Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) Reviews

We primarily use our KACE system for imaging, deploying software, and deploying fixes to Windows computer labs. 

We don't use the active directory in our environment, so pushing out changes to local group policy is something we use our SMA for often. 

Additionally, managing over 1000 Windows endpoints of varying models and manufacturers is no easy task. Management of these endpoints involves utilizing the inventory and scripting features on the KACE SMA. 

We even use KACE SMA on our VDI infrastructure, helping to maintain and track those endpoints.

The KACE SMA has helped make our endpoint team work more agilely, efficiently, and productively. 

We're able to deploy software and push out fixes to endpoints faster than ever. 

Our turnaround times for new software installation in our numerous computer labs on campus have never been quicker. 

With KACE, as soon as a request comes in or a report of a broken bit of software, we can quickly prepare and deploy a fix with the SMAs scripting feature - which has proven invaluable to our organization. This makes my team's day easier and our clients even happier.

The Powershell support in the SMA has proven invaluable time and time again as an organization that doesn't use Active Directory. We can easily make changes to our endpoints via Powershell scripts with the SMA, empowering us to make changes to our endpoints not always capable to a non-windows shop. 

Managed installations is also a great tool. Managed installations give my team a quick and efficient way to deploy software to many computers all at once, without the need to manually go to each computer and tediously and manually install the software. 

We'd love to see support for larger dependencies in the scripting feature. We sometimes use scripting to copy large files (5GB+) to 30+ computers at a time, and having a way to do this directly through KACE without breaking up the files into smaller ZIP files would be great. 

Additionally, we'd love to see the return of the 5-second auto refresh. We've found that 30 seconds between auto-refreshes in the KACE UI is sometimes too long. 

Other than that, the SMA is a fantastic product that makes life easier and keeps clients happy!

I've used the solution for five years.

KACE is an incredibly stable product. We have had very, very few stability issues, most of which are isolated to old hardware and versions.

KACE is incredibly scalable to many, many devices.

The Quest KACE support team is the best in the business. I always come out with an answer, and the support engineers are kind and professional always. I can't speak highly enough about them.

Positive

I was initially a bit scared of the complexity of setting up the KACE environment, however, in the end, it was very easy.

We were originally using a physical appliance and now we have migrated to a virtual appliance. We migrated to the virtual appliance three years ago.

Our primary use case is for managed installations and the software that we deploy. Our offices are scattered throughout the state and we have 103 locations that are remote. We use KACE to inventory those items. We use KACE to push updates, third-party products, and third-party software to them.

We gather inventory from them, it lets us know how many machines out there have 16 gigs of memory and who's running low in this space. Any new software that we get that the company purchases, that is how we deploy out to the masses. We do that so that we don't have to travel the state over and over again, we can do all this stuff remotely.

We also have a lot of reports that are being generated from the information that KACE has so that we can take that back to our accounting department. We can provide reports on the location of newly purchased laptops. It shows us if they're still being used and who they are assigned to.

The ease of being able to distribute software to a thousand machines from one location with just a few clicks is the most valuable feature.

KACE is super easy to use. You have to change your mental process on how to think of something and look at it as how KACE has designed it. But once you can figure out what KACE is thinking, then it is really easy to use. We've been using it so long that we don't have to write much new stuff for it. We are able to use the old scripting jobs or deployments that we had. We're able to take those and modify them with new software and then push it out that way. I learn something new every day in it. There's a lot of stuff that I probably don't know that it can do. I'm always playing with and discovering new things.

It's 90% on a single pane.

We use the Systems Deployment Appliance. It's our bread and butter. Every machine that gets imaged here in this building and out through the whole state goes through the SDA. We rely on it completely. There is no manual process of getting a laptop out of a box, plugging it up, turning it on, and waiting for Windows to start. If you were to go to Best Buy and buy a brand new laptop, you would spend the next two to three hours just setting it up. We don't do that. We get a laptop, plug it into the network, connect it to the SDA, and within about three clicks, we're done.

