject matter experts for deploying McAfee, the client, the agent, et cetera. He was having an issue uninstalling a McAfee firewall client. If you deploy a McAfee in your network, the uninstaller should be from McAfee, but the uninstaller from McAfee was an outdated version. Uninstalling the firewall client from McAfee requires a lot of effort. It's not impossible, but it's time-consuming and if you try to uninstall from the control panel, of course it won't allow you. There is a popup for the password and, without that, a lot of problems are going to occur. 

He told me he was facing this issue. The solution for uninstalling it was provided by KACE. I demonstrated it to him for one of our clients and he was shocked. He started writing that command, and the next day he sent me a text message, saying, "Thank you. You made my life easier." He gave that command to another customer, a client of his who is an IT administrator, to run that command via a batch file to all the end-users, because they didn't have KACE. 

For an IT department in any organization that pays for endpoint management, KACE is really a blessing for them.

The most valuable feature of KACE is the mass package deployment. There are a lot of endpoint management solutions in the market. The way KACE responds is with the installation management feature, which is done in a very intelligent way, as well as scripting. It's wow. It's really wow. On top of that, there is a mass undeployment feature as well.

For example, we had an issue a while back where there was a plugin for the SAP module being deployed to almost 1,800 computers. It was taking a backup, restarting the machine, and updating it automatically. Our end-users were complaining every day. We were receiving hundreds of calls. We found out that the issue was this plugin. It was updating and restarting machines without informing the users. When we did inventory, we started finding this application, but we didn't know about the history of that application. Luckily, KACE gave us an uninstallation path, the command line. When we deployed it, believe it or not, it worked as a massive uninstallation feature and it took care of almost 1,800 computers within one hour.

It's really very time-saving stuff. It's all up to you, how you are going to utilize KACE, but if you know the way, the features are very user-friendly and it does not require scripting. There are built-in features where you can build your own script and execute it remotely through KACE. 

I have never officially worked on the service desk model of KACE, but when I went through it, it was fine. It's good for a small IT department. It's more than enough. It has asset inventory and printer inventory. You enable the SNMP features and you can get reports on printers and even printer cartridge utilization reports. It's a very handy tool for organizations that have a lot of endpoints in place.

We also used the Systems Deployment Appliance for Windows 7. Now, we are planning to use it for the Windows 10 upgrade for the rest of our machines. If you're going to capture the image of a machine and re-image that machine, it's great. Over the network, it took us 18 minutes to deploy 19 GB of images. And that was not on the same campus. It was a remote campus. For the same campus, we also used it to deploy and it took us, I think, 16 minutes and a few seconds for almost 18 GB of Windows 7 images.

There are a lot of nice features.

There is a module for agent management when you right-click on the inventory. If you want to connect remotely you can do so. But sometimes the agent check-in does not happen. You can do the first check-in through a script, at the same time. 

But there should be a mini toolbox, like the competitors of KACE have, with the small features for KACE administrators. That would make their lives easier. If you are troubleshooting a specific endpoint, remote control is available as is Wake-on-LAN. But if you want to execute some commands, you have to use a third-party tool, the PS tool. If they would integrate those small things, it would make KACE more powerful.

I have been using Quest KACE Systems Management for almost five years.

Initially, four years back, we were having a lot of issues with the KACE agent. But as the solution has grown, the maturity level has really increased and the stability and the reliability have as well. My KACE machine has not been down for a single day in the last five years. It's a very stable product.

It's really reliable now and very intelligent on top of that. When we do a mass deployment, there isn't a single day when my network admin asks me, "Why are you deploying this?" I deployed Office 2013 with KACE, in a massive way, and our network guys never said, "Oh, we can see there is a bandwidth spike." The way that KACE intelligently deploys and manages installation is great. It's really kind of a miracle. I believe that they select a group, copy the file over the network to the cache of the local machine, execute the command, and then install the media file on the local machine.

KACE is very scalable.

We started with 700 clients and today we are at almost 2,000 clients. There hasn't been a single day where I have been concerned about the scalability or the of KACE. 

Quest Support for KACE is good. They are responsive and they always give you a solution in a  timely manner. 

