Microsoft Configuration Manager Reviews

This solution is used for vulnerability management. Our primary use case is for software updates, including ad-hoc and monthly updates, as well as security patches.

The whole purpose of vulnerability management is to help with mitigating any security threats that could be within the network. So this solution has helped because it is very valuable to have an overview of which devices and networks are not up to date, or have failed to update with a specific software update deployment.

A specific example is related to malware by the name of Coinminer. It is used by intruders to remotely mine cryptocurrency, using your computer resources. It consumes your computer's CPU and memory. By putting this solution in place and ensuring that the latest security patches are installed, you are no longer vulnerable to this virus. Your computer operates at an optimal speed.

In summary, you maintain security and the best performance of your systems.

The most valuable feature is the graphical-based status reports of software updates; showing successful and failed deployments. This gives you a quick overview of vulnerable computers that expose your network to risks of a security breach.

I would like to see an agentless version of the solution. An agent-based system is one where every computer on the network has to have a client installed in order to be able to report on it or deploy to it. In the case of this solution, you need to have the SCCM agent installed on every computer. To me, that is a weakness because if you don't have the agents installed in some computers, then you cannot reach them for the deployment of software updates.

An agentless system means that you don't need to have an agent installed on computers. You would simply sweep the network, see all live computers and deploy the updates be able to deploy updates. It is worth noting is that the installed agents open and run on specific ports in the computer. These may be used as launch pads for attacks; making your network more vulnerable to security breaches.

This is a stable solution. They release regular updates and upgrades, and they keep enhancing the features. I have not had any bugs that I would say were a challenge.

This solution is very scalable. As your network becomes bigger, you're able to accommodate more computers in terms of deploying the updates that you need to.

Microsoft technical support is fairly good, and I would rate them eight out of ten. They try to act promptly, but there are two issues that cause delays. The first is related to the difference in time zones, and the second comes about from the different levels of support licensing.

We did not use another solution prior to this one.

The initial setup for this solution is straightforward. It is a Microsoft-based product, and they usually have startup wizards. It is graphical, and the process of installation is self-explanatory. It is easy, even for a new user.

The initial setup, depending on whether it is a server and what tests have to be done, might take about two hours.

Once running, the time required for the deployment of updates varies depending on how many computers you are deploying to. If you have, say two thousand computers, then it will take approximately a week for all of them to be fully updated. This also depends on how regularly the computers are online. In cases where systems are frequently offline, it will take even longer. Once they come online, they get the deployment and update.

The first priority after installing the software is to gather all of the end-user devices. Make sure that they are all covered and up to date all of the time.

One IT administrator is enough to deploy and maintain this solution.

We handled the implementation and deployment ourselves.

The licensing is good because they have various options, depending on what you are looking for. There are one-year up-to three-year license contracts.

We did not evaluate options other than this one, from Microsoft. It is our company policy to run on Microsoft SCCM.

Since this solution is agent-based, computers without the agent cannot be reached on the network. In addition, non-Microsoft products are not supported. So if you have a mix of platforms like Linux and Mac OS, you'd be better off looking for an agentless solution and not SCCM.

Security is one of the big problems with Microsoft products, but usability is equally good. 

I would rate this product a seven out of ten.

We use it and our clients use it for device patch management, servers, and management processes.

We deploy it for clients but we don't usually maintain it for them.

The best thing about SCCM is the patch management. You can make sure that all of your devices are there. You can see all of them and see your levels.

It lets you know what your infrastructure is like and what state you are in.

SCCM internally works great. On your internal infrastructure, it is fantastic. It gives you everything you want it to do.

Because of the way SCCM is, we are moving to the Intune platform similarly to the way that everybody else is. Microsoft is slowly migrating SCCM to the new Intune product for management.

There are so many issues with SCCM, but they are already working on migrating the desktop to the intune platform. They have already improved the management and the patch management. They are also looking at cloud integration and being able to deploy it in Azure properly and run the Azure infrastructure.

The main or legacy issue is not being able to do remote management of devices without being on a VPN to get their updates. It didn't work well on non-corporate networks. This has been resolved by the new Intune platform.

It's Microsoft, they have their issues, but they are getting better. They are integrating it with their office products, and their platforms.

In the next releases, I would like to see them make it easier to do remote sessions into the boxes.

It would be nice to have everything in one place. Now they have Intune for the desktops and SCCM to handle their servers.

I have been using SCCM for ten years.

We were using some of the older versions.

The stability is only as good as your infrastructure.

The scalability of SCCM is good but now that it is on the intune platform, it's even better.

The usage and how extensively it is being used depends on the client and the client's roadmap.

As gold partners, you have a direct line to Microsoft technical staff. It is easy for us to get support.

Our experience with the support is a positive one.

I have been using Zabbix for ten years. I have deployed it in my infrastructure.

I have integrated it with Grafana.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward.

Depending on the customer and their infrastructure, it could be easy. If it is a small infrastructure the installation could be quite quick. You could fire up SCCM, sent the probes, let them detect it, and put it in. 