It takes around 30 minutes to configure our laptops. We image machines, image laptops five to 10 of them at a time. It's really great to just line them all up and power them on, hit enter, enter, enter, and then walk away. That part's great.

KACE saves us time. We've been using it for so long now it's become part of our routine. 

It has also increased the team's productivity. We've been able to create standards where we know that no matter what type of laptop it is, we can image it the same way. It has the same setup for every user kind of thing. We know we can guarantee that everybody across the state is running the same version of Microsoft Office or products like that. It has continuity. It's made it to where we are efficient across the board from high-level VP level down to standard user level. Our equipment and the way that our equipment functions is standard. It's across the board.

It makes it to where the six guys that are on our team here can step up and do the same job. We know what to look for. We know the learning curve for it. We all know what it does and how it works. If we hired a new person, they could come in and pick it up very fast and be up and going extremely quickly. We've cut the learning curve down tremendously.

I would like for there to be improvement when it comes to Microsoft and Windows updates. It has the ability to do it but the control of it is not there like I have in the Windows Server Update Services. The way KACE does it is still very granular. You don't really see the process like it is in the Windows Server Update Services. I think that would be one of the biggest things that I would like to see KACE really put some work into and really make that a big enhancement. 

I have been using KACE for seven to eight years. 

It's very stable. The upgrades and patches that they come out with only seem to enhance the product. They're not trying to fix something that's broken. It always seems like when there is a new version, it's always something that is enhancing.

We have one SDA and one SMA and it works for all 1200 of our devices that we have listed. I don't think we would ever need to scale out to anything larger than that.

When it comes to opening a service ticket or a support ticket through KACE with Quest, it's one of those that I don't cringe at. I don't mind it because I know I'm going to get somebody that's going to help me. They go above and beyond to help, unlike other companies like Microsoft or something. It's a pain to open a ticket with them because you feel like you have to sit at your phone and can't move and can't leave waiting for them. It's the complete opposite for Quest. I really like how KACE operates on the support side of things. We use their premium support.

I can open a ticket through the appliance itself or I can sign onto the Quest support website and submit a ticket that way. I know that in a very short amount of time, I'm either going to get contacted that they're working on it or we'll actually have a support technician calling me directly. I get real people. One of the biggest benefits is you get a real person. A real person who is willing and knowledgeable about the problem that you're calling about.

Having this excellent support hasn't influenced us to purchase additional products. But it has been an influence on never, not even considering, picking a different product for SMA or SDA. It's a given that it will be here and it will be here for a long time.

The initial setup was straightforward. When we got the original physical machines, it was taken out of the box, we plugged it into the rack, and got it set up. Within a day or so we had it up and running and had machines in there doing inventory already.

We had professional services assist us with the deployment. I can't remember if they actually came on-site or if we did it remotely. 

Our experience with Quest support has always been great. Any of our interactions with them have always been spot on.

The biggest thing that I've discovered from it, is to give a picture of our entire environment. In one location, I can see how many laptops we have, how many desktops we have, how many people we have assigned, and to what software we have it deployed. I can give versions. I can give so much detail on devices that I don't normally see or I don't normally touch, that are anywhere from five miles down the road to 300 miles down the road. I have the ability to see them, change them, update them, and move them. That's where the biggest bang for it comes in.

From an admin point of view, it would make an administrator's life a lot easier to be able to have that vision across their environments and know what's out there and where you stand in that environment. To know if the machines are up to date or if they falling behind, and different things like that. 

I would rate KACE a solid nine out of ten. Nothing is perfect, I think that there's always room for improvement but it would be a strong nine.

We are a small university of 10,000 students with 1,000 faculty and staff. We have to manage about 3500 computers spread over 3 sites.

There are 2,000 computers available for students. The rest are for staff, including 700 laptops.

Student computers are completely redeployed during the summer break, unlike staff computers which are redeployed during their replacement (every 5 years).

We use KACE SMA mainly to deploy software and security updates. We also use KACE to manage our assets and create monitoring reports.

