ManageEngine Endpoint Central Reviews

I used it about six months ago. We implemented it in the last company I worked with. We were using it for patching, rolling out images, and other similar things.

We were using the most recent version.

I like being able to image over the network. That's a nice feature that it has. Patch management is pretty decent on it as well.

The only problem with it is that the setup isn't very intuitive. I know that they just upgraded the product to make it a little bit easier to use, but compared to some of the other platforms, it is not easy to configure it, set it up, and get it running. However, once you have set it up and got it running, it runs great.

Once it was set up and running, there were no issues with it. It seems to run fairly well.

It is scalable. I was the admin for this system, and we probably had over a thousand end-users. I was the only one who knew how to use it at the time.

Their tech support was pretty good. For any issues we had, they'd come in and work with us and get them resolved pretty quickly.

Its setup isn't very intuitive.

We had perpetual licenses. The cost was around 36,000, and then you'd have the yearly maintenance fee of 2,000 or 3,000.

They have a service where they come in and configure it or do the setup for you for a price. I don't remember the price, but it was pretty reasonable. If you're not familiar with the platform, that might be a good thing to go with, especially if you don't want to go in and do the ifs and buts trying to set it up. It would be a lot easier if you had them come and set it up for you. With all the alerting and everything else that you have to set up with it, it takes a minute to get it up and running and have everything the way you wanted.

I'd give it an eight out of 10. I was really happy with it.

We deployed ManageEngine Desktop Central mainly for the patching of systems. Additionally, we have used it extensively for doing ad hoc software deployments, making changes to systems, such as if we need to deploy a registry fix. The solution also allows us to have local repositories. When we do a deployment at a local operation, everything is deployed locally from within that operation. We do not have to use the network to receive anything.

We do not use it for remote assistance very much, and the reason is we use ScreenConnect. I know that the Desktop Central remote control works. The other thing that we use Desktop Central is to receive quick access via the command line. It's very convenient that we can open a command prompt on a remote host.

We have seen a lot of benefits in reporting, we are able to pull a lot of information. For example, we can go ahead and pull out a report saying how many Windows 11 machines are in the organization, how many machines are missing patches that are older than 60 days, and how many machines have a specific version of the software.

ManageEngine Desktop Central automatically alerts you if there are newer releases or updates. You do not have to go to their website and check.

Your agents or your assets that are managed by ManageEngine Desktop Central, if you have a relay server, the agents will work over the internet. If there is an asset, then there is some vulnerability. As long as it's powered on and connected to the internet, it doesn't need to be on the corporate-wide area network. As long as it's on the internet, you can go ahead and manage it.

ManageEngine Desktop Central should keep up with some of the features that other major vendors are providing, such as Microsoft. 

If this solution could include the MDM component, then it would be a very strong contender with the other competitors.

The OS deployment of the solution could improve, I tested it before, and it was weak.

I have been using ManageEngine Desktop Central for approximately four years.

The stability of ManageEngine Desktop Central could improve. We have found that at times it can become a bit unstable. We have had issues with that in the past, but not much lately. 

The performance of the solution is good.

The solution is easy to scale. What you need for your scalability is to have more assets. You can scale the resources, such as the processor and memory. The way to scale would be doing the repositories at sites.

We have approximately five IT users using this solution in the organization.

We have been using ManageEngine Desktop Central extensively in my organization but in the last year or so more we have been focused more on the SCCM. We plan to increase usage as the company expands.

I've spoken with technical support in the past. It's a hit and miss, depending on who you speak with support. Some agents are very strong and some agents tell us to read an article and come back if we have any more problems.

The technical support could improve by being more consistent.

I have used other solutions in the past.

We do our software deployment based on a logical grouping of computers. ManageEngine Desktop Central provides the ability to create groups or a collection of computers. That's what they call it. If we can create the collection, of the software we've just uploaded to ManageEngine Desktop Central, it synchronizes it against all repositories. Then based on that collection, we only need to tell it to deploy that piece of software to the computers.

We can also use another tool for deployment that Desktop Central has which is really nice called the self-service portal. We have a list of applications that are common and ones that are not. The applications that not every user uses. For example, in the SAP GUI, not everybody uses SAP. We can have it published in the self-service portal and if the user needs it, they can deploy it themselves.

