Auvik vs. KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)

Auvik is well suited for managed service customers and small-scale SMB customers who do not have enough technical resource to manage and monitor their network. Also for customer who has distributed networks spreaded across worldwide or nation wide, Auvik is well suited since it does not need any on-premise setup at each site except for a collector. For customer who has already adopted and used cloud network and hosting services, Auvik is better as Auvik is also fully cloud based offering

Incentivized

I think it has added value for any organization. It reduced our Tech Support cost by: -Supporting users anywhere -Reducing users downtime as well keep them informed with the status of their tickets -Managing software and hardware actively -Processing automation -deploy mass software installs, patching or updates - Provide approved software's to users to install without IT help

Incentivized

• Auvik is the big pic tool of choice for network diagramming, helps layout of our network infrastructure, and we'll know immediately the status of the devices that are successfully communicating, and those that may have, for example, credentials issues.
• Auvik's "Traffic Insights" are key accelerators for intuitively isolating and resolving traffic-related issues quickly and easily, and the historical information makes it simpler to deduce what aspects may need replacement, capacity improvement, or possibly even re-architecture.
• Auvik integration tools are excellent solution enhancers - that are of particular interest to our company, as we make use of MS Teams and Connectwise products; we would like to see some features to integrate to ServiceNow as well.

Incentivized

• Inventory: KACE provides a ton of hardware and software inventory information that is easy to search, filter, and export. This is critical when we need to find the answers to questions about how many of such and such we have in our fleet.
• Patch Management: We were using WSUS before and it was altogether too cumbersome. KACE has given us the power, flexibility, and verification we need to feel comfortable our patches are up-to-date.
• Service Queue: We made KACE our help desk system and it does everything we need it to do. Great improvement over our old system.

Incentivized

• The map is not easy to quickly zoom in and out of or pan around. Usually requires a lot of filter toggling. Keyboard shortcuts for this would be nice.
• Better global settings that can be pushed to multiple client organizations
• Security groups/RBAC for user permissions across multiple clients
• Ability to change the URL

Incentivized

• The KACE SMA needs a better way to handle different roles in the software so certain users can access or administrate certain parts of the software, but not the entire software installation.
• The KACE SMA could improve the ticketing process of projects. The aspects of the title and some information do not always flow down from the parent ticket to its child tickets.
• The KACE SMA could improve the UI of the software with the addition of different CSS color schemes.

Incentivized

Because it's an amazing product.

Incentivized

The program can be a bit unwieldy at times, however the majority of information is displayed in a readable and friendly way. The maps and popup information box from the bottom can be harder to use on a smaller screen but on a 1080p+ display tends to work fine.

Incentivized

Overall, the software is simple to understand and use. That said, most vendors have been slowly updating their user interfaces to HTML5 so that they have a clean updated look and feel. This is where KACE falls short in that the UI is great for a packaged software 10 years ago. This isn't a major limitation as the software is really meant primarily for technology users.

Incentivized

We have never had a major outage or impact that was noticeable.

Incentivized

Pages can be slow to load on larger sites but tends to be fine for most clients.

Incentivized

Fast response and knowledgeable. If the technician does not know, they will look for the information and get back to you.

Incentivized

KACE does exactly what you need it to do, it maintains your computer environment. You can set patch schedules, inventory computers, setup software catalogs; basically everything you need to ensure the computers on your network are being actively managed. This is all with little need for constant configuration or updating the setup.

Incentivized

Auvik can stand up against any of the big network management and monitoring solutions on the market. I've implemented and used SolarWinds at many organizations for over 15 years. The paradigm that SolarWinds, PRTG, Prime, etc., work under is completely different than Auvik. It's apparent that Auvik was aiming to solve a different problem and built that solution from the ground up. For any organization responsible for multiple other organizations' infrastructure, Auvik is invaluable in comparison to the other products listed.

We have selected this software because it rolls several different systems into one. We have a helpdesk system with this and an asset and inventory management system as well. We pay one price for the whole system instead of paying multiple companies different amounts that would have totaled more than we pay for the single system.

Incentivized

Auvik has worked on sites with 15+ offices connected with VPN's and we have not encountered any issues with the monitoring. On larger sites the map can be a bit cumbersome to read however it can be cleaned up easily with device filters.

Incentivized

• the ROI for Auvik comes from the time it saves in updating documentation and onboarding, new clients. We no longer have to spend a day investigating a network and documenting it, this is life and up to date so you always have true information for reporting and troubleshooting.

Incentivized

• KACE has saved us from having to spend several days of employee hours in crafting DVDs and duplicating them (100+ DVDs)
• KACE has saved us on the postage required to send out those DVDs for every update (monthly) to all of our customers electronically

Incentivized