We faced a problem two or three years back, an issue with the inventory of Forescout Secure Connector. We could not find out how many machines had Secure Connect Connector because it's installed as a service. It was a very complex problem for us and KACE support came up with a solution: Create a new, customized inventory to get Secure Connect to be considered as a process. On that basis, we had a new entry and this solved our problem.

We have not used another asset management solution in this organization. I did use SCCM in my old company.

For us, the initial setup was not complex. The problem was that the environment, the network we work in, is a very restrictive environment. We have a lot of firewall policies and a layer of firewalls across the network. Because of the complex network architecture, we struggled a bit with the network discovery of the endpoints. We used one of the best practices: Do auto-discovery and then apply the agents.

At that point in time, I didn't really know KACE. It was a new box. I started discovering what would be next. The next thing that happened was another blessing from KACE which was having it do the Active Directory group policy deployment for the agents. I deployed it and that discovery was running for almost a week, but we started installing the agent within about four to five days. It was time-consuming. It took us two weeks because we ran it organization-to-organization because it would have slowed down the network. We did not want to take any risks. If we had taken the risk, it wouldn't have been an issue, as far as the KACE agent deployment is concerned. 

Now, whenever a new machine comes into our network, the KACE agent is automatically installed. Right after that, KACE is installing one of our NEC client agents automatically. Then, KACE will discover that this machine is a part of the McAfee agent, and if it is not, it will automatically install the McAfee agent. Then I configure McAfee to sync with Active Directory. 

So for us, when a new machine is joining, the desktop engineer will run only one command, GPUpdate. The machine will restart and then all the group policies, the KACE policies will be deployed. KACE will then install all of our small plugins automatically and they're good to go.

One of the best parts of KACE is when you go for a version upgrade. Once you do a version upgrade for any KACE module—any KACE virtual appliance or physical appliance—it's very user-friendly. In addition, the agent upgrade is a miracle. When you do the agent upgrade for the KACE appliance for the first time, it's "super-wow". The last upgrade I did was for almost 1,900 PCs, and all the agents were updated automatically when I upgraded the agent package. It took only 24 hours.

I am the only KACE administrator in our organization, but there are desktop engineers who log in to KACE. They review machines, but I do all the administration and configuration. They use it to take inventory or check the memory and see what replacements are required. They are read-only administrators.

We have seen a lot of return on our investment in KACE. One area is headcount. We are a military hospital. Imagine having 2,000 computers on the ground in different remote locations, yet having only seven desktop support engineers. If you do the math, there should be no way that seven desktop engineers can support 2,000 endpoints. Even the best-case scenario is one engineer working with 100 desktop machines, max. That gives you an idea of the headcount savings.

We are also saving on the licensing fee, compared to other endpoint management solutions.

KACE is very easy to use and user-friendly compared to the other endpoint management tools, like Microsoft SCCM and other third-party tools, in terms of IT administration. Compared to its competitors, it's easy to get machine inventory.

If any organization wants to manage its endpoints, having KACE, as I said, is a blessing for the IT administrators.

I would give it an eight out of 10. I am being demanding because there are some more improvements that can be made. But KACE can be a superpower in endpoint management.

Every day, we do patching and updating of Windows Drivers. We also have to activate new software packages from firewall or VPN to Adobe software on a regular basis. We then use it very often and gladly to exchange files from directories, so people don't ask, "Please change this document to this document." We would rather do this through the system, exchanging various documents inside it. 

We do inventory to see whether:

• A machine is working fine, e.g.. hardware load.
• Systems are regularly shutting down. 
• A monitor is closed on a laptop.

This is exactly how the system works.

We are currently using the K1000 appliance. We now have it as a standalone, using it for software distribution.

We also have a hardware appliance. It is not worse than the last version of the hardware appliance. We don't have a virtualized one yet, but we are going in that direction.

Quest KACE Systems Management provides a single pane of glass with everything that we need for endpoint management of all devices. It allows us to run multiple processes in parallel, i.e., parallelization. We have been able to assign a lot to many users at once. So, if somehow there is a critical error or a software is not working properly, then we mostly notice this on one user but can transfer the effect/result to all of them right away. That has worked very well because we don't have an internal environment to work with, which is why it is a good thing that we can achieve a lot and distribute it simultaneously.