For large infrastructures or complex networks, it can be more difficult. It can take as long as a day to get it all set up and running or it could even take a week.

One of the joys of SCCM is that one person could easily maintain it but we have two people from the service desk.

They are always changing their price model, which I don't like. It would be better if they didn't keep adjusting their price model.

The price model is different for every client. It depends on the corporation, the company's subscription balance, and how many machines they have. For us, it fluctuates. 

Some clients have a smaller infrastructure, and for those with large infrastructures, it will cost them more. Others will also have multiple versions of it for backup and failovers.

I was looking for a comparison to see if I want to propose them to some of my clients.

If you are implementing from new, go with Intune directly, don't use the on-premises version.

With the transitioning state to the cloud versions, I would rate SCCM a seven out of ten.

They have handled desktops very well but they haven't transitioned servers very well.

The administration of the solution is very helpful.

It offers many of the same features other solutions would offer. It's very similar in scope.

The solution has been very stable over the years.

The product is capable of scaling.

Technical support is very helpful and very responsive.

It is a bit of an old and outdated product.

The cloud would have been the best improvement and already Microsoft is looking into it. They are moving into the cloud and all it will make the product better. There's a roadmap in place, from what I understand. We'll move ahead toward whatever Microsoft decided to deploy.

The solution is mainly used for client management and software deployment. However, there maybe should be a more self-service experience. Microsoft may be addressing it in their cloud-native solutions, as currently a lot of administrative tasks are still needed. Automation would be helpful in those cases. If they could add more automation, that would be ideal.

I've used the solution for the last eight to ten years or so. It's been almost a decade. I've worked with it for a long time. 

The solution offers good stability. there are no bugs or glitches. It's reliable. It doesn't crash or freeze. The performance overall has been very good.

A company can easily scale this product if they need to.

Technical support has been amazing. It's Microsoft and their bread and butter is understanding their product. They built this technology and therefore can offer amazing support. At any level, for any questions, they can support you. We've very satisfied with the level of assistance they've provided.

I've also evaluated VMware, which would be a good option for companies that are not dealing with a lot of Microsoft applications.

We're just a customer and end-user.

We use the latest version of the solution. I can't speak to the exact version number.

I'd rate the solution at a ten out of ten. It's an incredible product.

I would recommend other companies to go ahead with whatever the latest cloud option is on offer. That is due to the fact that there is no SCCM as a product now. They have already transformed it into Microsoft Endpoint Manager. 

If a company is heavy on Microsoft products, like Office 365, this is the right tool, however, if not, if they are not a Microsoft centric organization, then maybe they can explore VMware as well. 

The product is quite good. We are happy with the collaboration of SCCM with Patch My PC, which allows us to do patchwork.

While the solution is quite good, it can be difficult to understand the logic of this product when it comes to software inventory.

Upon examination of the on-premise and Azure environments, I feel that SCCM could be more flexible.

While the issue of documentation is not exclusive to SCCM, it can be improved. When it comes to Microsoft Office suite, it is not always clear to where the articles have been moved and the use of a built-in searching giant to find their whereabouts is not always a possibility. When the article is moved to a new location, it can make it challenging to find what I deem to be useful or interesting. 

I believe we started using SCCM in 2003.

Microsoft technical support used to be better. In spite of us being a premier customer, we find the support unsatisfactory. The qualifications are not at issue, but the excessive time it takes for them to react, investigate and provide us with answers is.

When it comes to technical support, it is a crapshoot. I know how Microsoft works from the inside, as we used to work for the company. There are times when we will speak with a person who is really qualified and interested in helping and the case can be closed in the course of a single remote session or call.

At other times the ticket is apparently not rotated to the right person. In such cases, we will encounter someone who is merely being polite, towards the end of keeping the customer engaged but without the ability to help. 

Pricing is not in my work description and is left up to management and my colleagues. 

Since I cannot think of anything in need of improvement concerning SCCM, I would rate it as a ten out of ten.

SCCM is used in the insurance and public administration sector. We have various sized customers using it.

We are using the solutions for PC application inventories, patch management for new PC installation, PC reinstallation, and zero-day patching. We're using it to its full capabilities. It's a complete solution in the Microsoft environment.

SCCM has made it easy for our organization to personalize all the distribution schedules and how we want to distribute. It is very easy to manage, and there is a lot of option.

The most valuable feature of SCCM is the application distribution.

SCCM can improve on third-party application support.

The next features are coming through their newer solution Microsoft Intune or Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (MECM).

I have been using Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) for approximately 15 years. 

SCCM is stable.

The scalability of SCCM is good, it can scale a lot. You can manage a very small environment and go up to a couple hundred thousand PCs.

The support we have received from Microsoft was excellent.

I did not use another similar solution to SCCM.

The SCCM deployment difficulty level and time frame are dependent on how large the deployment is. If it is a large company then it can be complex. It can range in time from a couple of hours to a couple of days to a couple of weeks.

