CA Unicenter Network and Systems Management (Discontinued) vs. ConnectWise Automate

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
CA Unicenter NSM (Discontinued)
Score 3.1 out of 10
N/A
Unicenter Network and Systems Management (Unicenter NSM) reached end of life (EOL) in 2015.N/A
ConnectWise Automate
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
ConnectWise Automate, formerly LabTech, is a remote monitoring and management (RMM) platform. It provides powerful automation to discover and manage devices, monitor for problems, and scripts repetitive action.
$700
Pricing
CA Unicenter Network and Systems Management (Discontinued)ConnectWise Automate
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Agents
$1.00-$6.00
per month/per agent
Implementation Fee
$700
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
CA Unicenter NSM (Discontinued)ConnectWise Automate
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
CA Unicenter Network and Systems Management (Discontinued)ConnectWise Automate
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
CA Unicenter Network and Systems Management (Discontinued)ConnectWise Automate
Monitoring Tasks
Comparison of Monitoring Tasks features of Product A and Product B
CA Unicenter Network and Systems Management (Discontinued)
6.0
1 Ratings
28% below category average
ConnectWise Automate
6.1
21 Ratings
18% below category average
Automated alerts and notifications6.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Remote monitoring00 Ratings7.221 Ratings
Network device monitoring00 Ratings5.120 Ratings
Management Tasks
Comparison of Management Tasks features of Product A and Product B
CA Unicenter Network and Systems Management (Discontinued)
6.0
1 Ratings
21% below category average
ConnectWise Automate
6.3
21 Ratings
13% below category average
Patch Management5.01 Ratings5.920 Ratings
Service configuration management8.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Software and hardware inventory5.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Policy-based automation00 Ratings6.921 Ratings
Reporting
Comparison of Reporting features of Product A and Product B
CA Unicenter Network and Systems Management (Discontinued)
5.5
1 Ratings
32% below category average
ConnectWise Automate
-
Ratings
Performance data reports5.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Customizable reporting7.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Data visualization5.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Risk analysis5.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
CA Unicenter Network and Systems Management (Discontinued)
2.0
1 Ratings
107% below category average
ConnectWise Automate
-
Ratings
Antivirus and malware management2.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
CA Unicenter Network and Systems Management (Discontinued)ConnectWise Automate
Small Businesses
Atera
Atera
Score 8.9 out of 10
NinjaOne
NinjaOne
Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
ManageEngine Site24x7
ManageEngine Site24x7
Score 9.1 out of 10
NinjaOne
NinjaOne
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
ManageEngine Site24x7
ManageEngine Site24x7
Score 9.1 out of 10

