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Microsoft Configuration Manager vs Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 27, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Intune
Sponsored
Ranking in Configuration Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
233
Ranking in other categories
Remote Access (1st), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (1st), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (1st)
Microsoft Configuration Man...
Ranking in Configuration Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
80
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (3rd), Patch Management (1st)
Quest KACE Systems Manageme...
Ranking in Configuration Management
14th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Compliance (7th), Patch Management (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 12.0%, up from 10.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Configuration Manager is 14.4%, down from 15.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) is 4.4%, up from 3.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Configuration Management
 

Featured Reviews

Gaurav Chandola - PeerSpot reviewer
We can manage all aspects of our devices from a single console, easy to scale, and quick to deploy
Intune has many benefits from the Microsoft perspective. This solution can manage Windows 10 devices, app management, and provide security solutions. We don't need to worry about our network connection, and we'll be more secure with regular security patches and compliance. Since everything will be deployed through the internet and users will log in using the internet only, the risks have been mitigated. Security updates, security patching, and the application will be targeted from Intune. The location tracker will be available to track where the device is and the user's location. The user will be restricted from accessing certain applications using compliance policies. Conditional access policies will be based on the reason why the user needs access to the application. Microsoft Intune is one of the best products in the industry for managing Windows devices. The solution has more feature restrictions. The conditional access policies also eliminate the dependency on the on-prem network for the devices. The solution also manages our security settings and a lot of other beneficial features such as Microsoft Purview which gives us the compliance portion. We can manage all aspects of our device from a single console, including M365 services. This allows us to configure data classification types, such as public, private, internal, confidential, and highly confidential.
Abul Fazal - PeerSpot reviewer
Seamless system updates, useful integration, and reliable
The initial setup for Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager is simple. However, the configuration and management are not simple. Most of my clients are using the on-premise configuration. Cloud deployment is cumbersome because It requires lots of system communication to open from the cloud, and every client has to communicate with the cloud. We follow the Microsoft best practices procedure and white papers for implementation. Which includes single and multiple server deployments. The time it takes for deployment depends on the client's environment, such as the configuration and customization needed. However, the process can typically take two to three weeks to complete.
Fernando Cezario - PeerSpot reviewer
Helpful for IT asset management and offer a good dashboard
I like the KACE software dashboard so much! It's convenient. I don't need to know technical details like file formats (PDF or whatever) for installation, even for applications like Adobe. Here's how I use it: Let's say I have a license for Adobe and I need to install it on a computer named Julian. I simply open a case, enter the name of the application (Adobe), open the dashboard, and search for the computer named Julian. Once I select the computer, it shows up in the dashboard. Now, in the same case, I can open a large batch of software, select the application (Adobe Acrobat again), and choose the computer named Julian. KACE then deploys the application with minimal errors, usually within one or two minutes. Julian even receives a notification on their computer that the installation process has begun. It's fantastic! Moreover, it helped so much streamline our IT asset management and inventory. Sometimes someone changes the computer assigned to someone else. For example, Juliano had a computer, and then Matos changed it to his own use. I wouldn't know about this change if it weren't for KACE. KACE automatically tracks this information and saves it for me, allowing me to call it up on the dashboard. For example, if I need to find Juliano's computer in the system, I don't need to search through endless spreadsheets. I just search for "Juliano" in KACE. KACE also lists other details like the last login user. So, if I see "Juliano" on KACE but a different user is logged in, that tells me something might be wrong. I find this functionality very helpful for IT asset management.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It has improve our organization through the remote management of non-domain joined devices."
"Intune enables us to manage our devices from anywhere."
"It's easy to manage."
"The best part of Intune is application deployment. We can deploy an application to several users with a single click. We can use conditional access, granting access to users based on certain conditions, such as location, platform, etc."
"The tool's most valuable feature is Autopilot."
"The biggest asset is the range of device management options available with Intune, whether it is a Windows device, a Linux device, a Mac device, or mobile devices."
"The most important thing for me is the autopilot feature."
"I like Intune's ability to install software to a device remotely and push policy through the Azure portal."
"Software deployment and WSUS are most valuable."
"I manage software updates and operating systems for devices, and within seconds, we can remotely deploy a system for, say, 2,000 devices. Not only that, but we can also deploy scripts and create comprehensive compliance rules."
"This solution has made life easy with respect to patching, compliance, and OSD."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager is patch management."
"The main, clear valuable feature is updating the latest, patches and updates from Windows. This is the main feature we really utilize a lot."
"It works well for the endpoints for the customer I'm consulting. It has a bunch of knobs, and you can tune it to do lots of things."
"This has made the management of our environment easier."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager is it's incredibly simple to configure and execute changes in bulk, allowing for seamless deployment. With this solution, you can easily track the status of all modifications and send them with ease, making it a comprehensive and efficient solution for any necessary adjustments."
"Overall, I rate the solution ten out of ten."
"My company had bought some new machines. We used the tool to do some basic settings to ship every machine the same way and undertake the Windows deployment. We did the scripted installation. The tool helped us deploy custom software for specific departments. We also did Windows updates with the product."
"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."
"This product made the job easy to do without having to go put hands on the machines."
"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 initial setup is relatively easy."
"The solution provides us a single pane of glass with everything that we need for endpoint management of all devices. It definitely has made our endpoint management process much easier."
"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."
 

