BigFix Reviews

The most valuable features are the endpoint management capabilities of what you can actually control on your endpoints, as far as vulnerability assessment, compliance, and making sure that they are up to date on multiple platforms. One single-user-stop-shop is really awesome.

A benefit is being able to do it from a single place; whether it's Windows, Linux or Solaris, the user interaction doesn't change for the operators. We can teach one on Windows and one on Solaris to do the same thing. For them it's very simple, because it all looks the same. That why I dig it.

Scalability is big for us. To be able to scale faster and quicker, with more people coming in. Probably, more of a cloud initiative presence would be good, possibly as a SaaS, that would be amazing. Yeah, I think that's what we are looking for.

Stability is solid. Very, very solid. We rarely have issues and if there are, it was usually due to old architecture issues, but we've taken care of that and since then, we really haven't had any.

Scalability could be better. I know they're improving it. They are talking about it. They preached about it a lot at a recent IBM conference, specifically. We are kind of looking forward to that.

Technical support is getting better. About five years ago, it was horrible. Over the last couple of years, it's gotten better; more engagement and more knowledge transfer, it seems like, to the first-tier level support for IBM.

I came into the company and it was already there. So, I'm not sure about previous solutions.

I was not involved in the initial setup.

It is a highly effective tool if you're cross-platform. It really gets the job done simply.

I really do dig it. I had worked with it previously, got a different job, not using it. After a little bit I came back and just looked for a job that was still using the BigFix tool. I sought out jobs specifically looking for it.

Knowledge of the tool is important when selecting a vendor. Anyone can come and take you out to lunch, or wine and dine you. That's fine, they all do it. But to be able to have someone walk up to you and know how the tool actually functions is most important to me. I don't know which vendors were evaluated.

It's easy to manage. It gives me great power over the devices that I manage with very little effort, compared to other products. With other products, it takes a lot more effort just to do the same kind of work.

It has one central location to manage all the different platforms that we have such as desktop, Windows Servers, Linux Server, Solaris, AIX and zLinux. It's great to be able to manage them all from one central location.

The feature that I would like them to implement is for the command line and I know this is probably against the design. We come from the command line and sometimes, you want to talk to the agent in real time. Seems like now with the new BigFix CLI, it's heading in that direction. It's something that we've been craving for, because sometimes you want to just talk to this agent and not have to wait. You just want to discuss things with them and get the result back. That will be great. Still, you have to dance around and probably do some voodoo in order to get that data back. We come from the old framework, in which you send a command and get your return back. This kind of power is gone in BigFix, but we love all the other stuff.

Usually after upgrades, you have some hiccups but they're manageable. It's kind of common between products, after upgrades; either it is a learning curve or it could be a bug and then it's fixed in subsequent patches. So, nothing out of the ordinary, but it scales well.

This solution scales well.

I use the technical support for stubborn kind of issues, that won't go away. However, not as much as for the other products. They're very knowledgeable and it sounds like a different breed with the IBM support.

Actually, we had all the tools and we pulled them out, after which we went to BigFix. The reason why we chose this solution is because the government paid for it.

The setup is very easy. I usually have to tell them how hard it is, but then I can do it within a day. So, this is also a very big feature.

This product is extremely easy. If you've never implemented this type of three-tier architecture tool, then you don't know it. But, for anybody who has carried out such an implementation before, it is very straightforward.

Support is the most crucial criteria while selecting a vendor, because when things hit the wall and everybody's heated and trying to finger-point, you want someone that have the backbone to say, "We'll take care of it." IBM can do that. They never try to say, "No." They take the heat really well and they control it. Big corporations are looking for that kind of security that the company can provide and they're going to put as much resources as needed, so as to get the problem solved.

I like the overall usage of it. It's easy to use, gives you great visibility into your envionment, customization of your reports, and the community of users that you can pull experience and knowledge from. So that's one of the main advantages for using BigFix.