When we had to quickly switch from Office 365 to an Office local installation, which we used to have, people were cut off from the Office 365 license from now on because we no longer paid for it. We then got a call from a department, “Our 12 employees need our university Office application that we used before." That could be implemented very quickly. People didn't have to come to us, we didn't have to go there, and everything was done without seeing each other. This was very good and flexible, and no effort was needed.

The environment is worth it when rolling out new software, and we test it on this device.

We use the system every day because there is always something that someone needs. We just take a look to see if the system is working fine.

I have an “extended arm” through this agent, where I can distribute things very quickly, even to people who are in their home office and need some software. I can assign it. Then, in a short time, if the Internet works for the remote station, everything is available as quickly as possible. Logically, this is one of the greatest and most comfortable things for me.

In terms of updating and customizing, the solution is very good and flexible.

For patch management that we do in an automated way, it is great. We just check whether everything works and is done automatically. Therefore, it provides a great help.

I still need better communication about which processes are really due and which processes are currently being processed. According to the initial setup service provider, there is still no real management or overview on KACE where you can really see 100 percent of what is going on as well as what is going to be processed next and whether I can influence the overall process. It could really help me if I knew, e.g. exactly in 10 minutes my colleague will be supplied with this or that software. I haven't found this yet. If they could add this, that would be cool. It is still missing and I haven't yet found something like this.

Sometimes, if you copy and paste someone incorrectly, then you can also assign the wrong software and that can then lead to problems where you distribute the wrong software.

We have been using this solution since 2017.

The stability is indestructible.

We haven’t been scaling much. We don't have full utilization and are under 300 clients, and its scalability works.

We have two administrators and 140 users. Some users have two PCs, but most have only one PC.

The technical support has these pages, subpages, etc. If we can't find it on the Internet, then we go through Software Factory GmbH.

We did not previously use another solution. We only have experience with KACE Systems Management.

The deployment took three weeks. It's a service, so sometimes it takes awhile. The fragmented architecture that we have is a wide variety of PC systems, which was another problem. We still have different locations. In order to re-inventory them and get an overview of what is missing everywhere, we needed a strategy to make all the software identical, even if the hardware was different. This can be mapped well with this software.

We had the initial setup done by a service provider, which was ok. However, there were still a lot of question marks. Another company really helped us later. We also used another service provider who was once a technician at Quest, working as self-employed. We came very far with him and that gave us another boost, so we achieved more productivity after he showed us a few tricks.

We are now dealing with Software Factory GmbH from Nürtingen. They are very professional and have a solution for all our problems. It does cost extra, but Software Factory GmbH from Nürtingen really knows their business. They are much better than the provider for the initial setup.

Internally, two of us were required for deployment, a colleague and me.

It has definitely proven itself very well. For at least a year now, all changes have been noticed, e.g., decentralization. Because we are in three locations, I used to always have to travel somewhere to configure various things and could do everything only that way. So, it saves time in this case. It is a very good solution.

I can reach people now that I couldn't have reached previously. We are saving about 25 percent in time.

We buy consulting fees from Software Factory, then we pay extra for it.

We did not evaluate other options. Our service provider back then recommended KACE Systems Management as a very good product.

My colleague who knows other software distribution systems says this solution does not rank equally with others. He would move them to third place. I am very happy with the environment. If my colleague could decide, he wouldn't buy this solution. He would buy different software.

Spend more money on training so you can use the product to its fullest.

There is always increased usage during this coronavirus time. Almost every day, we have an increase or decrease in hardware as most people are now changing their laptops for desktop computers.

I would rate KACE somewhere near a nine (out of 10) because I am missing more control in it. 

Foreign Language: (German)

Was ist unser primärer Anwendungsfall?

Jeden Tag machen wir das Patchen und Aktualisieren von Windows Drivers. Außerdem müssen wir regelmäßig neue Softwarepakete von Firewall oder VPN bis zu Adobe-Software aktivieren. Wir verwenden es dann sehr oft und sehr gern, um Dateien aus Verzeichnissen auszutauschen, damit die Leute nicht fragen "Bitte tauschen Sie die Vorlagen gegen die Vorlagen." Wir tun dies lieber über das System, indem wir verschiedene Dokumente darin austauschen.

Wir führen auch Inventarisierung durch, um zu sehen, ob:

• Die Maschine funktioniert einwandfrei, z.B. Hardwarelast.
• Die Systeme werden regelmäßig heruntergefahren.
• Ein Monitor ist auf einem Laptop zugeklappt.