Cons

"Customer service used to be better, but as we are nearing the end of the contract, the focus on investing in us as a customer has diminished. It is what one would expect in such a situation."
"The technical support could be improved."
"The pricing could be improved."
"There are a couple of issues with stability."
"There is no catalog for mobile access management (MAM) security."
"The policies we had in SCCM and AD offered features that are missing from Microsoft Intune."
"Customer service used to be better. In the last couple of years, support has not been very good, even with Premier and Premium support. It's been very hit-or-miss."
"Enhancements for managing MacOS more comprehensively would be beneficial."
"It needs to be able to load faster during deployment."
"In terms of the monitoring, the timeframe it takes to actually report back on the compliance of a device after it has been patched is a bit too long."
"I would like to see some improvements in WSUS and control of other, non-Microsoft, product updates."
"They should improve their anti-malware policies like the SCEP policies. For instance, you can't have different policies for different servers, there is only one policy in all the servers, and everything is covered under that. For example, say you want to scan one group of servers on Saturday, and then you want to scan another group of servers on Sunday, you can't do that. You have to scan all your servers, a regular scan or a full scan, on the same day and at the same time. That's definitely one thing they need to resolve. In the next release, it would actually be nice if they included Apple products. It will also help if you can use Intune again. Their compliance reporting feature could also be better. They can maybe work a bit on that for patching now. It would be better if SCCM came with the functions of Right Click Tools built-in. If SCCM would have all those functions already built-in, we won't have to go and spend $5,000, just as an add-in from another company to get those functions."
"Regarding this, I'd like to mention the agent situation. When the agent on an end-user device is not functioning correctly, it can be quite problematic. It would be highly beneficial if there were a self-healing mechanism in place. Essentially, if the agent becomes corrupted or encounters issues, it should be able to rectify itself autonomously. This is particularly critical because, in order to utilize a tool like MECM (assuming you're referring to Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager), we need to deploy agents, known as AsMs, on all the devices we use, such as Windows 10 or Windows Server. Sometimes, when we deploy configurations or updates, they don't apply properly due to agent issues. This issue has been present since we began using MECM around 23 years ago. Unfortunately, there is currently no built-in mechanism for the agent to detect its own problems and initiate self-repair. Microsoft doesn’t have any feature to scan vulnerabilities and hence, they could include those."
"There is a reboot issue with the patching. Sometimes, if patching runs into any issue whatsoever, it doesn't reboot but it doesn't tell you it errored out. It just sits there and we don't find out until the next day whether it patched or not. That was a big issue for us. We're working through that. They added some stuff in there now where you can actually tell reboot is pending. But we still need some kind of notification that if something fails or is pending, we know. We shouldn't have to go in and look. They don't have anything for that right now."
"I want the system to provide some dependency relations. I would also like to see the relationship between different machines."
"Built in PowerShell cmdlets would be a nice feature because managing clients remotely can be a pain without knowing the WMI calls to run."
"The initial setup was complex. It is a Linux-based virtual server, where the customer cannot get into the back-end, so you can only follow their prompts. Then, there are specific things that have to be done in their implementation and upgrade phases that have to be done in a certain order or steps. If you don't get those steps right, the system doesn't work. I think that either simplifying that process or providing really good step-by-step documentation would be helpful."
"There isn't a lot they need to improve with the solution itself at this point. It is pretty close to providing a single pane of glass for everything that we need for endpoint management specifically on all devices. There is very little that it doesn't provide for us, and for those, we have to go to other methods. There are some of the patching solutions that it doesn't take care of for us. So, we have to do those manually on the devices, and that's really the biggest thing. It doesn't do patching really well for non-Microsoft applications. The major application updates, particularly Windows updates, don't function nearly as well, but, for the vast majority of things, it does just fine. If they could improve in this aspect, that'd be great, but I don't know if they're going to be able to do that."
"The only hiccups we had were some power issues, where the box was a little under-powered early on."
"One of the complications is that they don't have 24/7 support, and they're also not in our time zone... Sometimes, no matter how critical my application is, if my production server is down I won't be able to connect with anybody till 11:00 AM Eastern Standard Time."
"I have complaints about smart label adaptation and because of this, I recommend a 24 to 48 hour bake-in period."
"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."
"Paying for the product should come with full and extended training anytime it is needed."
