Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) Reviews

With KACE Systems Management, we can deploy this specialized software for students and teachers in separate computer rooms. In the beginning, we used a master PC. We edited one PC with all the usable software, then enrolled this master PC at the beginning of the semester. However, a big problem was when (in the middle of the semester) one of the teachers told us, "We needed another software," or, "We need updates." We did not have the possibility to go into the computer rooms during our work time. We had to do it at night and on the weekends. That was a big problem for us, so we looked for a solution to this problem. So, we installed the specialized software for the students and teachers in a short amount of time.

During the first years, we used the hardware/server from Dell in our environment. We then switched to the virtual appliance, which we use now in our network for one of my university's faculties.

It is a private cloud because we can't use a third-party cloud due to data protections for our university researchers.

There is a course for students where they learn to build buildings. They have to buy parts for the buildings: stones, wood, etc. The updates for the software come inside one semester, and we have two semesters in one year. Inside of a semester, there will be a very important update for the teacher. So, in April and October, we have to update this software during the semester. We get the new software and install it on one of our test PCs, then we create an executable file and ZIP file with all the configurations for our environment. Then, we distribute it with KACE Systems Management. 

With the information from KACE Systems Management, I am able to make a report. For example, in the next 30 days, if the pro support is running out, it is very important to see that because I can then extend the pro support for our hardware. In another example, the reports allow us to see if older software is not working after an update, which is also interesting and important for us.

The scripting part increases IT productivity because of the specialized software in our environments for students' courses. You need to use software which is not programmed by developers. A lot of software for building houses or other things is developed by normal guys, who do not have much skill in programming. When you need to install this type of software, it is very difficult. You have to install registry keys, etc. For that, it is very good to use the scripting part of this solution. So, you can automate this part as well.

• Reports
• The security part with updates
• Patch management, because we can update all the standards and software in our environment. 
• Asset management with license compliance 
• The overview with all the Dell EMC-specialized information.

We use only Dell EMC hardware in our environment. Therefore, it is good for us to use a system which can read information from hardware.

It has a single interface for us to be able to see everything that we might need for the endpoint management of devices, which is absolutely important. We also use the single sign-on service. Of course, we have other systems in our environment which we use for DHCP servers and to manage other things, but for this kind of information, it is very good for us that there is only one system that I have to use; where I can see everything I need for asset management and license compliances as well as for the monitoring of the system, e.g., which system is active and which system maybe was not there in the last two or three days or weeks.

The asset management and license compliances are very important and good for us to see which software is over-licensed or under-licensed.

I use their patch management to look at the security of our systems. Because of the research programs and the researchers who use these software systems and the computer, that is all secured for intrusion detections or interventions from criminals. So, it is very important for us that the patch management is working 100 percent.

It is a little bit difficult to use the license compliances because you need to decide when you are using the software catalog if you are using it with their license compliance or the normal software part. Under the inventory, you can use software as a menu link or software catalog. Most of my specialist software is not in the software catalog. When I try to import them, in my license compliances overview, there are cryptic names for this software that I have to import. That is not very good for the reports that I use. When I take them to my bosses, they see cryptic names of software that they don't understand. It would be much better for me if I could use software and the software catalog as well for the license compliances. 

If it could be possible to use GUI to create reports, where I could drag and drop like in Microsoft Access where you can create reports, e.g., when you take columns from tables from the drag and drop menu, then you can slide it down in another area and sort columns or create new columns. This would be nice to see in the graphical user interface as well as be much more developed for the reporting part than it is at the moment.

It has been at least 10 years. We started with the physical appliance from Dell.

It is a very stable system. In the last 10 years, there has been only one breach to the system. That was very quickly closed with the help of the technical support. I can't remember another problem with the system where it went down. 

We can buy new licenses for clients. There is no problem to import these new clients into the environment, which is pretty nice.

We are using SMA at its full potential at the moment. It is also possible to import printers, and you don't need any extra licenses for that. This is a nice feature as well.

What has been very good for me has been the ITNinja websites where I can look for information. For example, if I need something, then there has been a solution there. Also, the help system of the help sites inside of the KACE Systems Management Appliance are very helpful and easy to understand.

I use the support system of the KACE. So, I use the ticket system to stay in contact with KACE support, which has been very good for me. It has been very positive because they know what to do. Every time, I have had a solution in a couple of days, and that was very good for me. 

I use the ITNinja websites. I think KACE developed these ITNinja websites with Dell EMC, which has a lot of information about KACE SMA and SDA. We don't use third-party companies. We only use KACE support when needed.

We don't use WSUS in our environment anymore. However, we also don't use SMA for Windows updates. We use the Windows updates on the Microsoft website.

In the beginning, when you try to install new software, you need a little bit more time. That's absolutely normal. Then, I installed this software on over 160 PCs. In the past, I had to go to every PC in real-time by remoting on every PC and installing the computer software on every PC. Now, I can install the software in half an hour. In the past, I needed two days. For me, this has been very good. It has been very nice to see how fast it can install new/used software on new hardware.

For every upgrade over the years, SMA has been very intuitive and easy to use. Also, when I changed the physical appliance to the virtual appliance four or five years ago, it was easier to make a backup. Then, I could import the backup from the physical SMA to the virtual SMA. That was very easy to make. The surface of the website has not changed very much in its paths, which are very good. Parts of those paths are easier to look inside or adopt more functionality, but the surface is not so state of the art. Some websites, like WordPress sites, are a little bit difficult to see where information is and what to look for. However, in the KACE Systems Management, I know where the information is, and that is very good for me.

To deploy the appliance, it takes maybe an hour with all of the configuration and the DHCP server. When you start a system for the first time, you have to import all the information that you need or connect your clients with a system, which needs a bit more time. Also, when you are trying to distribute software, you need more time with the managed installations. I needed half a year with all my software products, maybe longer. For all my software products, I had to use them with a managed installation script or other scripting tools. However, if you have used other systems, then you can very quickly switch to SMA.