We use one person for the deployment of the solution. However, the deployment difficulty and time depends on a few factors, such as the size of the collection, how many computers are you deploying it to, how many users, and what is the size of the package and their complexities. Usually, once it's all replicated and the agents are online, if we tell it to deploy, it's almost immediate. Additionally, we do deployment based on off-hours, we can do them immediately or we can schedule deployments.

When the solution is up and running it does not require a lot of maintenance because it uses PostgreSQL, they have routines that manage the database. The only thing that you need to keep your eye on is the size of the repositories because as you patch more and you deploy more software, the size of your repositories grows and you need to keep a watch on this.

We make everybody else look good. We have received a return on investment because we were able to deploy applications a lot easier where we do not have to get the field services team involved.

The solution is very affordable.

The nice thing about ManageEngine Desktop Central is that when it's time for renewal, you can increase your footprint by the number of assets you're managing. I can scale up and down based on the size of my organization.

My advice to those wanting to implement this solution would be if they have a small IT department and they do not have strong IT people, ManageEngine Desktop Central is pretty simple to deploy. The complexity is not as big as an SCCM or some of the other products.

In terms of training, there's a lot of things on YouTube that tell you exactly how to do it. There is some good documentation from ManageEngine Desktop Central. It is very simple to deploy and get it up and running.

I rate ManageEngine Desktop Central an eight out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for managing patches and centralizing updates for applications. We can also blacklist and whitelist applications on our users' laptops.

Besides the office and operating systems, there are lots of other products that need to be taken care of, which are beyond your control. I have 250 endpoints here, sitting here and 100 roaming users, so for me, each and every application in the current scenario is very difficult, wherein the digital signatures are happening, the tokens are happening, which ask for the updates of Java, which ask for the update of a browser. It is very difficult for me to do the update of every PC individually. However, when handled in a centralized location, I get the control I need so that I can see which endpoint needs to be updated, which endpoint has been updated, et cetera. This is very helpful for me, very good.

The solution is very easy to use.

Everything is easily centralized and managed under this one product.

When we do the patching, I can select the applications which are applicable to my network. We will get multiple templates and tons and tons of applications, however, you can select and download and it'll start patching. It'll consume lots of bandwidth and disk space. What you can do, is that, whichever applications are applicable for you, you can select those applications and it will start patching only those applications. It will reduce the bandwidth, it'll reduce the disk space, and tracking will be much easier.

In terms of the warranty, you need to install the agent on the laptop, or desktop and once the agent is installed, when the communication happens, it fetches the entire detail of the hardware, software, and everything. The beautiful thing with that is it gives you the warranty information also, whether the product is out of warranty or not. I can set an alert for devices where the warranty is going to expire. I'll get an alert that it is going to expire in one year, a month, six months, whatever the term I defined.

Since I'm able to see whatever the applications are installed on the user's PC on the endpoint. Sometimes most of the roaming users who are out of my network tend to install applications that are not applicable as per company policy. You can define which applications are allowed. There was a couple of cases where my users had installed a YouTube Downloader, and while downloading and installing that filter, by default or by accident, they installed some of the adware also. That won't happen under this solution.

Desktop Central gives me an option wherein I can prohibit any software. When I blacklist software, the user will get an alert saying "This is prohibited software." Then they call IT and I'll get a notification. For me, I'm very much in control of my network now. I have the power of whitelisting or blacklisting.

For users that work from home and are not in the office, sometimes minor things happen, such as email not working properly, et cetera. Desktop Central will give me remote control of a user's machine and I can troubleshoot or find out what the issue might be. If something needs to be installed, I can do it remotely as well. I don't need to buy TeamViewer or AnyDesk or other software. 

There are so many features available to us. They've added a lot over time. Initially, the asset management was there, however, there were no warranty features. The remote control was there, however, there were various limitations. They've just gotten better and more robust over time. 

For the most part, all of my needs are met with this product.

I would like to see them come out with a SaaS version of the product in the future. There are dependencies with on-prem. For example, since it's on my data center, my bandwidth, it is totally dependent on my network. On the cloud, I don't have to worry about anything. 

One feature we're testing is when we have a laptop with just a DOS OS and we need to do a full installation, including installing the underlying OS. I'd like to have the option where we could create a template to allow the system to install the OS with the typical software. It's a feature we're testing now to see if this is possible. We don't use it yet. However, I'd like it if we could just run one script, one command, and then get an alert when the process is done so that I can go in and configure emails or whatever else I need so that it is ready for the end-user.