"They could make the booting solution easier for different things, e.g., easier to insert drivers. They could make it easier to create a new image and put it onto the server. Those would be some nice solutions. They could make it so that somebody who has no knowledge at all can do it. That would be really nice. Because every time, until I get it memorized, I still need to go back to the training, the manual, or Google it to figure it out again. If they would make it a lot easier, to where a nine-year-old could do it, that would be really cool. If they made it easier, I could have more people managing the images on the server, instead of just one or two people."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost of the license and the features are justified for myself as a technical person."
"Intune is included in the Microsoft 365 licensing package that we have."
"It's affordable. In comparison to the competitors, the price depends on what features you need from Intune, but it's affordable. There are no hidden costs, but there are some features that go for a premium price. Those are the add-ons for which you have to pay extra."
"I am not that aware of the pricing, but as compared to other MDM solutions, Microsoft is providing a lot of things at the organizational level. So, it is quite reasonable as compared to other MDM solutions."
"Our enterprise agreement includes Microsoft Intune at no additional cost."
"Its price is fair. It's a normal price. It isn't too expensive or too cheap."
"The pricing is inherently reasonable, as Microsoft leverages market insights to maintain the total cost of ownership at around ninety to ninety-five percent of what would be incurred in an on-premise scenario."
"It is average. Some of the costs are quite high depending on what the customer currently uses, but overall, it is not bad. I would not say that I would not recommend Intune based on the cost. I definitely would, but they can definitely improve on the cost. So overall, its cost is not bad."
"The price model is different for every client."
"For enterprises, there is an annual license required to use this solution. The price of the solution could be cheaper. However, this is mostly because of the exchange rate from the dollar to the Nigerian currency."
"As far as I know, it is an annual operating expense license."
"When you compare this solution with other tools in the market you might actually find a lot of variation in the pricing and that's why people opt for the other tools rather than Microsoft tools."
"We have to pay for a license."
"I would rate the cost as eight out of ten."
"Microsoft provides a steep price for their enterprise products, but they offer very competitive pricing for their legacy customers."
"Its licensing is quite complicated because we are getting the license not only for SCCM but for the full Microsoft package. We don't need to pay for a separate license. We need to have one license that includes everything we need, such as Windows, Microsoft 365, SCCM, encryption, and so on. So, we don't have a specific price for it. Perhaps, it is good that it includes the full suite of licensing of Microsoft. It is expensive, but we are getting a lot of features."
"We are a university. So, we have a very good price for the system. I think the price for the system is worth it because of the security patch management. The security patch management is very important for us. The price is very good for KACE SMA, the functionality you get, and the patch management."
"Licensing is done on a per device basis, so it's dependent on how many agents you've got installed."
"We buy consulting fees from Software Factory, then we pay extra for it."
"The pricing is fair."
"The product is reasonably priced."
"We pay annually for technical support."
"The pricing is great. It's billed annually and it's very reasonable."
"We are also saving on the licensing fee, compared to other endpoint management solutions."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
26%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
13%
University
11%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does Microsoft Intune compare with VMware Workspace One?
Microsoft Intune is a great tool for managing a mobile device fleet while keeping access control. The solution makes ...
What are the pros and cons of Microsoft Intune?
Microsoft Intune is a great configuration management tool and has a lot of good things going for it. Here are some of...
How does Google Cloud Identity compare with Microsoft Intune?
Microsoft Intune offers not only an easy-to-deploy data protection and productivity management solution, but also ...
How does Ansible compare to Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (SCCM)?
Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager takes knowledge and research to properly configure. The length of time that ...
How to choose between ManageEngine Desktop Central and Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (formerly SCCM)?
ManageEngine Desktop Central is very easy to set up, is scalable, stable, and also has very good patch management. Wh...
What do you like most about SCCM?
One of the standout features of SCCM is its application management capabilities. It allows us to create packages effi...
What do you like most about Quest KACE Systems Management?
KACE automatically tracks this information and saves it for me, allowing me to call it up on the dashboard. For examp...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Quest KACE Systems Management?
It is expensive in Brazil. Generally, it's considered expensive, especially compared to solutions like Spiceworks.
 

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager
Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager, System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM )
Dell KACE Systems Management
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway
Bank Alfalah Ltd., Wªrth Handelsges.m.b.H, Dimension Data, Japan Business Systems, St. Lucie County Public Schools, MISC Berhad
Waypoint, Mattos Filho, Meetic, Gems Education, Green Clinic HealthSystem, Service King
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Configuration Manager vs. Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) and other solutions. Updated: November 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.