We were using an end-of-life solution with limited software deployment management capabilities, as well as WSUS to deploy security updates. The asset management was done in an in-house tool that was also end of life.

With KACE, we were able to have a simplification of the software deployment management with more granularity and flexibility.

The use of replicas allowed us to relieve inter-site links during massive computer deployments or security updates.

The ability to create reports is also a plus that allows us to track the life of our computers.

On a single page I can have access to the hardware information, the status of the warranty, the associated support tickets, the installed software, the software waiting to be installed, the last user connected, the accounting information, the date of purchase, et cetera. It gives us the ability to create our own indicators by using customized inventory rules.

We can also create our own indicators thanks to personalized inventory fields and thus bring up very targeted information, including the state of Windows activation, the number and model of connected screens, the power supply scheme used, the presence of a file, et cetera.

What could be improved is the possibility to use replicas in a secure way outside our network in order to maintain the machines that never connect to our corporate network.

The helpdesk could also improve, although it has evolved a lot on the last versions. It does not meet the moment for our needs.

What could be interesting when deploying larger software or software to many machines on a remote site would be to be able to do it P2P in order to accelerate the local deployment and not to load too much of the inter-site links.

I've used the solution for ten years.

When you have a large number of computers, the price starts to become apparent. 

We use it for asset management for PCs and servers, and for doing updates. We also use it for monitoring all of our systems to keep them compliant with Windows updates or server updates. In addition, we use it to deploy and to uninstall software, and we use the Service Desk.

We're using Quest's K1000, which is the asset manager, and we're using the K2000, which is the deployment appliance.

The way it helps us is the easy organization and visibility that it gives into the software versions that are on our assets. It doesn't necessarily provide the solution but it provides us with high visibility into where we're at on all our assets. We can then address the different deployments to get things up to date pretty quickly.

The most valuable feature is the ability to monitor updates—the software versions—on machines so that we can keep everything compliant. We're very highly monitored because we are a financial institution. We have audits all the time and they look for vulnerabilities. So we try to keep everything to the latest software versions and firmware versions. We use KACE to monitor those.

The K1000 doesn't communicate well with some clients without SMB. There are some issues with getting things to image correctly because they rely on SMB, and SMB is a protocol that is being removed due to security reasons. Organizations are trying to rely less and less on SMB. I know Quest is aware of it. They've talked about having a new version that wouldn't rely on SMB for connection to the clients, but they haven't gotten there yet.

I've been using the Quest KACE Systems Management for four years. We're using 12.01.49 and we've been on it for about a month. We update pretty much every time updates become available.

The KACE solution is solid. We haven't had any issues with functionality.

It's definitely easy to scale out. We've had to add licenses as our environment has grown. We haven't had any problems there. We haven't hit our heads on any capacity issues.

We're using it to the capacity that we need to. We do most of our software deployment through it and we do about 150 to 200 tickets a month through the Service Desk.

Any time I've had to deal with their technical support, they've responded quickly and they're pretty thorough in getting things resolved.

For example, about six months ago, one of the updates didn't deploy correctly. I was doing it on a Saturday because I didn't want to interrupt production. It didn't go well, and a gentleman from Quest support jumped on and he went through it that day and we got it resolved. He knew what code needed to be executed manually and he worked through the problem and had us up within a couple of hours.

Positive

The initial setup is pretty involved because you have to set up Service Desk and you've got to set up all your environment labels for the different assets. As a part of purchasing the appliance, you do get to buy some services to help you get it set up in your environment, and that was a great purchase. They assisted us a lot in getting the Service Desk, and some of our labeling and environment, set up to get us going.

Between the two appliances, the deployment took pretty close to a week.

In terms of an implementation strategy, the first part was to get the Service Desk up and running on the K1000. Then we went to the K2000 with imaging and deployment through that.