Two to four people are needed for deployment. In my environment, we have a network administrator and me as an administrator for the system. There are also one or two other administrators for the solution in my company.

We saw ROI after the first year. Every year, the system becomes so much more valuable for us. Maybe the quality of our service is much better now. The students at our university can use more software, so the knowledge of students using state-of-the-art software is much better than in the past. We can react to requests from our teachers when they want to use new software in their courses. We can manage that in a short amount of time.

Most of the time, we install software in two months between semesters. So, we are saving four or five days over the year.

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. 

The technical support you get from KACE is sometimes priceless. Sometimes, you don't need very much support. However, if you need support, it is good for me to know that there are people who have very good knowledge about the system. I am willing to pay for that.

When we bought the SMA system, we researched other systems. I did some tests with SCCM and other systems as well as open-source software. It was very difficult for me to configure the other systems. Also, the open-source software was a bit too difficult for me to configure just in time. There was not so much time for me to sit there for a couple of weeks doing trial and error. 

I am very happy that I found a solution which was easy to install and use. That is also a reason for me to look at SDA from Quest because I know the system and it works fine. I don't have time to configure a new system from scratch. It just has to work.

It is very important for me to see that there is one GUI/website where I can have an overview of my computers and environment, see which computers are healthy, which ones might be damaged, or if everything is fine with the software. Another thing is that I can distribute software with executable files using the system. This was also a very important reason to use SMA because we have so many software systems where you get only a setup executable file, not an MSI file to convert the executable file, which is sometimes very time-sensitive.

I had a very good start with the software because I had training with one of the specialists from Dell EMC in the past, which was very good. Now, it is very intuitive for me to use the software, which is also very good. It is very clear. You can look for information in one of the paths, such as, home inventory monitoring and asset management. 

When you buy this software, use a bit more money and buy a training program as well. What you learn in such a short amount of time when you get the training is so much more valuable than when you do trial and error for yourself. That is my advice. They will help you to configure your environment in a very short time, then you can use it very quickly.

Mobile device management is not very important for us at the moment because we only use our physical PCs and sometimes our laptops. I have used tablets as well. However, for mobile devices, we don't distribute software on these kinds of systems. 

I am on a way to using KACE's Systems Deployment Appliance in the future. At the moment, we only use KACE SMA, but I want to try to buy SDA as well. I hope that I can this year. It makes total sense to use SDA as well when you use SMA. Both systems are integrated with one another. At the moment, we have installed the operating system on the computer physically. This is a very bad time with the pandemic, as it is very difficult for us to go to our workplace and into the computer rooms. Doing our work there physically is not possible now. I live in the UK at the moment and my work is in Berlin, Germany, so it is very difficult for me to go there and install new hardware. However, I am looking forward to getting SDA as well.

I would rate this solution as a nine out of 10.

We use Quest KACE Systems Management for things like deploying software packages, inventorying, and versioning what we currently have.

For me, specifically, the use case is for package deployment. When I need to push out a new package. We use a new 8x8 client, or I have Chrome set to update, and if it doesn't, we'll post it here. We use this solution to push packages because we don't have an SCCM solution or anything similar that I am more familiar with.

SCCM is a Microsoft solution, which is now known as MECM.

Right now, it's just a stopgap until we can set up and configure a proper environment. This product was acquired and brought over from an acquisition. As a result, there is some net overlapping and other issues that prevent it from being fully integrated everywhere, and there is a problem with firewall separation. 

It helps in some ways, and for the most part, it makes my life easier. It doesn't seem to hit everywhere.

I like how when you click on the device, it shows you everything that has changed as well as the software versioning. I am really enjoying the inventory aspect of it.

The deployment process for both deploying and creating a package is straightforward.

I believe the inventory in KACE is superior to SCCM's. 

I know with SCCM I could do things like remote console into machines via the agent's remote console, but that is not a feature that is provided in KACE. I know that at least in the Systems Management Appliance, I can't get to it.

I'm not sure how distribution works, with distribution points. I'm not sure if KACE has that feature. You could use an SCCM to set up distribution points at remote sites so that they don't have to download patches or software from across the country. If you have a DP or something similar, they could pull it down.

With KACE, you have to use smart labels and groups, and it can be annoying. It's aggravating if you don't know what you're doing because you have to figure out how to do it.

In terms of improvement, I would recommend the labeling process, also known as label management. With  SCCM, you have collections, here they do Label management.

The labeling process should be more streamlined. It should be easier to do. It gets confusing at times.

The only issue I have is with label creation.

I have been using Quest KACE Systems Management for nine months.

We are not working with the latest version. I don't see a way of determining the version, but It wouldn't be the most recent because even the application catalog is out of date, and the company decided not to purchase a new software catalog.

I believe that it is hybrid because I'm aware of a machine that checks in but isn't in our environment. It's a machine that was given to an employee and was never re-imaged. I'm aware that the client logs in from time to time. They have to re-image it to remove the agent, and then it will stop popping in. As a result, it's a hybrid.

I'm not very familiar with it. I was never taught how to do it. 

Everything I learned from experimenting with it for tasks that were assigned to me. There was no training.

I believe that once the agent is installed on a machine, it is very reliable. It easily tells you when it last logged in. You don't have to search for it. Aside from the labels, I believe it would be a great tool to use if properly configured with proper access everywhere.

We have approximately 800 employees with 67 to 71 data centers.

We don't have a lot of machines in there for scalability. We only have about 300 or 400 people out of a total of 12 or 13. I can't respond to that. 

We had 7,000 employees in the last environment I worked in, and SCCM handled it all with the 300 or 400 domain controllers we had. I can't comment on this because we don't have a large enough environment.

We have 200 or 300 users in our organization.

It is not being extensively used because it is only hitting approximately 30% of the machines. Because this is pushing toward workstations. 