It has definitely improved our patch process, being able to create compliance reports and hand those to management, executives and so on, and making the overall procedure of managing assets, managing end points, patching endpoints, etc. It has just made everything pretty easy.

It's not perfect, but it's close. There are some things here or there, for instance if you get down to the small details, such as if you could deploy and action it a different way, or you selected multiple endpoints and then from there, selected a right-click and deployed something from it, instead of the normal way etc.

If you could select one particular endpoint, look in the applicable fixlets, and then deploy an action from there, it would be helpful.

Of course there are many ways to achieve these aims, and you can't satisfy every possible little change here or there for everybody, these are just things that we've talked about or thrown out there in our environment.

I have been using the solution for almost two years already.

We haven't encountered any issues with stability.

We haven't encountered any issues with scalability.

I've used technical support quite often at times, when either having a small issue, or just trying to set something up new and different, and I've always had great experiences with support. They always either call me back, or email me back, or set up a WebEx to work through an issue. So I've had great experiences with support.

I haven't used a previous solution as such. I worked at a previous company, moved to the current company I am employed at now, and saw the process and how different it was.

Coming from a company that utilized BigFix, I knew that there was a better way here, and I pushed hard to get BigFix implemented. They went on my recommendation, spent the money, and we have it in place. It's been in place for almost two years now.

Regarding installation, I needed help from either support or our actual business partner or vendor. As I was just an operator previously, I never had to set it up from scratch. Actually it was pretty easy. Of course I had help, I had support, but it was nothing that was too difficult to do. Everything went seamlessly, went smoothly, and like I say we have been thoroughly enjoying it for the time we've had it.

Just do it.

I find the lifecycle and compliance models to be the most valuable features.

BigFix should consider giving organizations in Turkey a lower price.

I have been using BigFix for nearly a year. 

BigFix is a stable solution. We have not had any issues with it. 

BigFix is scalable and reliable. It has been good for our organization. 

We have not had much use for technical support. The few times that we did get in touch with them, they solved our problems. However, we have not had much need for technical support. BigFix is easy to use.

The initial setup was not complex.

BigFix is actually a little bit on the expensive side in Turkey because of the dollar's exchange rate in our currency. 

Everyone should give in Turkey a try. Our services are easy to manage with BigFix. It is a quick and easy-to-use tool. 

Our primary use case of this solution is for security patching and application patching.

From a security standpoint, it allows us to make sure that we're not leaving ourselves vulnerable to exploits and things like that. That's the biggest advantage that we see to the product from a security standpoint. 

We use it to compare current and past patch cycles. We usually roll the baselines into every patch cycle. We do some recording on previous patch cycles and stuff like that, and how effective each baseline is.

It has helped to compress our patch cycles from a long time ago. We were patching individually each day, then we were able to compress them all into a month.

I'm not sure by what percentage but it has helped to reduce help desk calls, in terms of security vulnerabilities, but it has reduced the amount of vulnerabilities and the security notifications we get. Also, self-service lets us install notifications, not like sending a front line support personnel.

Some of the most valuable features would be: 

• The custom content 
• Baselines
• Inventory
• Application usage

I would like to see: 

• More custom content
• Better content for Mac 
• Automated patching. They have this but I'm looking for improvements.
• Automated baselines for patching.

Stability is good. It works well. When it works, it works great. It's pretty quick to respond.

Scalability is good. From my other experience using the relays and things like that, it scales pretty widely. We have a pretty good amount of endpoints and it works well for us.

Technical support is good. We have a close relationship with people who work in the company. We are fortunate where we get direct communication with them, so it's good.

We weren't previously using a solution, so we knew we had to invest in one. We brought in a bunch of different solutions and BigFix was the one that won out. 

The initial setup was was complex because it was new. The help that they gave us and the documents that they gave us were really straightforward. The first time I set it up there was a learning curve, but the second time it was real easy.