We have about 85 to 90 people using the Service Desk, and we have five people in our IT department who administer the system. While they don't do so full-time, we have three people who do the admin work on the KACE appliance. One is responsible for software deployment, and the other two do most of the updates, as well as the monitoring of updates and vulnerabilities on computers, and pushing the patches through KACE. And we have four people who monitor the Service Desk in KACE. One is a basic Service Desk individual and the other three are systems admins who overlap and help out.

At the time when we bought it, it was a Dell product. Since then, Dell sold it to Quest. Dell provided a third party to help with the installation.

The solution has saved us a ton of time in several areas. We spend tremendously less time—probably 80 percent less—on updating now, versus before we had KACE.

I was using Microsoft SCCM in my previous environment and I replaced it with KACE. When I came to this new environment we put KACE in. Compared to SCCM, it's a lot better. With SCCM, when I was trying to push updates or get the stuff to function, the way it was designed it was more difficult. Usually, if I set up a script with KACE, it doesn't take long to get it to run successfully. Whether it's scripting or installing, it seems to be much smoother with the KACE product. The improvements are in deploying Windows and server updates automatically, on schedule.

We got rid of SCCM because we got out of our Microsoft licensing agreement at the time, and it was covered under that. And it just wasn't effective for us. We had a lot of issues with it.

There were a couple of us in IT who had used KACE in previous environments and we liked it, so we made the recommendation and moved forward with it.

Its ease of use is an eight out of 10. Some things can be a little difficult to find, but support's always there to help if we can't figure something out.

For both appliances, the K1000 and the K2000, make sure that you purchase the support for the deployment and get Quest's assistance in getting it set up properly for your environment. With the K2000, we got it set up with their support and then one of our technicians went in and started changing things and really set it in the wrong direction. Their support will help you start out on a firm foundation.

The primary use of this product is for our user support (help desk).

Kace has helped us integrate all of our IT needs from inventory to imaging. Having this appliance to do everything automatically and push out software is a plus. Summer tasks are so much easier with imaging across the network that requires almost zero technicians intervention.

Managing 3,000+ computers across our campus from one single solution has made our life (and work) so easy. We are able to respond to the needs of our users always and can look into the history of the devices or the KB created to self-serve our users.

Our computer Inventory became more accurate, and computers were rolled out faster. Our techs adapted quickly to the new service desk, and the users can now check the status of their ticket by login into the user portal. 

As we plan computer rotations, having an accurate inventory is a key to identifying computers that are end-of-life or out of warranty. KACE can provide all of the necessary information by simply running customized reports that in turn can be provided to individuals or departments, either on-demand or on an automatic schedule.

Asset management, inventory, reporting, and service desk features work together and they are very valued in our daily operations.

When a user creates a ticket, users are in a continuous loop of communication via the service desk, user portal, or email. We are now able to set tier levels and involve other areas within IT, networking, sysadmin, VOIP, or managerial for approvals.

The service desk can be configured and customized to better serve our environment. If necessary, additional queues can be added.

There is always room for improvement. An example will be the implementation of granulated permission to run Scripts. We often find it unnecessary (and dangerous) that all technicians can see/run all the scripts created by our institution. Ideally, a Manager could assign some scripts to certain levels of support. 

However, the system does most of what we need at this moment.                                          

KACE has a website, "Use Your Voice," where users can make suggestions to improve the product or add new features. This offers a great way to improve the system.                      

KACE recently added Windows Feature Update patching to SMA. That was a considerable improvement to keep end-points secure, as many users were asking for it. 

SMA was implemented in our institution in late 2008.

The stability is great, initially was running on a physical server, and recently migrated to a VM, both environments are very well-built.

Support was always provided a fast and accurate response to our questions, issues, or even helping us implementing new system upgrades

Positive

n/a

The setup was straight foward, and a dedicated support team was on the line while we implemented and set up the system. KACE included a follow-up online training to guide us and have the appliance up and running within the first hour.

We've seen ROI in less than 6 months.

We also looked into TrackIT.

The use case is for organization server patching, and we also use the asset management in a smaller capacity.