Genau so funktioniert das System.

Wir verwenden derzeit die K1000-Appliance. Wir haben es jetzt als Stand-alone und wir nutzen sie zur Softwareverteilung.

Wir haben auch noch eine Hardware-Appliance. Es ist nicht schlechter als die letzte Auslieferung von der Hardware-Appliance. Wir haben noch keine virtualisierte, aber wir gehen in diese Richtung.


Wie hat es meiner Organisation geholfen?

Quest KACE Systems Management bietet eine zentrale Schnittstelle mit allem, was wir für die Endpoint Management aller Geräte benötigen. Es ermöglicht uns, mehrere Prozesse parallel auszuführen, d.h. Parallelisierung. Wir konnten vielen Benutzern auf einmal viel zuordnen. Wenn also irgendwie ein kritischer Fehler vorliegt oder eine Software nicht richtig funktioniert, dann bemerken wir dies meistens bei einem Benutzer, können die Wirkung/das Ergebnis jedoch sofort auf alle übertragen. Das hat sehr gut funktioniert, weil wir keine interne Umgebung bei uns am arbeiten haben, deswegen ist es wirklich sehr gute Sache, dass wir viel erreichen und gleichzeitig verteilen können.

Als wir schnell von Office 365 auf eine Office-Lokalinstallation umsteigen mussten, die wir früher hatten, wurden die Leute von nun an von der Office 365-Lizenz abgeschnitten, weil wir nicht mehr dafür bezahlt haben. Dann bekamen wir einen Anruf von einer Abteilung: „Unsere 12 Mitarbeiter brauchen unsere Hochschul-Office-Anwendung, die wir benutzt haben.“ Das ließ sich sehr schnell umsetzen. Die Leute mussten nicht zu uns kommen, wir mussten nicht hingehen, und es wurde eben alles sozusagen ohne dass man sich sieht erledigt. Das war sehr gut und flexibel, also kein Aufwand.

Die Umwelt lohnt sich beim Ausrollen von neuer Software und wir testen sie auf diesem Gerät.

Wir nutzen das System jeden Tag, weil es immer etwas gibt, was jemand braucht. Oder wenn wir nur reingucken, ob das System funktioniert.


Was haben wir am wertvollsten gefunden?

Ich habe durch diesen Agenten einen „verlängerten Arm“, wo ich sehr schnell Sachen verteilen kann, auch an Leute, die im Home-Office sind und Software benötigen. Ich kann es zuordnen. Dann in kurzer Zeit, wenn das Internet für die Gegenstelle funktioniert, ist alles schnellstmöglich verfügbar. Logischerweise ist dies für mich eine der tollsten und bequemsten Sache.

In Hinsicht auf Aktualisieren und Anpassen ist die Lösung sehr gut und sehr flexibel.

Für das automatisierte Patch-Management ist es großartig. Wir prüfen nur, ob alles funktioniert und das wird automatisch erledigt dann. Daher bietet es eine große Hilfe.


Was kann verbessert werden?

Ich brauche noch eine bessere Kommunikation darüber, welche Prozesse noch einstehen und welche Prozesse gerade bearbeitet werden. Nach Angaben des Ersteinrichtungsdienstleisters gibt es bei KACE noch keine wirkliche Verwaltung oder Übersicht, wo man wirklich 100 Prozent sehen kann, was gerade läuft und was als nächstes bearbeitet wird und ob ich den Gesamtprozess beeinflussen kann. Es könnte mir wirklich helfen, wenn ich wüsste, z.B. genau in 10 Minuten wird mein Kollege mit dieser oder jener Software versorgt. Das habe ich noch nicht gefunden. Wenn sie das hinzufügen könnten, wäre das toll. Es fehlt noch und ich habe so etwas noch nicht gefunden.

Manchmal, wenn Sie jemanden falsch kopieren und einfügen, können Sie auch die falsche Software zuweisen und das kann dann zu Problemen führen, wenn Sie die falsche Software verteilen.


Wie lange habe ich die Lösung verwendet?

Wir verwenden diese Lösung seit 2017.


Was halte ich von der Stabilität der Lösung?

Die Stabilität ist unverwüstlich.


Was denke ich über die Skalierbarkeit der Lösung?