I don't believe that we have plans to increase our usage. That's why we started looking for a third party. I don't think they're heading for KACE. I believe they're discussing BigFix right now, but that's a different department, and we could be drawn into that.

I have never had to contact technical support.

We use an internal application. For ticketing or our change management process, we don't use any solutions such as ServiceNow, Remedy, or Magic.

I'm not involved in networking. I work in internal IT. As a result, they use Palo Altos and Ciscos.

WSUS and KACE are currently in use.

At my previous job, I used SCCM, System Center Configuration Manager.

I was not involved with the initial setup. I came to it in the state that it's in.

I am responsible for the maintenance of this solution. It does not require a lot of maintenance. It is truly low-maintenance. However, we do not send patches via KACE. We use WSUS to distribute patches. If there isn't anything for me to do in KACE, there isn't anything for me to do. If there isn't a new package coming out, maintenance is minimal, and the agent is pushed using a GPO, leaving nothing to do until we deploy agents, which is handled by the GPO.

I was only looking for something to patch our internal workstations and servers, not anything for customers.

I would suggest taking a training course. Take a training course on its fundamental administration. That would've been nice because it would've probably helped me with label creation and other things like that. Even though the KBE isn't too bad, you'll need to figure out who has the account in order to log into their knowledge base.

I would give it an eight out of ten, but I haven't seen everything it's capable of. And the reason I say that is because I have 10 years of SCCM experience. I love SCCM, this isn't as bad, but I can't really compare this to that. 

I really like what I am seeing, I would rate Quest KACE Systems Management an eight out of ten. I can't rate it any higher than that.

We use most of the modules, although the Service Desk is one of the most important ones for us. We, as an IT department, handle a large volume of calls that includes different requests. We tried to make it accessible for all of the different teams within the IT department, not just the Service Desk, but networking servers, admins, and applications. We try to make it so that all of our IT requests come in from a central point, basically.

In addition to that, there are a number of other Service Desk queues or departments outside of IT. Those have been either initiated by us asking if someone needed some way of tracking their own work or issues, or they've come to us and asked for the same thing. 

The second feature that we use most often is device inventory. We have our KACE agent deployed on all of our workstations and servers, and it provides us with reports on the hardware and software inventory for those. The other half of that is that we take that data and report on it for things like accuracy, renewals, and replenishment.

We also rely very heavily on the patching module, which is part of the security module. This feature ensures that our workstations and servers are up-to-date with the latest patches.

I'm also using it for extensive software deployments. For example, a couple of years ago we went from one version of Microsoft Office in our environment to a completely different version, almost exclusively through KACE automated software deployment. This saved us thousands of PC touches.

Also within the domain of software distribution, we use file synchronization and scripting.

I work with two different entities. The first is KACE as a service, which is hosted, and the second one is hosted by my company in our Azure environment.

I feel that KACE is pretty easy to use, although that may be coming from the fact that I've been using it for so long. In the Service Desk, it's really easy to clean up a basic queue, and from there, you can get more granular and do a lot more customization if you need to.

For the inventory functionality, the agent requires no configuration except for pointing it to the server.

For software deployment, as long as you've got your installation commands, it pretty much runs on its own. This is the same with patching, where you set up a schedule and then just let it go.

We have seen a return on investment from its ease of use, firstly because the KACE appliance is managed almost entirely by me alone. This means that we don't need to have multiple people working on each individual component. With the reporting that we do, we've been able to find unused or underused software licenses, remove those from the computers, and apply them elsewhere. This meant savings because we didn't have to purchase additional licenses.

KACE was previously owned by Dell and because we have a hook into Dell's warranty database, we're able to use that information to learn about what's in our environment and see what we need to budget for replenishment. This includes replacing computers on a quarterly or yearly basis. That way, we're not just saying "I don't know, we'll throw X number of dollars at it". It's an actual and pretty accurate budget, instead of just estimating it.

It has also saved a lot of time because for example, when we did the Microsoft Office upgrade, our service desk team did not have to touch all of those computers. It just ran automatically. That would have been a very large time investment. We have had it in place for so long that it is difficult for me to estimate how much time it is saving us on a monthly or weekly basis. I have nothing to compare it against.

Scalability is my primary concern right now. The first environment that I had it in was about 1,700 devices and things worked pretty well. Now that I'm well over 10,000, even with plenty of resources allocated, I'm running into issues where things aren't working correctly. I'm having to work with support and the answer that I usually get is that we're trying to do too much with KACE. Essentially, I'm overloading it with tasks to perform and as a result, I'm having to split stuff up a lot more into multiple jobs instead of one job. There's no built-in load balancing, I can't have multiple servers, and limitations like that.

I have been running Quest KACE Systems Management in production for seven years, since late 2014.

We have KACE deployed on more than 9,000 workstations and approximately 1,300 servers. Scalability is an issue for us at the moment, and I don't know how much our company is going to grow in the future. One of the ways that we grow is through acquisitions. For example, we just acquired a little company that was about 20 people and acquired another one with about six people.

I don't know what's coming down the pipe. I am not sure if there's a company that's about a thousand people, how is that going to affect how I use KACE. I wonder if I'm going to have to scale things back, such as running a script once every other week instead of once a week, or stretching out my patching windows.

I'd rate the customer support pretty high. I use them pretty frequently and I have been satisfied with the majority of their answers. I have never been brushed off by them saying, "Oh yeah, it's just this, you've got to do that."

Quest has a Professional Services offering, which is their consulting service. You can use their professional services to have them come out and help you set up your clients, or work with you to do so. Or, if you need a report written that isn't supplied by default and you can write it by yourself, you can contract them to write it for you. We have not used professional services.

The Premium Support that we have gives us access to a technical account manager. It includes monthly touch meetings to ensure that everything is going smoothly. For example, they ask if we need anything else and whether they can help move things along, such as reviewing any open issues that we have.

The biggest value from premier support is the ability to get past the technical support. I don't mean that they're not providing good support but with Premier, I've been able to talk with our technical account manager about more advanced topics. I would consider myself a power user and I do a lot of stuff that's outside the norm. This is not the sort of stuff that you would just set it up and forget about.

