Microsoft Configuration Manager Reviews

The primary use case of the solution is to deploy patches, and applications, and upgrade our client operating systems.

Without the solution, we would have to manually install all patches and software and upgrade our operating system with the help of our support team, which would take a long time. With SCCM, this process is automated, making it a highly valuable feature.

The most valuable feature of this solution is its ability to deploy patches to nearly all applications.

SCCM should strive to enhance the accuracy of its reporting functions in order to avoid any issues with incorrect or inaccurate data.

Microsoft could supply an installation guide to make setup easier.

I have been using the solution for ten years.

The solution is stable and we have not had any issues.

The solution is scalable.

We have 100,000 people using the solution.

The technical support is good. We can call the hotline or use the website to generate the tickets.

Positive

The initial setup is straightforward.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

Maintenance for the solution is easy.

I recommend the solution to others.

It is used only for endpoints. We are trying to decide if it is useful for server-based evaluation as well. Like everybody else, we want to track what software is deployed. We have a one-half deployment of this product now, and I'm not sure if it's useful for what we want to do, which is server-based. It is designed to detect any PC. Thousands of people are using it this way, and it's not a new thing, but some people also seem to use the product for server-based detection, and it looks like there are modules you can download for Linux and other things to make it work beyond just the endpoint, which is what I am after.

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. 

It is designed to detect any PC. You can do it agent-based, or you can do it by some other method. If it is agent-based, then as long as the PC has the Endpoint Manager agent on it at the time when the batch job runs, it detects the hardware and software and puts it in the database. 

I'm looking for a single solution for all discovery needs. It fulfills about 40% of the requirements, and I'd like to see the other 60% so that I don't have to keep doing this.

I've been consulting in this space for five years. It has been used by the customer for years.

I don't have enough data on that. While I've been observing it, it has been stable.

When you buy it, you license it with a total number of devices to be managed, and that's a wall. When you hit the wall, you're going to need more licenses. So, you can scale right up to the spot where you have hit your boundary on licensing. To that boundary, it scales just fine.

I don't have any experience with their support.

This client uses seven or eight different things to perform this function of discovery. They use two different things for networks, and they use a hodgepodge of things to track VMware and Virtual Data Images (VDIs) and basically back of the envelope to track things that are on servers.

As far as I know, it is an annual operating expense license.

You may need complementary products to handle the holes not envisioned by SCCM.

For what it was designed to do, I would rate it a nine out of 10.

This solution helps to manage different areas. For example, asset inventory and software inventory. You are able to patch products, do software deployment, and software packaging. 

I have found some valuable features to be the built-in reporting tool, the ability to get visibility on your organization, compliance reports, software remitting for all your products in your organization, and the management of all machines in your environment including a new domain and workgroups.

I currently need to increase my compliance level in the patching processes which this solution could improve on. For this purpose, I am looking for another solution to perform more efficiently and to work faster to cover this part specifically.

There should be more visibility to integrate more products other than Microsoft products. For example, Adobe and Google Chrome. You need to do a lot of manual intervention to cover all non-Microsoft products for patching at the moment. There are third parties working on these gaps in this solution. 

I have been using the solution for 12 years.

The solution is stable most of the time.

I have found the solution to be scalable. We have around 50,000 users using the solution.

We were satisfied with the support sometimes. There were occasions when we have had an engineer that was not experienced in the particular problem we encountered to be able to help efficiently. This could be improved by having better-trained engineers.

The specifications for the SCCM and the organizational capacity can make the installation complex otherwise it can be easy.

The deployment took a long time. We required a team system engineer from Microsoft to be allocated with my team to complete any configuration.

We are currently looking for another solution to work in parallel to cover some of the gaps in functionality.

I rate SCCM an eight out of ten.

We use the solution to monitor our servers and clouds. We also use it for software and hardware inventories.

Hardware and software inventories help us discover the resources and assets in our organization. The dashboards have information about our assets. We use the reports for decision-making. The tool gives good information about our resources in the organization.

The solution is crowded with information. It is complicated to search for things.

I have been using the solution for almost six months.

The stability is excellent. I have had no problems. I rate the product’s stability an eight out of ten.

We have around ten users in the organization. The product serves only the environment where we install the agent for each client. We have almost 2000 clients. I rate the product’s scalability a nine out of ten.

The implementation is easy. It took three to four hours.