For what I use it for, the solution provides a single pane of glass with everything I need for endpoint management of all devices. For the most part, it lowers the amount of time required for manual intervention. It gives me more time to work on other projects instead of consistently worrying about patching. Per week or per month, it's saving me a good five hours.

One of the most valuable features is that it natively patches third-party applications and not just a core operating system.

It's relatively easy to use and most of it is pretty intuitive. They've made things a little more involved now with the agent token that needs to be used. That means installing it from a server, from the share, is not quite as simple as it used to be, but once you know how to do it, and that it's something that has to occur, it's really not a problem.

It enables IT asset management, compliance, software asset management, mobile device management, and patch management, although we don't utilize the MDM. That's mainly due to our security requirements. But the IT asset tracking is a big segment.

And the software asset management has been a big help, even when it comes to license true-ups. I can use it to find out how many Tivoli we have, and boom, there's the number. Even if it's reporting a number that might be a little higher than what it actually is, because it's looking for one component, it gives you a good first first-hand look. As a result, we know there's something out there and this confirms we've got five of them. And you can actually click on the information about the software and it shows, for example, that these five servers are where it's being reported. If you really want, you can log in to them and validate. We have used that quite a bit.

Another segment that has really helped out is where you go in and actually use the distributions. We might have a situation where we need something installed on all 237 servers by tomorrow. I'll just go in and do a managed installation and have KACE push it out. So far, that's been pretty successful. I wish it had a little bit more ability to allow me to put something in there without saying, "Okay, we're already aware of this software. What file do you want to use?" It would be nice if it let me type it in and prompted me, when needed, saying, "We've already found that. Do you want to use this one? Yes or no?" But it hasn't kept me from accomplishing what I intended. Overall, the distribution is a pretty nice feature.

My biggest complaint is that almost every time they send out a new version, it fixes something and breaks another. Something that wasn't working in the last version now works, but something else stops; or they'll remove some dashboard that I really found to be nice and replace it with something totally different that I could care less about.

Another example of this would be that there is a set of agents where the communication between the agents and KACE is very consistent, and the patch numbers are very good. And then there will be a new agent which they say fixes this, this, and this. But then, all of a sudden, my patch numbers go down and the communication isn't as good, or they're timing-out more.

An additional instance of this is that it used to be, when you were patching, you would see how many succeeded and how many failed. You would also see which patches had failed and had reached the maximum number of attempts. Connected with that, there used to be a "reset tries" feature and that was nice because you could actually reset the attempts and KACE would try those patches the next time. Now, although "reset tries," is still there, it's grayed out. It doesn't function.

It affects usability because every time you upgrade, you don't really know what you may be getting yourself into. I wish they'd be a little more consistent and make sure it's only getting better, rather than their saying, "We had 15 known issues in the last version. In this new version, we're offering these new things, but we've still got 15 known issues."

The installs are generally very easy. You just say, "Okay, go ahead, upgrade," and they seem to run fairly smoothly with no problems. It's just that after you've done them, you have to see what is working and what's not working.

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

On the whole, the stability is good. Once it's up and running, it just pretty much runs. There aren't really system crashes or anything of that nature. It's a solid system that really does not encounter failures of the system itself.

Scalability is available. I have not experimented much with some of the options. For example, you can have a system at this site and have another site that doesn't have an entire KACE, but just a file share where KACE can put patches as well. Instead of servers at that site going all the way to your primary site, they just pull the patches from that local repository. Theoretically, that helps. So it can be scalable if you so choose.

In our environment we manage 237 servers. 

Their technical support is good. They're very prompt. Quest has been very quick in responding to any support cases or questions. And most of the time, the answer is very straightforward and easily executed or easily understood.

Positive

We did use something that KACE replaced, but I don't even remember what it was.

SCCM is what we use for workstations, but not for server patching. We do have WSUS (Windows Server Update Services) running as a backup in case we want to use Windows Update. We do have other options available, but for servers, KACE is the primary patching system.