I also get information about a lot of different reporting and things like that. Sometimes, I'm interested in the very minute details of how it works, in order to either do the report or ensure that I'm doing something in the correct fashion. With the help of the technical account manager, I have been able to be interactive as an intermediate, or I've actually been able to get on, or have a call with, some of the developers who may have been the ones specifically programming a certain portion of the appliance. I don't see getting those deep answers from somebody further back behind the technical support customer service.

Prior to KACE, we had a piece of software, which is no longer around, called eSMART. It was developed by a company called ASAP, which was acquired by Dell. Dell purchased ASAP, decommissioned their eSMART product, and then wrapped up the functionality of the eSMART product into KACE. This is what led us there.

It wasn't really difficult to set up. When we set ours up initially, there was an option to have somebody from the technical support or training department go over it with you. Once you started setting it up, they would ensure that you understand how to work it.

I can't recall exactly how long it took for the overall deployment, although I don't believe it was a lengthy process. The two biggest parts of the setup were configuring the initial queue for IT, and getting the agents pushed out.

We completed the deployment on our own and I am responsible for performing the updates.

Licensing is done on a per device basis, so it's dependent on how many agents you've got installed. When we looked at it, KACE was competitively priced versus other agent-based asset and inventory management solutions.

Where we really get a lot of value is that the product licensing is only based on that. It means that if we implement another IT service, we can use it with no problem and it doesn't cost anything more to put that in there. We can just keep adding to it, so we're basically getting more use for no extra costs. An example is that we have other departments and other kinds of entities within our business, and they are utilizing the service desk functionality for things outside of plain IT support.

Early on in the pilot, we evaluated other options. It was around the time that we implemented KACE that we also played with a solution called Spiceworks for system support.

They have a ticketing system, and we tried to make it work, but being about the time that we started looking at KACE, and since KACE had the functionality of a service desk, we didn't really pursue that any further.

I know that Quest has other products, whether they're KACE branded or other brands, but, by and large, those offerings are for systems or services that we already have in place with other vendors.

My advice for anybody who is implementing KACE is not to be afraid to use their technical support. There is also some semi-official support available in external groups. They run a website called ITNinja, and there's a lot of discussion on there from KACE users, about questions that they have, or issues that they have, or wants or reports.

People help out each other. The site is run by Quest, but it is community moderated rather than Quest doing the moderation of the content. Essentially, it's a virtual user group and it has been a big help.

In summary, this is a very good product but there is always room to improve. For what we've used it for, it's been very good, and I hope that it continues to serve us well.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

The main use cases for Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance are touch management, software and hardware inventory, and software delivery.

The most valuable features include simplicity, which makes systems management easier and faster, especially for device management. It provides a good inventory and complete inventory management, which allows clients to access information quickly. The solution is also easy to use and offers an efficient deployment process.

The user interface needs improvement as customers have mentioned they do not like the interface since it is not an SMA-based interface and lacks a manual configuration option.

I have been selling the solution for around three years.

It is a stable product that works continuously.

The product is very scalable as it supports 10,000 thousand endpoints with just one appliance, and adding more appliances can increase the number of endpoints.

The customer service is very good, providing quick customer support in Spanish.

Positive

The initial setup is relatively easy, and on a scale of one to ten, I would rate it as an eight.

The implementation requires just one admin responsible for managing the endpoints and supporting end-users.

The return on investment is seen in the quick access to information, good inventory management, and efficient systems management. The solution is considered a very good product.

The pricing is in the middle range of the market, not too expensive but not the cheapest either.

I would recommend Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance to other businesses. 

Overall, I rate the solution ten out of ten.

We use Quest KACE Systems Management for everything. It does everything from soup to nuts. It does inventory control, and not just of computers that check; we also do inventory of other hard IT assets, like big-screen monitors, printers, laptops, et cetera.

We also use it for software inventory, license inventory, and for server management. We use it for end-user workstation patching, for Windows and Dell EMC patches, as well as other critical software updates, such as Adobe Acrobat. 

In addition, we use it for ticket queues and ticket management. We've got queues for multiple departments on this machine, including our people services queue, facilities, IT, and web development queues. It's our ticket system. 

We also push out software and software updates with it all the time. 

Up until about a month ago, it was on-prem, but we just migrated up to Azure in the cloud.

The ease of use has definitely affected the time-to value of the solution for us. We're not having to put up deployment servers or patch-management servers. My staff is not having to run from machine to machine to do software installations. That can be automated this way. We also don't have to have a separate ticket queue system. We're saving money left and right by all of these features being well implemented and integrated into this one solution.

The single pane of glass has everything you need for endpoint management of all devices. You have your main pane and you have tabs on the left. If you say, "I want to do software distribution," you click on that tab and you do your work. If you want to do inventory, you click on that tab and you do your stuff there. Not having to jump from screen to screen makes things a bit faster, a bit more efficient, and it saves a bit of time. I don't have to change screens to find multiple bits of information. It has a well-designed web app as well. If I need to, I can have multiple tabs open for viewing different panes. If I need to compare two machines, I can just open two tabs and compare them.

Looking back, it has saved me, personally, a good 10 hours per week, out of 40. That's significant. As far as my team is concerned, with four people working a total of 160 hours per week, KACE has saved them close to a third of that time by not having to jump from system to system to get the information they need.

It has also definitely increased IT productivity. We can take on more tickets and we can take on more problems from other people. We can work towards higher-end solutions and not worry about tripping over the system that does the implementations.

All of the use cases I mentioned are among its most valuable features. It's central to our IT management and our IT systems. Without this solution, we would be dead in the water. The most critical are the ticket queues, because so many departments rely on them, and patch management/software distribution.