No answers on this topic

All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
CA Unicenter Network and Systems Management (Discontinued)ConnectWise Automate
Likelihood to Recommend
3.0
(1 ratings)
7.5
(58 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(4 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(4 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
3.0
(4 ratings)
Support Rating
2.0
(1 ratings)
7.0
(14 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(3 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
5.0
(2 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
CA Unicenter Network and Systems Management (Discontinued)ConnectWise Automate
Likelihood to Recommend
Broadcom
It's a decent system if you're a pure IT shop and want to become ITIL-aligned. It forces everyone into an ITIL mentality - service level agreements, change management, and asset tracking. It's very rote, for better and for worse. It's not appropriate at all as a customer-facing or non-IT facing self-service tool. You will never get your end users to really understand how to use the interface.
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ConnectWise
I recommend it to all IT colleagues; regardless of the size of the PCs with which you work most of the time, the application allows connection stability between computers that make it possible to continue working or taking care of the infrastructure from afar.
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Pros
Broadcom
  • ITIL ticketing (incidents, problems, etc.).
  • Change orders.
  • Matching up its asset management system with incidents/change orders.
Read full review
ConnectWise
  • Desktop sharing / view with chat to the operator, file sharing and pass-through for keyboard strokes
  • Computer/server monitoring with thresholds and warning
  • Search - tracking down computers when you have many by name, logged in user, IP
  • End user ticket raising is built into the tray icon which make access really easy
Read full review
Cons
Broadcom
  • The user interface (UX) is antiquated and clunky. Compared to ServiceNow, it feels like it's 15 years behind.
  • It's complicated - We do routine internal training just to get people to use it correctly.
  • It doesn't have an automated way of discovering assets. Everything has to be force-fed.
Read full review
ConnectWise
  • They have conflicting scheduling paradigms. When scheduling patching for clients, the 1st Friday is interpreted as the very first Friday of the month, even if this is the 1st of the month. For scripting, the 1st Friday of the month is interpreted as the 1st Friday of the 1st FULL WEEK of the month. This makes no sense to have two different interpretations, and makes it unreliable to schedule recurring scripts to fall when recurring maintenance does. The scripts need to be done manually because of this.
  • There is no way to dictate reboot orders for patch policies. This tied directly in with my first point. We have some clients that require reboot orders. This is not possible without having different patch policies for each server and specifying a time this way. But, there aren't small enough increments of time to make this reliable, plus patching duration might vary. Excluding reboots with patching and scheduling reboot scripts fixes this. However, this can't be done once on a recurring schedule due to the different scheduling paradigms already discussed. We have to schedule these manually each month.
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Likelihood to Renew
Broadcom
No answers on this topic
ConnectWise
The primary reason for this rating is that ConnectWise Automate is currently so integral to our operations that moving away would involve more man hours than we would realistically have to invest. However, ConnectWise Automate is also completely capable of meeting all of our business needs and customizable to the point where if something is not meeting those needs out of the box, it can be modified to do what we want. From only installing software on machines if a different software package exists, to push a new version of that software is available, to check if credentials for user/machine have been updated to our new standards and then updating them if they have not, ConnectWise Automate is capable of doing everything we ask of it.
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Usability
Broadcom
No answers on this topic
ConnectWise
Basic use of the product is fairly easy. Information about the machines you manage can be found in customizable dashboards, which can be unique for each user, and, therefore, properly suited to the users' needs/job function. This is not a 10 because some of the interfaces are very clunky (Patch Management), and some features are not intuitive and not well documented (reporting). Scripting and Patch Management have a fairly steep learning curve (For structure in patch management and syntax in scripting), but once learned, they work well.
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Performance
Broadcom
No answers on this topic
ConnectWise
It used to be great, but then they broke reporting, speed and responsiveness with version 11 and the new Patch Manager. It's really bad and their support people are way behind on fixing so many bugs. They have really gone downhill. If they don't get it together soon, we'll start looking around.
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Support Rating
Broadcom
We have to hire 2 full-time 3rd-party consultants to run this application. That tells me it's not a very IT-friendly, vendor-supported application. Compare that with, say, SolarWinds, which is much easier for regular IT staff to customize without sacrificing features and capability. Sure, we have to bring in Loop1 to consult for us when we need to do a major SolarWinds config change or need a really unusual custom query built, but we never need more than 10 hours of consulting per month.
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ConnectWise
ConnectWise Automate lets you manage more endpoints, with enhanced productivity and improved service, all without increasing expenses. It can manage patches and updates across thousands of computers. We also use it for customized monitoring and alerting on workstations and servers. Monitoring is really robust and granular. It does a great job of gathering a TON of data about the network, and that data is searchable. There are a bunch of different reports built in. Integrates with Manage, Control, and other applications. It does a ton of stuff out of the box, and has endless customization options.
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Online Training
Broadcom
No answers on this topic
ConnectWise
The Online training has been re-done and needs a lot more work. When you look at training in different roles, it shows a lot of the same topics but no explanation to what is different about them. Several times that topics are the exact same, but they make you re-take the same information for a different topic, instead of marking that you have already completed that portion of training.
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Implementation Rating
Broadcom
No answers on this topic
ConnectWise
Start small and learn the in's and out's before making policies and rolling things out company wide. Ask the questions of why if you don't agree with something or your company does things a different way. Usually they are done a certain way for a reason. Start simple with roll out and slowly enable or add on the functionality that is needed.
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Alternatives Considered
Broadcom
I did not select CA. If it were up to me, I would migrate us to ServiceNow. The user interface on ServiceNow is 100% more modern and 200% more user friendly. With ServiceNow, the front page for end users makes it clear: one button that says "Ask for something" and one button that says "Report a problem". That's what our end users need. The biggest problem we have in our organization is that our end users don't report issues to the Help Desk often enough and rarely ask for things through the Help Desk. A clean, simple self-service option like this would open up a world of new information for our customer service team.
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ConnectWise
I believe the monitoring and alerts in Continuum command is better, but [ConnectWise Automate (formerly LabTech)] does have stronger scripting, and perhaps a better interface. N-Central is inferior on all fronts to both. I did not make the purchasing decision. I would myself likely pick Continuum if I had to make a on the spot choice.
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Return on Investment
Broadcom
  • It helped make us an ITIL shop.
  • It was integral during our large IT consolidation 10 years ago in merging 10 different IT departments into one by converging on one ticketing system for all IT issues.
  • Its lack of user-friendliness has gated us from being able to deploy a true self-service IT help desk.
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ConnectWise
  • We found we were able to provide good monitoring of our customers sites which was an objective. However, that came at a significant time investment that never seemed to be finished.
  • We were able to negotiate a price that worked for us for an up-front purchase which was nice.
  • We found the pricing to be very competitive.
  • Bottom line for us was despite the pros of the product, we found other RMM solutions to be a better overall "value" due to not having to dedicate technicians to maintaining the product.
Read full review
ScreenShots

ConnectWise Automate Screenshots

Screenshot of Monitor: Find problemsScreenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of