I was involved in the initial setup and I found it to be relatively easy. It was pretty intuitive and straightforward.

Bringing it online to the point that I could log in took 45 minutes to an hour, and that included making sure I had DNS records so that the URL was resolving, and putting in the IPS and gateways, et cetera. All of a sudden, boom, it was up and running. 

After that, it was a matter of making sure that patches are actually downloading properly, and that the agent installs are checking in and everything is working properly. So getting it all tuned and set the way we wanted took two or three months, but the initial "it's technically functioning" was just two or three days.

We have realized a return on our investment with the solution. We are more stringent than the NSA as far as security goes. We run weekly security scans on our systems and we're consistently bringing in third-party organizations to do red-team tests where they'll try to hack in and do a lot of things to test us. Since Quest KACE Systems Management patches not just the operating system, but can also patch third-party things like Java and Wireshark if an update is detected, overall it handles everything that's detected. If possible, it will attempt to patch it.

The cost of KACE has been relatively low compared to other systems. Even if those systems have the same cost, they do not do as much of the third-party patching that KACE natively does. With a cost of less than $4,500 a year, it's been very good.

The pricing model is fair and fine. I wouldn't change anything about that.

We looked at SCCM and Qualys.

One of the reasons we went with KACE was cost. 

Another was that it patches third-party applications natively. Certain systems tend to need native operating system patching only. You can download something like a Java update and then "package it" for installation. But with KACE you can say, "If you find it and it's critical, recommended, not superseded, and it's detected on our system, download it and patch it." It's nice that it's doing third-party apps and not just the operating system.

If you're considering KACE for a large environment, come up with smart labels and patching schedules that are going to fit the number of systems that you have. The scheduling really comes into play, especially now with Windows having bundled patches. As a result, you're downloading a 1 or 1.2-gigabyte file to update the server, versus between three and seven 2 or 3 or 5 megabyte files. When there were multiple files, even if two of them didn't get uploaded, the other three did. If this one large file times out, it just does not patch. So scheduling the time to stage those and deploy on a different day is really important.

I wish we had the ability to use the mobile asset tracking and bar coding. Those are things that have been a real void in our organization. At least we are utilizing KACE for the servers and we manually input barcodes or serial numbers. Having the option to use a KACE app to input that information is nice and would save a lot of time. 

We use the solution for managing our fleet of approximately 1,500 devices. This includes Windows patch management and version control, scripting deployment to workstations as well as managed software deployment to groups and individuals. 

It is also used for creating reports for software use, patching records, and auditing the workstation fleet. We like being able to create custom reports based on any number of internal fields, and the ability to have custom inventory fields too. With it, we can deploy complex software solutions in a controlled manner.

Quest KACE has provided us with a managed environment that surpasses all expectations. The information available via KACE is up to date, critical to our normal operations, and has become the go-to tool of our IT teams for extended support. In our classroom environment, it has saved a lot of time in software deployment.

Having a full report of our estate, which version of Windows is running, whether the device is encrypted, is running the latest AV solution, when the support runs until, et cetera, has been vital. It allows us to maintain a service desk that has all of the most up-to-date information on all workstations.

Full auditing of the Windows estate is the most valuable aspect for us. We are aware this solution can do Apple and Linux-based integration too, however, we simply haven't had the time to explore this so far. 

The managed software deployment is great. We like ensuring a single managed solution can be deployed - rather than having to do a custom install, which is time consuming and error-prone.

Scripting deployment for configuration, removal, or reporting is helpful as well. This has allowed us to ensure we are currently using our workstations and they are correctly implemented for end-users.

The solution needs to add:

• Automated software deployment, rather than manually having to create uninstall packages and running this against a number of manually entered devices. 
• Driver feeds for devices outside of Dell ownership.
• The ability to push out managed feature updates from Microsoft in a more seamless way.
• The ability to integrate quickly with workstations to push out tests/patches.

There is a Resolve issue whereby some workstations no longer report/check-in after a recent update. This is now an open case with Quest Support.