It's also extremely easy to use. The documentation could be perhaps a little bit smoother in places. It can be a little choppy. But as far as being able to go into the machine and work with it goes, once you get the hang of it, it's simple. It is a very simple interface. That said, I've been using it since 1990-something, so I'm really used to it.

The updating and configuring to get things the way you need them in your environment are not as convenient as in some solutions. For example, Microsoft Windows has group policies, which are fine if all your machines are on the same network all the time. But in these wonderful days of COVID, where everybody's working remotely, nobody is in the office all the time. And certainly, the entire office is not on-site anymore with all computers on-site. That means that group policies fall apart. The KACE solution has had to step in and fill that niche for us.

The problem is that it's harder to directly emulate a lot of the stuff that the group policies do, using the KACE solution. With regular group policies, you just specify the various settings you want to change on the workstations, and then you specify the workstations and—while it's kind of an ugly mess—it does it. Whereas on KACE, you really have to know what you're doing with scripting to effectively script those exact same changes.

I would also like to see more convenient settings for Windows and, possibly, Mac systems, more in line with Windows Group Policies. I'd like that kind of granularity with that kind of ease of access and ease of control. Group policies are out the window now with everybody working remotely. I don't personally want to spend the time or effort investing in Microsoft Intune, when the KACE solution is perfectly capable of doing all of those things.

I've been using the KACE SMA, which was previously called the KBOX 1000, since the 1990s; pretty much since version 1 came out.

It's rock-solid. I've never had a stability problem with KACE.

I've never really had to scale it. It does have scalability built-in and I could have multiple repositories across the nation connected to this one machine if I wanted to. But I haven't had to because that use case doesn't make sense for us.

But we're always looking to utilize it more. We first look to KACE when evaluating any solution that might require third-party involvement. We ask ourselves if KACE can do it.

We use their regular tech support and that tech support is beyond savvy. Their tech support is stellar. They're instantly responsive and they know their stuff. They know exactly what they're doing, and I've thrown some weird questions at them, at some really weird times of day. The person I get on the other end has always said, "Yeah. No problem. Hang on a sec. Here's your answer."

I don't have to explain something three times to 18 different people. I really just explain it once, usually over a chat session. They'll tell me, "Oh, well look at this, and look at this, and try those out. If those don't work, try this." It's great. I wish I had that kind of tech support with other vendors.

Positive

The move to Azure has been as smooth as silk. It's been great. Once we figured it out, it only took about an hour to an hour and a half. But there were some steps along the way that weren't terribly clear, meaning it ended up taking about five or six hours.

The things that made it complicated were the types of things that you can't really correct while you're in the middle of doing a migration. The machine's IP address was hard-coded into the configuration. That may be great, but you can't unset that when you're in the middle of the migration. We had already started to migrate the data over and then realized, "Oh, once it comes up, it's going to have a fixed IP address on a completely different subnet. It's not going to know where it is or how to get to it, and we're not going to be able to get to it. So we had to back out the entire thing and start over again with an unspecified IP. There were similar technical glitches, little things like that. If we had thought about them a little bit beforehand, or if there were documentation saying, "Hey, you might want to de-provision the IP address before you do this," we would have been in better shape.

I tend to do most of the maintenance on it. A colleague/subordinate of mine does it sometimes as well. Maintenance consists of making sure the backup files get put somewhere that is reliably safe, and applying patches when it needs them. But the patches are infrequent, and Quest is addressing automated backups in the next release. So soon, that won't even be an issue.

Return on investment will probably take a good year or two, simply because there's a lot of ramp-up. While you can get the system up and running in a day, you're not going to have enough useful data and you will not have had time to fully ramp up all of the features of the machine within that day.

For example, if you do a lot of patch management, you have to have your complete inventory of machines in there to see what patches are necessary and to tell the system, "I want everybody to be running these patches, not those patches." So there is a lot of stuff that you need to get in there, and that takes time and experience.

Licensing is very straightforward. They don't overcomplicate it. This is not a Cisco product where you have to have 30 different licenses just to open the box. It's pretty much set-and-forget. You pay an annual license. Licensing is based, in part, on number of seats, but they're very flexible and they're willing to work with you. 

The cost is in the mid to upper range, but the ROI exceeds the outside cost, especially once you've had the system for a while. And that's all the more true since they now offer it as a cloud-based solution. You can either buy their cloud-based solution or you can host it on your own cloud solution, which is what we've chosen to do because we already own the license for it.

If you already own the license for it, it doesn't matter if you're using their old hardware or if you want to migrate your stuff up to the cloud—you own the license. If you want to migrate up to the cloud, they say, "Yeah, no problem. Here's a preconfigured image with all the software installed on it already. All you have to do is create the environment for it in Azure, move this in there and then move your backups, your data, from your old system to this one." Provided you don't mess yourself up like we did a few times, it just flows right in.

In my last company, I was the one who purchased KACE. I was the one who reviewed it, vetted it, and brought it in to replace something like six or seven different technologies that were all fighting with each other.

Back in the 1990s, I was reviewing other products, to get away from these technologies I was fighting with. This solution popped up that does soup to nuts. It does everything. I thought, "Okay, that makes me nervous. Jack of all trades, master of none." But I got a review unit in and it actually did what I wanted it to do, and it didn't mess with me. It didn't fight me every step of the way.

I've had to use competitive solutions for other vendors. I used ServiceNow for a long time, which is a solution I detest. It has a nonsensical, overcomplicated interface, it's difficult to use, difficult to manage, and doesn't do half the stuff that I want it to do. It doesn't integrate or scale well. ServiceNow is a disaster, as far as I'm concerned.

I've used Jira, which is so-so. I'm not a big fan of Jira, but I think pretty much everybody has a love-hate relationship with it. I do still use that with one of our vendors.

The big pros of Quest KACE Systems Management are its simple interface, and simple, direct management. It's very easy to maintain and manage the device, and it's easy to get it up and running. You can have it up and running in an hour, and have it really up and running in a day, easily. The other solutions are so complex, overcomplicated, and overwrought that it takes forever.