I've been working with the solution for around three years. 

The stability is very good. We have been using it for the last three to four years and there is not a single downtime where the product has failed. In terms of service updates, service backups, and whatever the features are coming, we have faced a 99.9% success ratio.

In the initial stage, at that time, we had a hybrid environment internally, where we had Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, and some of the servers which had Windows 2003 OS. There were compatibility issues, however, we've since migrated and upgraded the systems and there is no longer an issue.

The solution is scalable.

We are using the solution quite extensively and have about 250 users.

Technical support has been good and we've been satisfied with their level of service. They have a good inbuilt chat option if you need to reach them. They have a technical team right within the solution that you can talk to in real-time. They can provide workarounds or escalate issues quite easily.

We used to have a Windows SUS server for patch management. There were other products that needed to be taken care of - for example, Adobe, the WinRAR, and multiple other software, which needed to be patched, and in which the assets needed to be managed. There are things such as warranties that need to be managed, and their tracking needs to be done, we were looking for an application wherein we would get everything on a centralized product, which is why we chose this solution.

The initial setup was straightforward. At the time, when we were in the phase of testing for the product, we did whatever testing to fulfill our requirements. That way, when we went into production, there were not any hiccups.

Deployment took around ten to 15 days, due to the number of endpoints that needed to be done, and the number of products that needed to be whitelisted. Also, everything needed to be configured. Around four to five people were involved in that project.

In terms of maintenance, if there is any product update, or if the application will have any service package coming, then I need to take downtime, to go through everything and do testing of the service pack to see whether it will hamper any current writing process or not. Once I do it in the test environment, then I have to put it in production.

That said, once we move to SaaS, this process will be obsolete in the cloud.

I have two dedicated resources for maintenance. That includes me. The other person looks at the patch management and the warranties. I look at server maintenance and deal with whatever resources are required for servers. 

We were able to set it up ourselves in-house. 

At the time we signed onto this product, it was a bit more expensive than SolarWinds, however, I'm not sure if that's since changed. 

We looked at SolarWinds, however, we went for the Desktop Central. We evaluated it and we found Desktop Central was quite user-friendly in terms of patch management and in terms of asset management. Right from the user inception, until the exit, everything is tracked under Desktop Central, whatever the asset allocated to the user, whatever the warranty, whatever the application, the install, everything is tracked under the Desktop Central.

Kaseya was also evaluated which was on the cloud. However, it was costlier and there were manageability issues. SolarWinds was a bit very complex in terms of handling. Technical support was also different as they only have an email option.

I'm a customer and an end-user.

Currently, we are using on-prem. I am waiting for SaaS, however, I really don't have the SaaS version. It'll be very good if they offer a SaaS version; my manageability will become very much easier.

If you're looking for third-party patch management, asset management, and/or remote control support, then this is the best app. For remote control, it doesn't require much bandwidth. Often, people sitting in a remote location are using their 3G data cards or mobile data, mobile phone, and they still got connected with the seamless connectivity. There has been no issue.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

We are using the solution for desktop support. You can connect to the client machines and do the support for them remotely. You can record the sessions and you can deploy software. We use it to install operating systems. It's basically a desktop support solution.

The product makes it very easy to connect to clients. Normally, with all the tools I try, many have been messy when connecting with the client. With DesktopCentral, it's really easy. 

Normally, you can install the software and you are ready to run when you install the agent in the client. It's very easy to install on the clients' machines as you can connect with the active directory and deploy it automatically.

The initial setup is very simple.

The stability is very good.

The product tends to have some glitches in terms of connection when you have two connections to the same machine. For example, you have the internet cable connected to your PC, and you are connected to the WiFi. The client gets confused about that and loses the connection with the client a lot of the time if you don't deactivate one of them.

They should make it easier to deploy in the clients. 

Improvement of the chats on the web communication through the WAN would be helpful.

I've used the solution at this company for two years. In my last job, maybe I use it for four years approximately.

The product is very stable. Normally, I do the updates. I never have a problem or have to make a solution for coming back after a shutdown. It's reliable. there are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

It's my understanding that the scalability is good. I don't have a cluster right now, however, from what I see, it's going to be easy to set up. In the option of the platform, you have an assistant to make a cluster and make your implementation bigger. That said, I didn't try it yet.

