Broadcom Unified Infrastructure Manager, formerly from CA Technologies, is a unified tool for systems monitoring and analytics. It offers multiple deployment options for IT teams and MSPs .
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Lansweeper
Score 8.7 out of 10
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Lansweeper - Network Discovery and IT Asset Management Software
Lansweeper is an IT asset
management solution that provides network…
Well Suited: - Multiple units (you may split Nimsoft per Groups, companies, etc.) - When your Business Teams NEED Dashboards (they'll love it after they learn how to use, for example, if they discover that the may even run SQL queries together with monitor the webpage of the application, and display business data) Less appropriate: - If you are beginning to monitor your environment (because you need to know your environment at least a little bit to check if the entire set of monitoring Nimsoft plugins will really help you or you will only use it to ping your application) - If you don't have at least one (i do recommend 2 or 3 after some short time) people dedicated to deploy and fine-tune the monitoring. The tool is really good, but if you don't have anyone working on it, you will notice that you're spending money in an elephant to kill an ant or worst, that you passed the entire year, and still have the same problems of the last year, cause no one put the hands enough time in the tool. I saw this happening during the first year when I was the only one working with the tool and still supporting the entire team.
Lansweeper I believe is well suited for any environment - its low cost and small footprint make it an easy addition to any organization, big or small, that is looking for an asset inventory solution that can either replace or supplement existing asset management systems. It may not be well suited for situations where a lot of customization is necessary, such as pulling in custom fields or details from equipment that don't reside in a registry.
Inventory - LANSweeper scans the network for devices - anything with an SNMP trap or using AD or local credentials. We can get an in-depth look at devices.
Reporting - LANSweeper can generate just about any report you can imagine. We can check RAM in groups and determine where upgrades are needed. We can find local printers (which aren't allowed on our network) and address that issue with the user. We can check CPU type to help determine end of life without our network.
Printers - It's nice to have a quick look at printer statuses. Toner levels, out of paper, and service errors are all reported via LANSweeper.
I'd like to see improvements in inventory management. Currently node management isn't as efficient as I'd like.
I also see a big opportunity to offer greater customization in the Detail Tab. I'd like the ability to pick and chose which metrics are displayed by default in the Detail Tab snapshot.
Can only scan what it sees. Doesn't show every item on the machine. Patches are also absent.
Software Recognition is OK with Microsoft. It is dire within our network of multiple products. Recognition is at about 35% with constant manual work needed to baseline for each manufacturer in each network
Datacenter compliance is a manual project. We used Excel extensively.
License optimization is limited to installations v surplus licenses. We need to know who's using what and how.
Lots of info online there are tons of SQL Reports you can copy from the web as Lansweeper and users post many of them. They also send out alerts that pop up on Lansweeper, letting you know of an update that you need for certain software and provide an SQL report so you can scan your system to see what PCs need this update.
All tools have their own gaps , some seem to do more than others, some just work better. With UIM we have found a sweet spot with features, price point, pros, cons, etc
Microsoft System Center needs to install agents on all IT asset for discovery and sometimes the agents can easily get corrupted. Lansweeper is a SaaS solution and it's easier to deploy to all IT asset that are connected to the network. This save us a lot of deployment time without the need to engage vendor for professional service.
Business Units love It - Good for them, but worse for the IT Team until we share the responsibility of the dashboards.
If no one put their hands on it, it will take some time to give results. I'm talking about environments with 400 devices, for example, in something about 6 months to one year, if no one is dedicated, and depending on the consulting company. Some, even certified by CA, was not good. If possible, try to use CA services directly.
IT Teams, after they start to notice that the tool really work, will want to monitor everything. Depending on the company, this will be more or less easy to measure, as ROI. And I'm telling this because usually IT teams don't know how to sell them to C-Levels, and the tool, because of the price, is always a motivation to questions like: "What is this tool? Do you really need it? Is there another way to monitor this?"
It had a positive impact on solutions expense cause several teams we're using different solutions with different costs that used several servers and DB resources. Now, we've been able to simply that a lot with Lansweeper.
With my previous point, people had to train and learn about each of their solutions. Now we can put a team in charge and so the other teams can focus on other tasks.
Last year Lansweeper changed their licencing prices a lot so it slashed our budget.