Training users on how to use KACE is really simple. "See the big button that says 'File a Ticket'? That's the one you click." And they get that. The other systems are not necessarily that straightforward. KACE is also eminently configurable. If I don't like the terminology on a certain screen for a particular department, I can change it. I can make the people services queue look distinctly different from the IT queue, and have it behave differently. There is so much that this solution does that I just absolutely adore.

With KACE's inventory management, I can tell whose machines are getting patched regularly and whose machines are not getting patched regularly, and I can actually remedy that. I can tell who is running older versions of software and I can remedy that quickly, as well. I can push out new versions of antiviral software, security software, or web browsers. I can push out pretty much any piece of software I choose, without a lot of hassle. It's actually very straightforward, provided that the software conforms to industry norms for software distribution, with standard MSIs and standard DMGs.

Compliance is not really a big deal for us. We're not beholden to audits and the like. But if we were, KACE would certainly help. In my last company, I was beholden to audits, and I used the reporting and compliance management frequently. All the other features I mentioned are important for compliance, because you can't do compliance management without them. You can't hold yourself liable for software licensing if you don't have the software licensing built into the system and no way to reconcile it. The same is true for hardware and hardware licensing, as well as patch management. It's all tied together.

On a scale of one to 10, KACE goes up to 11.

Our main purpose is to image the computers we have on campus, using the Systems Deployment Appliance. After we get that set up, our second purpose is to use the Systems Management Appliance to keep an inventory of, and send scripts to, all the computers that we have on campus.

KACE has definitely significantly affected the time it takes to solve problems. In the past, we were spending way too much time solving minor issues, whereas with KACE we can do it on the fly. I'm solving problems quickly, in as little as 15 minutes, and then we're able to push out the resolution across campus. In the past, even if we had figured out something that quickly, it would still have taken us weeks at a time to push everything out.

As far as PCs go, and running Windows, the solution handles everything. I even have a Linux machine that I've imaged with KACE. I don't handle the Mac side of devices but I know there was a different solution that our Mac guy has used. It definitely makes it easier for us to keep inventory because, without it, our environment would be the Wild West. It would just be impossible to keep track of everything. The way I have it set up—and especially recently with COVID, we've had lots of people taking computers off-campus—I'm still able to keep everything together, even though we have computers all over the place. If we didn't have something like this, that would be an impossible task.

In terms of the amount of time KACE saves us, it's weeks of work on a monthly basis. We're able to do things in a day that used to take us about a month to do. It has also increased IT productivity because it takes less manpower to get the same amount of work done. Once a month, a classroom would go down, with some 25 computers in it. We would have to send a group of people out to take care of it. Now, we can do that work in a day, with one person. The other people who used to have to take care of that kind of issue can do other things that we need done.

The most valuable feature is the imaging of computers through the SDA. In the past, someone actually put images on CDs and walked around campus to image all the computers. We have around 3,000 computers on campus, and doing that with one disk, over and over, was very time-consuming. Being able to do that quickly is important because, on our academic side, we are re-imaging computers every summer, so that they have all the current updates. That means installing all the software on what amounts to about 1,500 computers. Being able to do that so quickly with the SDA, and to then use the SMA for reinstalling software, has been huge for our productivity.

It provides us with asset management, compliance, software asset management, mobile device management to an extent, and patch management. The combination of these abilities is extremely important. I'm able to download new patches pretty quickly and I send them out every week to all the computers on campus. That means we're constantly keeping everything up to date, and that helps, especially with the number of threats out there. Having everything up to date and being able to do it as quickly as we can is extremely important.

When I first started using the SDA, I used their default system image setup. But I do have a custom image that I created myself and, over time, I've been gradually going in that direction. It just took me some time to figure it out, but now that I have it figured out, it's super simple for me to set everything up the way I want it. It's been a great help to get everything set up that way for my environment. Obviously, everybody's environment is going to be different.

We also use the MDM functionality a little bit. We don't have any Android devices in our environment, but we do have a bunch of iPads that we were using the MDM for. It was easy to get those endpoints into the MDM for asset management. Originally, it was really easy to image them with KACE and then push all the software to those devices, even the iPads. But I think Apple is trying to push MDMs out of their environment. They want everything done the way they decide.

It's pretty easy to use. I didn't have too many issues in terms of setting everything up; that was pretty intuitive. From time to time there are hiccups with updates and I've had to contact their tech support. Something like that probably happens once a year. But overall, it's very easy to use.

Also, it took a little bit of time to figure out how to use the KACE Service Desk. I like the way that I'm able to customize it. But when it comes to how our techs are able to use it, it's not as functional as our current solution, which is BMC FootPrints Service Desk. I would like it to replace our current solution, and the only reason I haven't replaced it is that there's more functionality in our current solution.

I have been using KACE Systems Management for about five years.

It seems pretty stable. I haven't really had any issues, except for one time, when I was building the KACE boot environment. They had to add a hot-fix to it but that happened once in the last five years.

It's being used on every single computer that we have on campus, and we use it every single day, because we're always imaging or re-imaging computers. 

As of now, there is no plan to increase our use, but I would imagine that as things come back to normal, if we have more students coming to campus, we will add more computers and we will increase our use at that time.

Their technical support has been good so far. If there's an emergency, something that we need fixed right away, they usually get back to us within an hour. They've been very helpful.

We did not have a previous solution.

The initial setup seemed complex at first. But as I spent more time with it, it was actually pretty easy to set it up. It is one of those things that, when you look at it, you realize there are so many things that you can do with it. It was a little overwhelming. But it didn't take that long to get the hang of everything and get into it. On a scale of one to 10, it was about a five as far as complexity goes.

It took a month or two to deploy. It took a little bit of time to get it set up the way that we wanted it. But now that we have it set up, it has been relatively easy to maintain that setup. The more I work with it, the easier it gets when I have to make a major change.

As for preparation ahead of setup, we just had to set up a server for it to be installed on. There wasn't much preparation.