I have five technical users and I have 200 clients.

I don't have plans to have more clients or increase usage as the size of the company is finite. However, I will likely acquire more products from ManageEngine.

The initial implementation process was very simple. I even installed it myself. 

I didn't need support or a consultant to do the setup. I handled it myself and was very, very simple.

We pay licensing fees on a yearly basis. 

We have the aggregate fees for a few things, however, for the most part, it's all under one license fee. There aren't added costs.

We are partners. 

The advice I can give to people looking to implement this solution is to read all the information they have on the website as all the steps to handle the implementation is there. It is very easy to read and it's very accessible on their site. You don't need to look for other site guides or any other tutorials as everything you need is right there on their website.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten. I've been pretty happy with the product in general.

With that solution, we can push patches out. We can deploy software, and it tracks our inventory. We can do OS deployment with it. That's about all that we use it for right now.

The patch management aspect of the solution is the most valuable part for us.

Overall, our experience has not been good.

In terms of the software itself, it's just kind of hit or miss as to whether or not it works. I've had to spend a lot of time with their port trying to get to work.

Technical support is not reliable. 

The solution isn't fully stable, and, when it goes down, it's hard to get it up and running.

The initial setup is complicated.

I've been using the solution for five or so years. It's been a while. 

I wouldn't say that it's stable. We've just had problems. Due to the fact that it's pretty complicated, to me anyway, and then when it does go down, it takes a while to get it working again.

The technical support, like the software, is hit or miss. Sometimes it takes a long time to get anything done. We would prefer it if they were more reliable. We're not satisfied with the level of service we get.

The initial setup is rather complex. It's not really straightforward. 

I can't speak to their exact pricing. I don't have any information on that.

We are customers and end-users.

From Manage Engine, we're using just the Desktop Central and the Log 360. Desktop Central does not happen to be the MSP.

We are using version 10.1.2119.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend the solution to others. I would advise users to keep looking into other options.

I'd rate the solution at a four out of ten. We haven't been very happy overall.

We use it for Windows patching, third-party application patching, and third-party application deployment. 

The advantage of this solution for us is that it has basically centralized all our IT support, both remote and on-prem. We no longer need to do a lot of sneakernet. We're basically doing full remote support with it.

This solution has many valuable features. It's a complete product that allows you to remote troubleshoot, has an inventory of systems, as well as other things. We own the entire suite. The UEM suite allows us to deploy Manage Patching, Deploy OS' as well as MDM Management. We use the entire Swiss Army knife of the product. We use some other ManageEngine products and there's seamless integration between them. They've implemented in-application support so you can type a question to support and you'll get a real time reply, which is great. They really listen to their customers and try to proactively support them. They're constantly listening to feedback and making improvements on the product. It's one of those things where they listen to the customers and they're constantly evolving the product.

There are occasional glitches but they deal with it very quickly and efficiently. They've actually just rolled out a whole new endpoint security add-on that includes the features I've been looking for. 

I've been using this solution for 10 years. 

The solution has been fairly stable. It's evolved over time and they've come a long way. It's been a consistently stable platform. We've previously used things like WSUS and Intune for Window Patch deployment, ManageEngine is by far easier to use than those products. 

This is a very scalable solution. It's deployed to our entire organization, so that's about 400 users.

The technical support is great. The challenge is that sometimes support has to go back to development and the lead time can take a while. It's no different to any other company. They're all going to do the same thing. I'd much rather have them fix it right the first time versus coming back constantly with band-aids.

The initial setup is easy. You build a server, you install, you run the executable, it installs. It has a self-contained database and it does its own thing. You're up and running in 10 minutes. Obviously, like any product, it's going to take you time to evolve the product, to use the product, to get to know the product, but you can be up and running in as quickly as 10 minutes.

The cost is fairly reasonable for what you're getting. As an end user, you always want everything for nothing, but the reality of the matter is you get what you pay for so I think the price is fair. If you compare it to things like other patch management and third party tools, I'd say the price is probably fairly good.

We've looked at a lot of solutions and, value for money, this product can't be beat. They're always packing more features into it. We've looked at a couple of other products and they're just more cumbersome to set up and more expensive.

It's worth taking a good look at this solution because I think it's a really good product and it has a lot of features. It has a lot of value added and they have great support.

