BMC Helix Client Management vs. Symantec Client Management Suite

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
BMC Helix Client Management
Score 5.2 out of 10
N/A
BMC Helix Client Management provides comprehensive, automated endpoint management, delivering great service to end users while minimizing cost, maintaining compliance, and reducing security risk. It replaces the now EoL BMC BladeLogic Client Automation platform. The software automatically deploys patches and updates patch bulletins.N/A
Symantec Client Management Suite
Score 7.4 out of 10
N/A
Symantec Client Management Suite is designed to automate time-consuming and redundant tasks for deploying, managing, patching, and securing desktops and laptops so organizations can reduce the cost and effort of managing Windows, Mac, Linux, and virtual desktop environments.N/A
Pricing
BMC Helix Client ManagementSymantec Client Management Suite
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
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Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BMC Helix Client ManagementSymantec Client Management Suite
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details——
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
BMC Helix Client ManagementSymantec Client Management Suite
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
BMC Helix Client ManagementSymantec Client Management Suite
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

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Medium-sized Companies
ManageEngine Endpoint Central
ManageEngine Endpoint Central
Score 8.9 out of 10
ManageEngine Endpoint Central
ManageEngine Endpoint Central
Score 8.9 out of 10
Enterprises
ManageEngine Endpoint Central
ManageEngine Endpoint Central
Score 8.9 out of 10
ManageEngine Endpoint Central
ManageEngine Endpoint Central
Score 8.9 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
BMC Helix Client ManagementSymantec Client Management Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
6.0
(3 ratings)
8.9
(14 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
5.0
(1 ratings)
5.0
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
BMC Helix Client ManagementSymantec Client Management Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
BMC Software Inc.
This tool will work the best in homogeneous environment where systems are running on Windows OS. In heterogeneous environment like ours where we have Windows, Linux and OS X operating systems, roll out and integration will be a challenge since not all the systems will have accessibility from a common credential
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Broadcom
Whenever you have computers that aren't easily accessible or you have a big site to cover (or multi location), Symantec Client Management Suite (CMS) is really great to manage all your computers, if it's for installation, software, licenses or even status. Setting up all you need from CMS can take some time, especially when you're in a multi-location site. We had to ask the Symantec engineers to help us a couple of times and set things up because even if we followed the documentation, it wasn't an easy task. But at least, the Symantec engineers are people that know what they do and they're really efficient at it.
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Pros
BMC Software Inc.
  • Easy to use
  • Easy to upgrade
  • Highly flexible without customization
  • Great community/support
  • Patch management provides the flexibility to deploy patches using a test to production methodology. It also allows us to customize restart actions which helps with compliance but eases disruption to the business.
  • Computer imaging and software deployment work together to improve speed to delivery.
  • Financial asset management is very useful providing all of the information we need to support our PC replacement process.
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Broadcom
  • Patch Management: We are able to easily deploy patches to all our workstations and accurately report on compliance.
  • Software Delivery: We do a lot of software deployments to our end users and with CMS we can quickly create policies or tasks to perform these deliveries and get quick results on our success or failures.
  • Inventory: Ease of use to get reports of what workstations have what software installed, patch levels, or hardware specifications.
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Cons
BMC Software Inc.
  • It would be nice if it were possible to export search results
  • Schedule my reports to automatically, run at intervals of my choosing with the results either emailed or dumped to disk as a CSV
  • Easy report writing
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Broadcom
  • More transparency with the roadmap would be a welcome change. New and upcoming features are usually a surprise until a major Symantec Event takes place but little is heard about those features before and even after, in some cases, leading up to a release.
  • Documentation for some items is poor. Especially around the Workflow product. It was intended that the documentation for the elements in a workflow would be crowd-sourced, which is a good idea, but in order for that to happen, more people need to be using it and taking the time to draw up the documents.
  • Cost. Its always a big topic, especially in higher-ed, but Symantec could do more to lower its costs for some product lines in order to gain more acceptance and support. If that was done and more institutions could get their student workers to use the product, once they leave college and go into the "real-world" there is a possibility that they would start recommending Symantec products because of their use in College.
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Likelihood to Renew
BMC Software Inc.
No answers on this topic
Broadcom
So far so good - no major issues with that technology.
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Support Rating
BMC Software Inc.
The process followed by the support team for incidents as well as support requests will become bottleneck for dynamically growing organisations as nothing works fast from a support point of view. A few of the requirements that we asked for took more time to execute and most of them came with a cost.
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Broadcom
Support at Symantec isn't that great. Client Management Suite isn't even listed on the Support Portal when trying to open a ticket. Your best bet for support is actually the user groups that Symantec hosts. The members of the groups are usually very responsive. With Broadcom buying Symantec, I've seen a huge jump in personnel leaving Symantec, so I'm assuming the support is just going to get worse. Recently for a simple question, I reached out to 5 people just to find out 4 of the 5 had left the company.
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Alternatives Considered
BMC Software Inc.
As we decided to go for BMC Remedy for ITSM, BMC Helix Client Management was the better solution than other tools for ITAM solution as integrating ITAM and ITSM was easier than other tools and also from support point of view, it will be one throat to choke. The reporting module was elaborate and customisable.
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Broadcom
Although there are other tools that can be utilized I don't believe those tools are as robust as Symantec Management Platform. The Symantec Management Platform was chosen because of the value it returns internally and for our customers. You can pull just about any data element from an endpoint and provide detailed reports or great graphs for the C-Level
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Return on Investment
BMC Software Inc.
  • BMC Client Management has improved our speed to delivery, quality of service and security by providing the necessary automation tools to improve our processes.
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Broadcom
  • SMP allows us to centrally manage all of our endpoints with little to no end user interaction.
  • With the new P2P downloading our bandwidth constraints have been almost completely removed.
  • Cloud Enabled Management (CEM) allows our remote users to receive the same updates as in-network devices without the need for a VPN connection.
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ScreenShots