I do most of the main maintenance on it and I have one other person who helps me from time to time. There isn't a lot of work there.

We used a reseller to help with the deployment. I talked with them a little and didn't have any issues with them.

Don't scale up too quickly, because there was a period of time where we bought a bunch of licenses but we weren't using that many. When we finally needed more licenses, we lucked into a time when they had a discount on licenses, so we bought more at that time. So hold off for those times when the cost comes down a little bit.

There were a few options out there that had some of the things we were looking for, such as the SDA and SMA, but KACE had more of what we were looking for. Some solutions had half of it and some others had the other half, but as far as having all of it goes, KACE was the best option.

As far as the SDA goes, definitely look at the options for customizing your own images. I had problems with my images as far as the built-in system imaging went. But once I switched over to customizing my own images, I had fewer issues with imaging computers. And when it comes to the SMA, definitely take advantage of asset management and its scripting capabilities. They have significantly helped me and our organization.

We use it to deploy software, push updates to the software, and manage our endpoints, desktops, and laptop computers. We are currently managing over 4,000 endpoints.

We are patching our software with KACE.

We have a virtual appliance.

We have a better handle on knowing exactly where our computers are and who is logging into them. We also have a better solution on what equipment is obsolete and needs to be replaced. We are also probably more compliant with upgrading our software or keeping our software patched so we have less vulnerabilities.

The solution has increased our IT productivity. I have seen a big increase from management to do reporting. It takes us a lot less time to identify systems that need to be upgraded. It is very efficient when we have to upgrade settings on the computer because my folks don't have to walk around and do that. 

KACE collects all the inventory of everything on a computer and everything about a computer, like warranty information. Software control and inventory is its most valuable feature. We use it all the time for that because we have a large geographic area with limited staff. It allows us to do things from a central location.

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.

For the basic functions, it is very easy to use, e.g., looking up computers and seeing what is on them. For the software deployment and scripting, it is more difficult. I only have experienced people on my team do that type of work. If there was a way to simplify the interface for more technical tasks, that would be more useful.

We had a system that we had to upgrade manually this past week. It was a good portion of the systems. Unfortunately, due to the type of software it was, I couldn't do it with KACE, even though we tried. So, my folks had to manually touch each one of the computers, and it cost us hours in lost productivity.

The correlation between assets and inventory needs improvement. The KACE appliance does both asset tracking and inventory, and the link between those two is very sparse and difficult to operate. So, I asked them if they could link those two more seamlessly. I gave that information to KACE a couple of years ago.

I have been using it for over 10 years.

It has been very stable. It just runs. We haven't had to reboot or do any work on the virtual side in months.

It does regular upgrades, which are manual. You need to upgrade your appliance manually. We are one iteration back right now, so we will have to upgrade the appliance. This doesn't happen that often. We don't typically upgrade every time an update comes out. We do it as needed or before it gets too old.

We haven't had to scale it. We only have one appliance. However, when we have gone through several upgrade purchases to add more nodes and systems to it, we buy a license, then apply that to the appliance. Then, our systems can just check in.

We put the solution on every computer in our environment. So, we don't have plans to increase usage, except when we buy more stuff. KACE goes on every computer that we have. It is required for our organization. If we bought 5,000 more computers, then we would buy 5,000 more licenses. That is just the standard that we use.

We have Quest support. I assume we buy the highest level. Here's the thing about their support: It is good and bad. Their support is excellent once you get to the right person on the right team, I find that the subject-matter experts in their area of KACE are extremely helpful. They guide and help me figure out the things that I can't do. However, it takes a little while to get through their support system to get to that right person. The issues with KACE are minor compared to the benefits provided by the organization.

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.

Simultaneously, we were having a problem with the appliance, which caused us to migrate to virtual.

Our implementation strategy at that time went through our change control process. It was to back up the old system, take those backups offline, implement the new system, and then restore from the backups. There are two parts to that which need to be done: 

1. Bring the system up and test with the test group. 
2. Deploy that system for the rest of our network.

We originally had it on an appliance. I was the one who did the virtual upgrade. It was very complex to get it first setup. However, Quest was very helpful in getting that done. I would not have been able to do it without some of their help. The migration took days (close to a week).

It has saved us a lot of time. I couldn't quantify it because we have been using it for so long. It would be hard to remember what it was like before using it. I would imagine it is enough personnel hours that when we have lost people due to attrition, if we didn't have it, then we would have been pretty sunk.

As a government agency, our accounting doesn't look at depreciation or ROI. We just don't. I have seen the return on the investment personally, because I can see the folks who work for me don't have to work as hard or have to travel as much to get things done. I could see where, in a private company, you could turn that into dollars and cents. We just don't monetize that. However, if I worked for a private company, I would absolutely be counting the hours saved and how much that turns into money.

Its pricing model is good for what it offers. Nobody here gives me a hard time about renewing the contract every year. It might be a little cost prohibitive for a smaller company who has to stand up a virtual environment as well as have virtual environment licensing and the hardware. If you have a smaller environment, it might be cost prohibitive. If you only have a couple of hundred computers, you might be more willing to do those manually. In our environment, the cost savings of having KACE far outweigh the licensing costs. We are okay with its pricing model.

We have another solution for patching endpoints on the operating system. KACE would probably do a great job at it. We just already have something else in our environment. Most companies probably do. For example, if you have a Microsoft environment, then you would probably use a Microsoft solution. Or, if you are in a Linux environment, then you would probably use a Linux brand.

We have a separate system for imaging and deploying our computers. I wouldn't mind trying the solution's Systems Deployment Appliance (SDA). It might be something that I will look at in the future.

We evaluated what we could do with Microsoft solutions because we have Active Directory. We haven't really evaluated any other third-party solutions because we have been happy with KACE and don't see a need to shop elsewhere.