I would rate this solution a nine out of 10. 

Our primary use case is to manage most aspects of the endpoints in 21 remote sites. All sites are connected via IPSec VPN mesh and have distribution servers at each site, OS deployment, software deployment, patch management, remote administration, configurations, mobile device management, and browser management. One of my favorite features is a simple remote CMD. This enables us to troubleshoot certain things without interfering with the user desktop session or needing to ask them to take remote control of the machine. It's very valuable being able to fix a problem without stopping user productivity.

It has become a single pane of glass for a majority of client support and administration. It has enabled my team to quickly identify machines, who is using it, what applications are installed, and a huge set of tools to solve most problems. OS imaging and deployment has significantly reduced the amount of time and resources needed to deploy a large set of new computers or even just reimage a problematic PC because of malware or other problem that would take much longer to troubleshoot. Software deployment has taken the task of installing a common application on hundreds of computers to just a few clicks.

Honestly, I have to say all features together have become the Swiss army knife of desktop management. They all work hand in hand. Software deployment saves an unbelievable amount of time installing an application on hundreds of computers. A full suite of remote administration tools to troubleshoot problems or make a change via PowerShell without intruding on the user desktop. Mobile device management eliminated the problem of missing iPads or iCloud locked tablets and phones. The mundane process of patch management is now a breeze.

I really feel like asset explorer should be a component of desktop central. That would make it the ultimate desktop management tool. This would also simplify the asset management role since an agent is already being deployed and assets could be added at the same time.  the CMDB would be quickly populated with a PC hardware and software inventory along with user relationships. Device assignment and tracking would be another added value. Adding that feature set would tie everything together and be the one-stop-shop of desktop management suites.

Approximately a year.

It's very stable it just seems to always work.

Very scalable. Distribution servers are the main factor.

The few times we have contacted customer support they have always very quickly solved the problem. Every support agent has been very professional and curteous. 

We did not use a different solution. We did a trial Desktop central and immediately fell in love with it and have not regretted the decision.

It was very easy to setup initially. The side effect is you will spend a lot of time tweaking and fine-tuning everything. 

In-house.

Time saved is money saved.

Go with what you can afford. Every part of the application is going to save time and money and a very worthwhile investment.

We did not evaluate competing products. Everything we were looking for was there and worked well and was easy to use.

We use this solution for Patch Management, IT Asset Management, and Remote Control on Network Computers.

We adopted this solution by replacing GFI LanGuard.

Current version of Endpoint central has great capabilities over patch management and software deployment. Also we can take advantages of many system tools and configurations for day to day work.

The most valuable feature of this solution is the Patch Management.

The Patch Management functionality needs still improvements. No provision to control network traffic. 

The Deployment scheduler needs updating to support various methods for deployment.

We have used this solution from 2012 onward.

Solution is very stable and has great featurs that can be used by system admins.

The product has great capabilitied only the should understand the patching process more deeply to avoid failures and client system issues such as OS corrupt, continuos patch failed, system hanging etc.

Support needs improvement. They totally realy on customers at present.

Neutral

GFI LanGuard has poor capicity and feature for patch deployment. We find many client computer OS getting corrupt due to improper patch deployment.

It take a while to understand the process for us.

We implemented in-house.

Manage Engine Licensing policy is best among all. You should always take 10% less licenses than projected. I will advise to learn and implement the solution in-house rather than buying initial setup service.

GFI LanGuard

You can limit the admins and users for the Endpoint Management to reduce the cost.

I am certified for two of the modules of ManageEngine. I am a certified associate for AD Manager Plus (Active Directory Management) and I also have the certification for Desktop Central. Desktop Central is a management module used to manage devices and services from one location.  

To manage a large number of users and devices and push upgrades and patches, we need a solution that allows us to do that in an efficient way. We can do this with Microsoft Active Directory. That would be our primary use case for this solution. There are other things that we do with it.   

If we want to track an incident more closely to do some root-cause analysis, Desktop Central can help us with this.  

If I have a large group or area of a company that extends into EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa) and APAC (Asia-Pacific) and maybe LATAM (Latin America) that is on Windows 7 and I want to upgrade multiple devices to Windows 10, I can plan for these upgrades and do them simultaneously. Desktop Central has certain use cases within IT, Ops, and DevSecOps (security as a part of software development and IT operations) roles. Using these you can build a DevSecOps pipeline using Desktop Central.  