There is a Resolve issue whereby we cannot migrate between VMware hosts.

We have been Quest KACE customers for approximately five years now. We have used the K1000 for device management and K2000 for asset deployment.

The stability is great - it simply never fails!

Scalability is very good. We've been able to expand several times, expanding the number of devices covered with ease. We have also utilised the cloud-based MDM solutions, however, this isn't something we've maintained a licence for due to internal staffing resources.

We have successfully moved away from a hardware-based solution and moved into a virtualised VMWare estate. This has allowed us to integrate the backups of this product within our organisational estate, plus allowed us to migrate the services across various parts of our network, without having to physically change the location of the hardware. This is a great solution for us and removed any hardware blockers that were in place previously and to take advantage of the virtualisation advantages without any major changes to our client estate.

We previously used Acronis to do very basic duplicate systems.

The solution is very easy to get set up and push out clients to our workstations for deployment. It is now used as our only solution to image and deploy workstations!

As with many platforms, the more you can put in, the better the solution will function. The time taken to deploy complex packages can be time-consuming, but this is outside of the KACE environment directly.

Licencing has been quite simple throughout. We have successfully expanded our support numerous times, including additional features and devices.

We did not previously evaluate other options. 

We Primarily use KACE as a diverse deployment and management solution. 

Our environment includes multiple locations, so having a single point of deployment for automation/patches/software/scripts and response management is ideal. 

We work in the banking industry, so having this single point and not having to worry about security is enormous. We have to go through multiple government security audits a year and our auditors are always blown away with our KACE environment. We need KACE to keep our organization going.

Previously, we were working with upwards of 200 different applications and tools, the amount of compatibility issues and clutter was unbelievable. One update on one application could ruin a whole environment at times. Thank goodness we found KACE to consolidate our environment and really cut down on resources! 

They've saved us so much time and money it's unreal. They have so much flexibility in what you want to configure or script. In some of my deployments, I've built entire applications on KACE to work with, while in others I have small built-in batch files. The only thing that limits KACE is your imagination.

The ability to build scripts right on the deployment center itself, as well as building groups that take those scripts/task chains has been absolutely invaluable and one of the most important parts of my whole environment. Without it, we would need to hire at least six to seven more employees to do what I'm able to do myself with those tools. 

On top of this, they have multiple forums that are super active. I've gone to tech support, ITninja, and even Reddit. One time, I asked a question on the KACE subReddit on how to improve a function and a KACE team member responded in five minutes. That's honestly unheard of for a company like this.

The GUI needs some work. I love all that it can do, however, it can be just be so cluttered at times. I wish we could see them spend some time improving the interface.

Sometimes when I run certain functions or need to do a one-off massive deployment, it lacks in "mobility". It can be a pain, having to go back a page and re-type in all the same information in the "run now" tab when I have a whole bunch of one-off situations. It's not like I can't do what I need to do, however, I seem to just spend more time than I'd like having to type in the same information over and over.

I've used the solution for the past five years.

In all the years we've had this product we've never had a stability issue.

The solution can scale. The product can be a help desk ticket system, all the way up to the entirety of your virtual machine environment - making updates and changes at a click of a button.

They take their role in support extremely seriously. We don't have to reach out too often due to the lack of problems, however, when we do, they respond within an hour or two at the very longest.

Positive

We did not use another solution. Once we got KACE, I just don't understand how we held on for so long without it.

We had a vendor assist us so that we never had a single hiccup during the entire setup.

The vendor was, without a doubt, an expert. We assisted and learned everything they could teach us.

We had ROI about a year into this and have saved so much ever since.

If your team is small like ours, I highly recommend working with an install vendor. For us, it wasn't as much a technically challenging thing to implement as much as what the vendor showed us during setup and installation that was just so helpful. With their help, we were able to hit the ground running and had much less of a learning curve.

Other options were discussed however, it was so long ago I can't recall what they were.

I would say start by looking at all of the services/products that KACE offers - don't feel overwhelmed as they will integrate very well with each other.