Microsoft has some easier solutions because they are already built into the Active Directory system, because the operating systems are already talking on the back-end. KACE does things that are easier to implement because it is a single dashboard that allows me better control. We don't use KACE for operating system updates because that is built into Microsoft Active Directory, but Microsoft Active Directory does not provide anything for third-party software updates, like Adobe products. So, we kind of use KACE for what it is good at and use the other one for what it is good at.

Absolutely leverage the software update catalog that you can put together and implement. Brush up on your batch scripting because that is very important. Those are the main things that really helped us. 

The software distribution takes some research to figure out how to do. You will just have to spend some time learning how to do it.

Our mobile devices are managed separately.

I would rate this solution as an eight out of 10.

We use KACE internally in our company to deliver and manage services for our customers. We access it every day. We are on the support page every day. KACE is open in my browser all the time.

We provide our own KACE services to customers. We are managing more than 85,000 machines by using KACE. In terms of the setup, sometimes, there is a shared environment, and sometimes, there is a dedicated environment. 

Our customers are in retail, power, healthcare, and education. We have more than 20 customers with recurring contracts, and we have had many customers for one-time projects. 

Our customers use KACE for inventory and software delivery and distribution. They use it to apply policies and generate reports. We have some customers who use it for Service Desk. We have done some customizations on Service Desk for ITSM in terms of assets and CMDB to maintain all information related to IT assets.

It provides IT asset management, compliance, software asset management, mobile device management, and patch management. We don't use mobile device management and patch management internally, but we do provide it to our customers. We have some customers who use MDM and patch management. Having all these in one solution is very important for us because Unirede provides monitoring to customers. By using the KACE solution, we are able to provide endpoint management for our customers. This is a gap that KACE filled for us. It is very important for us. We get more than 30% of the revenue through endpoint management for our customers.

It saves time, which is its most important benefit. When you automate tasks, there is a lot of time-saving. Based on the feedback from our customers, it has saved more than 50% time.

It provides what we need for updating and configuring everything the way we need it to be in our environment. For me, it is very easy. It is not a big deal to update when necessary. 

We use Systems Deployment Appliance (SDA) for Windows and Linux devices in our environment. We have used SDA for internal use, for training, and for our customers. We have a few customers who have SDA in place on-premise. We sometimes also use the product to migrate the environment. For example, we use it for migrating from Windows 7 to Windows 10. At the beginning of the pandemic, some of the customers bought a lot of notebooks to make their employees work from home, and we provided migration services to them. By using SDA, we are able to do implementation in a short period, such as one, two, or three months. It is very good for automating the deployments, but, of course, it can be improved. Improvements are always welcomed.

It has increased IT productivity. With SDA, we can reduce a lot of time to provide a new installation. From hours, it gets reduced to minutes. Some customers have told us that their technicians used to spend the whole shift deploying one machine, whereas, with SDA, they could do it in less than one hour for one machine. They were also able to provide a new installation in 30 minutes.

We use machine profiles. We have profiles for the HR department, technicians, etc. We create smart labels related to this information, and we associate the tasks for software, scripts, installation, updates, etc. When the computer is turned on and has the agents installed on it, we detect the profile, and we install and run everything in a few minutes. This is another way to reduce the effort to keep our environment up to date and do automatic installations.

Asset management is most valuable. It is essential for all customers. The other features are also useful, but asset management is most important.

Everything is easy to use. KACE was created to be easy. It is very easy as compared to other solutions such as System Center, but it is important to have knowledge of some of the important concepts. For example, the knowledge of smart labels is critical. If you don't have knowledge of smart labels, you won't get its 100% benefit.

We use the Cloud MDM functionality. Its Windows and Mac enrollment capabilities for allowing IT admins to bypass manual device setup are fine. We provide management as a service to some customers, and they have Windows, Linux, and Mac. We also use it for our internal use in the company.

Its dashboard needs improvement. Currently, there is no way to modify the dashboard. There should be more flexibility so that we can create views according to our use case.

They can add some tips in the UI to help with the configuration. It will make the interface more user-friendly.

Its reporting also needs to be improved. Its reports are just textual, but we need a graphical report. We should be able to create dashboard views by using different types of graphics, such as pivot graphics. This functionality is currently missing.

We use the Cloud MDM functionality. Its interface is a little bit different from the SDA interface and the SMA interface. The concept related to the labels is also a little bit different. The SDA interface could be changed a little bit to have the same functionality as MDM. It is easier to create smart labels in MDM than in SDA. 

It can also be improved in terms of the consumption of resources or the size of the virtual machine. Currently, we are using a lot of memory and CPU power, and these can be reduced, but it is not a big deal.

I have been using KACE for more than 10 years. I have so far handled 600 implementations of K1000 and K2000 in Brazil and Latin America. I have delivered training for more than 5,000 hours.

In 2010 or 2011, I was trained at KACE headquarters in the USA, and after that, I was in charge of supporting customers in Brazil. I helped them with project implementations, training, and quick starts. In 2016, I joined Dell, and I was in charge of all services related to KACE in Brazil and Latin America. In our company, we started using KACE four years ago.

It is very stable, but your infrastructure should meet the requirements for stability. To have stability, you need to meet all the requirements. You need static file systems. If you are using dynamic file systems on the Hyper-V or VM, you might have some issues with stability. You also need to take care of certain things related to the network.

If you have met all requirements and you have 100% compatibility as per the compatibility matrix, it is very stable. If you miss something, you can get into trouble. 

We have their Premier Support because it is very important to have very fast support. I would rate them a nine out of 10. Sometimes, when you have a new hire or a new technician, they don't understand everything before denying some requests. They need to be more flexible.

It is not complex. It is easy, but you need to have knowledge of various concepts, such as smart labels. It is important. Otherwise, it won't be so easy. To make it easier and more user-friendly, they can provide some tips in the UI during the configuration.

Its ease of use has helped in getting an ROI in a very short time. We sell KACE as a service, and we got our ROI within three months.   

I would rate it a nine out of 10. It could be improved a little bit more.