SCCM is an old on-premise solution. We're moving through to MECM and that is a cloud-based solution to do similar functionality, such as Intune. SCCM is used at its most. We will not increase the use of SCCM.

We are consultants and we do all of the implementations of SCCM for our customers.

The number of staff we need for maintaining the solution depends don't the size of the company, but usually, we have two to three people.

The ROI has been very good from SCCM.

The price of SCCM depends on the size of the organization. The price is competitive.

I rate the price of SCCM a three out of five.

We did not choose SCCM. It's a solution that evolved, and at one point it changed its name.

My advice to others is to plan ahead and make sure to take into account everything that the solution can do because if you do not understand what the product can do, you will probably buy a lot of software to do what the solution is already doing. Understand all the features and how you will be able to use them.

The next features are coming through Microsoft Intune.

I rate Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager nine out of ten.

The most valuable feature of Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager is patch management.

Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager can improve by allowing us to schedule the scripts, we don't have a script scheduling option and have to do it manually. 

I have been using Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager for a couple of years.

Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager is a stable solution.

The scalability of Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager is good.

The support can be responsive but other times can be a little slow.

The rate support from Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager an eight out of ten.

I have not used another solution other than Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager.

The initial setup of Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager was simple.

We did the deployment of Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager in-house. We have our maintenance of the solution automated.

Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager is a complete solution for what we need it for, and I would recommend it to others.

I rate Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager an eight out of ten.

The best features that I really appreciated are software and application pushing, Microsoft patching with Wsus integration, O.S. deployment with PXE (with driver installation, latest patches and customization), mobile management with Intune Connector, file inventory on pcs, users statistic usage about applications, hardware and software inventory.

We had the opportunity to easily manage Microsoft patching deployment with Wsus role installed or maintaining Wsus infrastructure separated from SCCM.

In this latter case we created properly GPO and script to push patch centrally and with appropriate scheduling. At the same time mobile management with MDM ability and encrypting as well, software and application pushing and updating overriding security concerns and O.S. deployment was some of the top features that we really appreciated.
I appreciated Distribution points on the cloud and ability to publish on demandapplications for users groups.

In this case users could choose from software list to automatically install some missing application without asking directly to IT team.

I think that some improvements would be appreciated on application package deployment for whom that has not a deep scripting ability like me.

SCCM is an high CPU/memory conuming application and so it would be fine that Microsoft could improve performances.

I started utilizing SMS 2003 since 9 years ago, since 4 years ago I managed and directed differentsmigration projects and zero installations on corporate companies with CAS, Primary and Secondary Sites.

At the same time I utilized this product during daily operations like reporting, software pushing, Microsoft patching, mobile managemen with satisfaction

You should consider that this product is particularly complex and delicate at the same time and so, the most difficult thing, was related to find causes of any installation delay or misconfiguration

About stability I did not find any particular problem.

When I got some problems on internet is quite easy to find consistent answers.

The only thing that I did not appreciated it was the case that, if you do not have CAS, you can install only one primary sites and all other sites could be only secondary sites.

This problem could be solved installing CAS later but about secondary site upgrade I am not aware that they can be automatically updated to primary site without uninstallation and re-installation.

Customer service is very good.

Technical support is very good and there are a lot of documentation on internet to help you on deployment/usage too.

I utilized for a while PDQ, spiceworks and psexec too but they are not caomparable with wide SCCM options/features.

The first setup was quite complex but primarily due to wide capabilities of the product itself that need time to be customized.

It was implemented by an in-house team coordinated and managed from me.

In my opinion SCCM SP1 is great.

Setup and licensing was quite expensive as well at start up stage. When all procedures have been implemented like collections, application and packages, wsus automatically deployment, O.S preparation, mobile management policies, reporting day by day, time to be spent to manage it would be more limited but, considering the importance and quantity of activity done from SCCM it would be normal to have a lot of hours daily spent from a team to utilize this product (obviously it would depends on company too)

PDQ, Spiceworks, psexec, GPO, scripting…

SCCM is really great but you must consider that you will take a lot of time to manage it entirely.

You should consider that this product would be, in the future, more and more strategic for companies about security concerns, task automation and for your CV too.

I have a lot of guide and screenshot as well:

http://www.alessandromazzanti.com/search/label/SCCM%202012

Here is my blog link:

http://www.alessandromazzanti.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mazzanti

I like its ease of use. It does what you need it to do, and it's a one-stop-shop for the company and for all your deployments. If you incorporate Intune into it, you can have both. You can bring your own devices and corporate devices, and everything runs out of SCCM and Intune.

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.

I have been dealing with SCCM for nine years.

I used to be the SCCM administrator for quite a big company that had 80,000 people. That's pretty much all I did all day, every day.

BigFix is the poor man's SCCM. It's for people that can't afford SCCM and for small and medium-sized businesses. There's nothing else out there that can do what it can do.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give SCCM a nine.