Since we are a government organization, money is not an issue. There's an agreement between the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and Microsoft.

I will recommend the tool to others. It is helpful for organizations. Overall, I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for client management, especially for day-to-day operational activities, like access management or software deployment.

The main key feature that we find the most valuable is the patching. The remote desktop is a very useful feature as well. The software deployment aspect is helpful too. These are the three core features from which we see the customers really benefit if they have a System Center Config Manager. This is especially true for enterprise organizations here.

Microsoft is being very competitive right now, and they are really investing in a lot of new features to be more competitive in the marketplace. 

We are okay with all the available features.

In the future, we're looking for tighter integration with cloud solutions like Windows Intune. It is already there, however, it's still in need of some improvements. It's not straightforward in terms of the administration on offer. 

We'd like the solution to make it easier to manage remote users.

It offers a very difficult cloud gateway when it comes to cloud management.

The solution does need a lot of configuration and fine-tuning, so a company will need a dedicated person who's knowledgeable in the product to manage it.

A few people complained that SCCM is very complex without CPS, depending on the SQL database, and when using SQL as a backend service. Sometimes updating the dashboard and getting the reports, can be slow. They're not getting an instant update on the database. That is where most of the customers tend to complain. 

I've been using the solution since version 2.0 or something close to that. It may be at least 15 years.

We don't have very many issues in SCCM. It's not a plug and play software, however. From time to time it does require fine-tuning. You need the right management and administrative people in place to manage the product. This is essential in order to keep it running correctly.  

We have clients in both the private and public sectors. 

The solution requires fine-tuning and configuration tweaks. In order to scale it, you will need a knowledgeable person to manage the process.

Technical support from Microsoft has been good. We've been satisfied with their level of service.

We don't find the initial setup to be complex. We've done many implementations a this point, and we find it to be straightforward. Our team is very much experts at this point. They know all the processes and they go through everything step by step. 

In terms of how long it takes to deploy the solution, this question is very tricky. It's all dependant on the customers, and their environment as well as the customer's readiness to proceed. If it's a POC, where I don't have any dependencies on the customer side, that everything will be within the private network, isolated environment, I can handle a deployment within two days. We can install, configure, and make everything ready in that short amount of time simply because we don't have customer dependencies.

You do need to have the correct people in place to manage it once it's up and running. They need to be experienced and dedicated to the product.

We're an integrator and service provider here in Bahrain, so we have done more than a couple of installations, so where our team is very confident in our ability to implement the solution on behalf of our clients.

We're actually looking at ServiceNow as a potential product to use in the future.

We are a Microsoft gold partner.

We're noticing many users in our country moving away from Microsoft and towards AWS.

We tend to use the latest solution, or something close to that. We always are trying to keep it up to date in all the customer database and systems. Whenever there is the latest update available, we update everything immediately for our customers. The latest version may be 19.06.

While all the customers we have are currently on-prem, we are looking for cloud-based solutions going forward, due to the fact that our customers tend to gravitate towards the cloud. They are like looking for something they can easily manage. That's all clients, irrespective of whether they are in the office or are our mobile users. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. I really like the product, however, there's always room for improvement.

Microsoft Configuration Manager gives different tools in one solution. 

The tool's deployment is complex and depends on the architecture you want to implement. 

The solution is stable.

The tool is scalable. 

I rate Microsoft Configuration Manager a ten out of ten. 

Microsoft has done a good job with authentication solutions, such as single sign-on, or open authentication.

The downside of Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager is it's an on-premise-based solution. With the pandemic coming on board the need to support users across the globe has increased. For a while, we would use the in-built Microsoft Teams screen sharing feature but the disadvantage of that is you cannot perform privileged access. Microsoft does not give you access to that. That's where you need cloud-based tools, such as BeyondTrust or Freshservice.

There are many aspects of this solution that can be improved, such as security.

The integration could be better with other software packages.

I have been using Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager for approximately three years.

Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager is a stable solution.

Having Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager available only on on-premise creates limitations. If you want the best scalability options then you will have to move to the cloud to a solution such as Microsoft Intune.

We have approximately 1,000 active endpoints using this solution.

Microsoft has a lot of support available for Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager. When we open a support ticket Microsoft solves them in the set out the time frame in the SLA.

We were using other solutions previously.