We also looked at Microsoft SCCM. We chose BigFix because it's more inclusive, it's centered towards Microsoft and Windows. There's a lot more content and things like that so, it's much more in-depth and widespread than SCCM.

I would rate BigFix an eight or nine. We've been using it for a really long time and we're happy customers. 

I would advise someone considering BigFix to split it up and compare it to what you're looking at. You'll see that it can do more than other competitors. 

Being able to hit all of our endpoints is the most beneficial feature of this solution. It mainly gives us a lot of consistency. For example, with the previous product that we were using for endpoint management, we were getting like 70-80% completion on most tasks. With BigFix, it has moved past that and we're now achieving 98-99% completion.

It just streamlined the whole process, because it allows us to manage everything from one endpoint solution. It's reliable. So, we never had to spend time with the senior technicians for circling back to remediate all the ones that it missed.

Probably, there is need to just expand the WebUI and make it a full management console and really deprecate the Windows-based command console. They should definitely update the web reports to make it up to the executive level, something I'd actually want to show them, i.e., instead of having to rebuild everything outside in Excel.

In brief, it needs to expand the WebUI, get more granular permissions and then just getting web reports, that are on par with the year we're in.

We just ran into something, during the last update of version 9.5.3. We're still trying to figure out, if it was the update or not. But, we've had a couple of issues recently with some different things and as to how it's running, as far as the permissions go. Other than that, it has been great.

It goes back to reliability. I was in this company before they started using BigFix. We broke it over and over on our old endpoint system and it was just getting to the point where it wasn't even saving us time anymore. That's how we knew we had to invest in a new solution.

For us, initial setup wasn't complex because we are a fully owned subsidiary of a company that already had it all built out. Basically, they just added us in. For us, it was super straightforward, just like a simple click.

We looked really heavily at LANDesk; they offer a similar product. We ultimately ended up going with BigFix, because of its pricing. Being a subsidiary, we were able to jump on our parent company's license and get a volume license for the enterprise, versus having to going out and get our own solution.

There are so many things that I look at before selecting a vendor. The biggest ones are just honesty and a proven concept. We don't like to spend a lot of time sitting around the table, talking about what it can do, rather I want to see it, do it. So, those hands-on demos are a live proof of concept in our environment and that is what we always try to strive for.

Be careful. It's a super powerful tool. It can be unforgiving, i.e., if you do some of the things wrong, it can be a nightmare. There are a couple of things that we've learned in our environment, especially with the APIs and some of those things that can be devastating, if they're done wrong.

The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use.

It improves the productivity of our organization, by helping the technical guys in our team.

We would like to see more of the extended reporting feature. It would help the technical teams, so as to drill down into the reports further.

The stability is good.

Scalability is also good.

This solution is giving us the results that it's meant for.

You should definitely take a look at it.

The most important criteria while selecting a vendor are the reliability, cost and technical support.

It eases automation. We have been using it to automate Windows. We are currently using it on our AIX boxes to deploy patches; basically, to automate patch installation and OS upgrades.

It saves time and reduces human error. We are still experimenting with more of its features, such as how we can roll back some of the patches that we have already installed and so on. It definitely looks good.

We use it on the AIX. I think it worked fine. I work on the AIX and we are still in the testing period, so it would be interesting to see, if there's an issue with it. But, the team that does most of the automation thinks that it should work fine. Because they didn't see any issues with Linux, they don't see any issues with the AIX either.

Maybe, if they could provide a better GUI, it would be a nice thing to have.

Stability is good.

We're using it on Windows and have used it on Linux. It worked well on Linux and now, we are actively moving to test it on the AIX.

We were using HPE Server Automation, which we were formerly using to automate most of the Linux patching. We were using HPE SA for our automation. It automates but it doesn't have the feature as to where we can back out the patches that were pushed and BigFix offers that to us.

In my opinion, trust and reputation are the most important criteria when selecting a vendor. IBM is known for that.

Definitely, without any hesitation, I would recommend that you should implement and use it. Try it out!