Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) Reviews

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

I've used the KACE tickets a lot.

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

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

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

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

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 For example, one update superseded another.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

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

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

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

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

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

The patch management security is also A one.

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

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

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

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

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

Scalability-wise, this product is great.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We completed the deployment in-house.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

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 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The solution needs to add:

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

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

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

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

The stability is great - it simply never fails!

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

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

We previously used Acronis to do very basic duplicate systems.

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

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

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

We did not previously evaluate other options. 

We use this solution to manage our workstations and desktops. We can manage our hardware inventory and licenses, remotely install software, update software, and generate reports.

We do not use it to manage servers, only workstations.

We have a lot of different machines and devices in our environment. When I need to upgrade or install specific software applications, they can be deployed en masse and over a short period of time. It saves us a lot of time, which is the biggest help that KACE provides.

This product has helped our IT operations increase productivity. We have been able to create labels for machines and users, which has been useful. Also, we have been able to create rules in KACE that segregate software according to each area. Using this capability, our team management has improved as well as our customer relationships. 

This solution makes it easy to control assets and upgrade all types of software.

The mass deployment of software is easy to do.

KACE is very intuitive and easy to use. I am new to using the KACE Systems Management solution. Today, I was amalgamating software for the first time. It was easy to do. The employee that I was helping liked the way that it resolved the problem. It is also easy and fast to transfer my knowledge of KACE to another person.

This product provides good visibility into our machines, which is useful. It provides details about the software, hardware, and what is connected to it. It is very easy to use.

I would like them to implement VBScript language in KACE Systems Management. Currently, we can only use PowerShell.

We recently updated to the latest version, and we haven't yet seen all the features that it previously had.

I have been using Quest KACE Systems Management for between three and four years. It was deployed several years before I joined the company.

Stability-wise, it is fine. I have never seen this product crash or timeout.

If the server is working, then KACE Systems Management is fine.

We have four help desk staff who work with it. We don't manage servers with KACE; we just manage stations. We do not use it in our daily routine.

As our company and environment have grown, scalability has not been a problem. The scalability of the tool seems to be good. We currently manage 639 endpoints.

We use Quest Premier Support and contact them a lot. They have a Brazilian analyst who is very good to work with. He is skilled, has complete knowledge of the product, and has helped to resolve several problems that we have had in our environment. He never leaves us with big problems.

I would rate technical support a ten out of ten.

Positive

I have worked with SCCM, which is quite like this product, but the KACE Systems Management interface is better. 

KACE Systems Management makes it easy to find information because it is intuitive. 

The pros of SCCM are that it has more integrations and APIs with Microsoft software. This is useful when it comes to managing an environment. Because it is a Microsoft product, it has more integrations than other competing software.

I was not involved in the initial deployment.

KACE saves us time when it comes to maintaining our machines. For example, we sometimes need to retrieve information from the operating system of our machines. Normally, this has to be done manually, and we move from station to station to complete the task. With KACE filtering the results, we can do it in 20 seconds.

The pricing is fair.

KACE is a useful product for us. As I am new to it, I don't have very many suggestions for improvement. Rather, it has been very good, useful software.

I would rate this solution as eight out of ten.