In the case of a well-formed pipeline, the Ops is given the liberty to do the releases rather than having to get IT involved at multiple locations. With minimal help, the Ops can do the releases, they just have to define the release and the release goes out smoothly without any IT intervention. The automation process can be built out this way to give technical control to non-technical users. We built our own platform for doing that from scratch Java based. But the technology matured and there are more options available from vendors to solve these issues. We chose to deploy Desktop Centeral as our dedicated solution.  

It has greatly simplified updating and patching within our systems.  

From my hands-on experience, the features I have found the most valuable in Desktop Central is the way it is tightly coupled with the rest of the modules and the entire gamut of ManageEngine. So if I want to collect data about who the users are on the system, I can pull that from the Active Directory. The AD Workbench is a dashboard that gives all the data about the users enterprise-wide.  

Desktop Central has got a dedicated mobile device management module. ManageEngine has got the complete gamut of offerings. It has got asset management, service management, and asset classification. It can do any kind of patch management. It is best at the general management of assets and reporting.  

For example, we can use it for virtually anything having to do with security on endpoints. Say we have maybe 4,000-plus devices that we have to monitor and upgrade the OSS (Operations Support Systems) and apply patching. This can all be handled with Desktop Central from a central location. That is what makes it a very good option.  

Desktop Central manages pushing upgrades to endpoints and how to securely manage those endpoints. That is how it is most useful.  

The product has several places where there is room for improvement.  

Although it is on the cloud, sometimes the performance is slower than it should be. One of the reasons could be that it is tightly integrated and tight coupled with the rest of the modules and all of them have to be in sync. This syncing takes time and resources. When I go to our Desktop Central console, sometimes it runs slowly. So performance is one place where it could have room for improvement.  

In terms of patching, which is a major benefit of the package, patch management can work even better as well. The vulnerabilities are obvious. Every day we get reports on a lot of new vulnerabilities. It is clear that ManageEngine is doing the patching and the package is easily deployed once they are developed and available. The incident management, the root cause, the planning of the resolution, the service management — all these things are known and available. The team at ManageEngine is good at that. But they do not provide reports to user admins on the development and delivery which is information they already have and admins could use. Once the patch is added to the repository the defense against vulnerabilities improves. But the information about developments and vulnerabilities would be good to have and could be shared more candidly.  

I have been working with Desktop Central since February 2020, so that is about 2 years now.  

The product is constantly being upgraded by the vendor for any known issues with some features or some bugs. That kind of stability issue will always be temporary.  

There can be minor bugs that linger because they are not affecting operational issues, but even these can be escalated for fixing. We can get it fixed through the support and the product team for that. We talk directly to the product team if we feel something is important. It can happen over the phone, or it can happen by email. The entire product team has got different account managers for each of their customers. We can go directly to the team professionals that we need and get a bug fix and get it applied.  

Although Desktop Central is performing well, it sometimes experiences lag because of the resources available. The CPU and memory available might be temporarily low. Desktop Central needs a lot of resources to perform its services and syncing.  

Overall we have not had any serious, lingering issues with stability.  

We have not had any issues overall with any type of scalability. Right now we might have more than 12,000, 15,000-plus users spread across the geography. We can add more.  

All the service management gets taken care of by Desktop Central, which monitors everything. So if you need to expand services you configure this in Desktop Central. There are business KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), so it is KPI driven. How many incidents we are expecting, how much we can scale and all these system variables can be driven by business KPIs.  

Quest Office has a product called Foglight that has been used for quite a long time to order business KPIs. There are two different types of KPIs: the business KPIs, and then the functional or technical KPIs. So those are all integrated with Desktop Central from Foglight.  

We have incident management through Alacrity which is made by a different segment of BMC Software which has also got the product called Remedy. Alacrity is something similar.  

Within Desktop Central there is a production management function that is at the core of the application. When we configure Alacrity to care for incident management or Foglight to manage KPIs, this becomes integrated with the Desktop Central modules.  

We can tightly integrate other applications to the Desktop Central solution and expand out what it oversees and interacts with.  

If the workload increases, we can scale services easily on the cloud or make other plans for enhancing our architecture.  

I am quite satisfied with the customer support. They have bigger support teams available and the routing to the proper people and resources is quite good. They have support out of different cities, so they 'follow the sun' from the perspective of support and the availability is quite good all the time.  