Wir haben nicht viel skaliert. Wir haben keine volle Auslastung und haben weniger als 300 Clients, und die Skalierbarkeit funktioniert gut.

Wir haben zwei Administratoren und 140 Benutzer. Einige Benutzer haben zwei PCs, aber die meisten haben nur einen PC.


Wie sind Kundenservice und technischer Support?

Der technische Support hat diese Seiten, Unterseiten etc. Sollten wir etwas im Internet nicht finden, dann wenden wir uns an die Software Factory GmbH.


Welche Lösung habe ich vorher verwendet und warum habe ich gewechselt?

Wir haben vorher keine andere Lösung verwendet. Wir haben nur Erfahrung mit KACE Systems Management.


Wie war die Ersteinrichtung?

Der Einsatz dauerte ca. drei Wochen. Es ist ein Service, daher dauert es manchmal eine Weile. Die fragmentierte Architektur, die wir haben, besteht aus einer Vielzahl von PC-Systemen, was ein weiteres Problem war. Wir haben noch verschiedene Standorte. Um sie neu zu inventarisieren und einen Überblick darüber zu bekommen, was überall fehlt, brauchten wir eine Strategie, um die gesamte Software baugleich zu machen, auch wenn die Hardware unterschiedlich war. Dies lässt sich mit dieser Software gut abbilden.


Was ist mit dem Implementierungsteam?

Wir haben die Ersteinrichtung von einem Dienstleister durchführen lassen, was ok war. Allerdings gab es noch viele Fragezeichen. Eine andere Firma hat uns später wirklich geholfen. Wir haben auch einen anderen Dienstleister eingesetzt, der früher als Techniker bei Quest tätig war, dann selbstständig gemacht hat. Wir sind mit ihm sehr weit gekommen und das hat uns einen weiteren Schub gegeben, so dass wir mehr Produktivität erreicht haben, nachdem er uns ein paar Tricks gezeigt hat.

Wir haben es jetzt mit der Software Factory GmbH aus Nürtingen zu tun. Sie sind sehr professionell und haben eine Lösung für alle unsere Probleme. Kostet zwar extra, aber die sind wirklich sehr auf Zack. Sie sind viel besser als der Anbieter für die Ersteinrichtung.

Intern waren zwei von uns für den Einsatz erforderlich, ein Kollege und ich.


Was war unser ROI?

Es hat sich definitiv sehr gut bewährt. Seit mindestens einem Jahr sind alle Veränderungen, wie z.B. die Dezentralisierung, aufgefallen. Da wir an drei Standorten sind, musste ich früher immer irgendwo hinfahren, um verschiedene Dinge zu konfigurieren und konnte alles nur so machen. Das spart in diesem Fall also Zeit. Es ist eine sehr gute Lösung.

Ich kann jetzt Leute erreichen, die ich vorher nicht erreichen konnte. Wir sparen rund 25% Zeit.


Wie sind meine Erfahrungen mit Preisen, Einrichtungskosten und Lizenzierung?

Wir zahlen Beratungshonorare von der Software Factory, dann zahlen wir extra dafür.


Welche anderen Lösungen habe ich in Betracht gezogen?

Andere Optionen haben wir nicht in Betracht gezogen. Unser Dienstleister hat KACE Systems Management damals als sehr gutes Produkt empfohlen.

Mein Kollege, der andere Softwareverteilungssysteme kennt, sagt, dass diese Lösung nicht gleichrangig mit anderen ist. Er würde sie auf Platz 3 schieben. Ich bin sehr zufrieden mit der Umgebung. Wenn mein Kollege entscheiden könnte, würde er diese Lösung nicht kaufen. Er würde andere Software kaufen.


Welche anderen Ratschläge habe ich?

Geben Sie mehr Geld für Schulung aus, damit Sie das Produkt vollgablich nutzen können.

Es gibt immer eine erhöhte Nutzung während dieser Corona-Zeit. Fast jeden Tag haben wir eine Zunahme oder Abnahme der Hardware, da die meisten Leute jetzt ihre Laptops gegen Desktop-Computer austauschen.

Ich würde KACE irgendwo in der Nähe einer Neun (von 10) bewerten, weil mir mehr Kontrolle fehlt.


Welche Version dieser Lösung verwenden Sie derzeit?

K1000

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.