The installation is not easy. As with most on-premise solutions, they are not easy to install. Microsoft documentation is complicated and goes on and on. It's a lot to try to assimilate the information. With a cloud solution, it makes it a bit easier. However, even with Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager being on-premise with Intune, it's still not straightforward. The time the implementation took for us to complete was a couple of weeks with a five-person team.

In recent times, a lot of companies have begun to move away from Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager. The endpoint configuration is very convoluted to implement. In most companies, you need to have a very large dedicated team to manage the solution on the back end. 

A lot of companies are looking to cost savings. With the advent of cloud solutions, companies have the opportunity to receive a lot of cost savings. There are a lot of ITSM tools that will do asset management for you, change management, converged asset management, and updates. There are other ways to configure updates and deployment. The solution is a bit convoluted and expensive.

The price of Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager is expensive.

I have a very good idea of what my present workplace pays for this solution because it's usually a mixture of different solutions. For example, if you have an Azure P2 license, it tends to cover Microsoft 365 E5. We have a number of licenses. 

The licensing is typically paid monthly or annually as part of the agreement by the customer.

I would recommend this solution to others if you're an Azure-centric organization. If you have your workloads on Azure and are a Microsoft-based organization. For example, you have Microsoft servers, Microsoft endpoints, Azure workloads, BD VMs, Data Factory, and SQL.

I would advise others to use online help forums instead of Microsoft documentation because they can tend to be complicated and lengthy.

I rate Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager a nine out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for patch management, application deployment and operating system deployment.

It has improved our ability to remediate against critical CVE's in a timely manner across the enterprise.

The patch management is great. The ability to be able to centrally purchase servers is quite useful.

The ability to monitor only after you have rebooted devices allows you to see if they have compliance or not.

The efficiency - as opposed to patching once you have the time - of having a central repository to manage everything you need is very helpful.

The solution is quite stable. 

It's perfect for enterprises.

We have found the scalability to be quite good.

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. That could be better. Sometimes you could be looking at a screen and may take about five to 10 minutes before you get back the actual compliance status and that could be reduced.

Having a cloud solution is better in a lot of ways. For the deployment of the operating system, with InTune and modern end-point management, you no longer have to image machines and waste a lot of hours. You no longer have your technicians spending four, five hours imaging machine sessions for drivers and things like that. You can make use of an autopilot, which reduces resources and can cut down the timeframe drastically. There's a lot of wins with the cloud technology that's coming forward, that enterprises and organizations can make use of.

I've used the solution over the three years. It's been in our organization for the past six years.

It's a very stable product. It is definitely an enterprise-grade patch management solution.

The product is very scalable. When we have migrations and we bring on additional devices, such as during an acquisition of companies, it's great. We can bring them right into our environment. It's very scalable in terms of deploying and adding a new division to the solution. 

Currently, we have it deployed to support over 20,000 PCs.

Likely, we will increase usage. There are also new tools that are modern tools that we are starting to make use of. As much as you're doing something for patch management, where you need to enter the discussion is you need to start looking at modern endpoints, which is InTune, for example. We will start making use of InTune for the patch of end-points. We could also do scheduling of those patches as well from the cloud to the client. We are using, a hybrid approach. Generally, our goal is to expand usage.

In terms of technical support, once you have a Microsoft agreement, the level of support would be the same across all our products. We have an enterprise-grade level of support. Therefore, once I create a critical case, I get support within the hour. We are quite satisfied.

We have had a deployment in our enterprise for more than five years. It's a relatively complex deployment due to the fact that we have a large organization.

I am one of the enterprise engineers. I make deployments happen at a new location and it may just be a matter of training the onsite technician at that new division on how to make use of it. We have an enterprise-grade deployment and we have divisional deployments where divisions can make use of it to still manage their in-house shops.

A consultant would've assisted in the initial deployment.

We do pay a licensing fee on a yearly basis. 

There is a license cost and it is licensed per deployment. We do pay licensing costs for all of the deployments that we have on our end, across the enterprise.

With the way everything is moving to the cloud, you need to have all of these licenses in place.

We're partners with Microsoft.

For people looking into implementing Configuration Manager at this point, I would recommend it. They should also look at InTune, which is more of an endpoint deployment. For the servers, you can still look at what we have, however, just the way, how things are developing, I can see the industry and patch management moving away from on-prem management to more like making use of the cloud and use of our Microsoft for business in terms of managing the updates, ease of updates and things like that. What is happening now is a paradigm shift.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. It's great for enterprises.