Neutral

VMware was our solution at first. It was a PaaS (Platform as a Service) offering with built-in security and a part of vCloud Air. Workspace ONE was on the top of that. It was the first real desktop virtualization. Like Citrix, it gives you VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure). With that, VMs can easily be managed through Workspace ONE and integrated VDIs.  

If I already have VMware and vSphere as my core backbone for the virtualization strategy in the organization, I might also look at automation for deploying updates. If I have a containerized application that is not automated, I can build in the automation using the DevSecOps pipeline or I can look for another solution. If you want to do the DevSecOps pipeline in the VMware workspace, you can do that with vRealize automation.  

VMware, compared to Desktop Central, is far more expensive. Desktop Central has got a license and pricing advantage similar to your windows update and Windows WUSP (Windows Update Services: Client-Server Protocol). That is your Windows update platform. With Desktop Central, you pay something similar to that. It is only a few dollars per license per user.  

Switching to Desktop Central was a matter of having an opportunity to make a switch, keeping aware of the developments in the technology and on the market, and moving to a product that was cheaper and had the capabilities that we needed to carry out the task.   

Our process and roll out for doing the setups are pretty easy. We have managed to gain familiarity with the product and created a pretty smooth process for the installations.  

I have installed a lot of modules by myself, like EDI Manager, and I even installed Desktop Central. We run tests until we are satisfied that these two modules are installed correctly and this usually does not take much time.  

We do not necessarily handle the setup and deployment totally by ourselves. We stay connected to the managing and support team. There are different product teams within the managing team. There is one for EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) Manager, there is one for Desktop Central, there is another one for the service management. There are many different parts at the support team level. Most of the installations do not require assistance but we can consult support when required. They will help us cope with any sticking point and we can move on from there.

Desktop Central can be less expensive than other solutions like VMware for managing DevSecOps. You have to pay per asset with Desktop Central and the final cost depends on how many assets you have across the organization. Per asset, the license cost will be less than using a more expensive license for VMware and vRealize. I think per desktop it might be somewhere around $50 or $100 each using ManageEngine.  

This is the only product I have in mind for this type of solution currently, although we have not evaluated Sophos yet. After that, there is only Citrix and VM Workspace ONE. Citrix is the oldest vendor we have had since Citrix MetaFrame Presentations Server days. At that time they were using screen sharing on desktops, RDPs (Remote Desktop Protocol), and still using all those older technologies. So that is too old as a solution. Desktop Central is doing much better things and has advanced well beyond that solution.  

My advice to people looking into this solution is that if you want to improve on the patching processes as a part of a DevSecOps pipeline, Desktop Central can help you do that. It will help you make that workflow easier and it is a better option than other solutions. So this works out to be a better because everything is built-in. You do not have to integrate with any other company's portal or any other incident management or tracking.  

If you plan for a patch, there are different tools to use, different notifications to set for the patch, and they can be administered within Desktop Central itself. So the admin can approve it and once the notification changes, the patch can be released to the endpoints. That works pretty fast. That built-in workflow makes it more productive and easier to use.  

On a scale from one to ten, where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate Desktop Central higher than the VMware and Citrix Workspaces. The workflows are much better and easier, and the different roles for IT and Ops are well defined. So I would rate somewhere around seven.  

It is a seven because it still has got some room for improvement, but I think seven is good.  

I like that we can manage everything totally in one dashboard. We can install software easily. Anyone can handle the installation. It's got good documentation. 

The setup is pretty simple. 

It's scalable. 

The technical communication needs to be better. They need better technical support.

The solution is expensive. 

I've been using the solution for one to two months. 

The product is stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. I'd rate the stability eight or nine out of ten based on its reliability.

It is scalable. It is simple to expand. I'd rate its ability to scale eight out of ten. 

Technical support has not been great. I haven't been pleased with their ability to assist when we need help. That said, there are some technicians that are good if you can get a hold of them.

Negative

It is easy to set up the solution. I'd rate the ease of implementation nine out of ten. It is not overly complex. 

It is a pretty expensive solution. With one being cheap and ten being expensive, I'd rate the affordability at a nine out of ten. Compared to other products, it costs a lot. 

I'm a customer and end user. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. I'm pretty happy with its capabilities.