Unicenter Network and Systems Management (Unicenter NSM) from CA Technologies reached end of life (EOL) in 2015.
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SPDocKit
Score 10.0 out of 10
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SysKit, in Zagreb, offers SPDocKit as the Ultimate SharePoint On-Premises Administration Tool, used to automate routine administrators’ tasks such as document configuration and exploration of SharePoint structure.
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Pricing
CA Unicenter Network and Systems Management (Discontinued)
SysKit SPDocKit
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
CA Unicenter NSM (Discontinued)
SPDocKit
Free Trial
No
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
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More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
CA Unicenter Network and Systems Management (Discontinued)
CA Unicenter Network and Systems Management (Discontinued)
SysKit SPDocKit
Likelihood to Recommend
Discontinued Products
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.
The product is second to none in providing an accurate and detailed view of a SharePoint farm, its composition, and its configuration. It is an essential tool for discovery purposes, and it should be used anytime business continuity and disaster recover plans/documentations are being prepared. Since SharePoint doesn't include a "farm clone" method, SPDocKit provides the next best thing in attempts to replicate configuration. It can also be used as a Q&A checkpoint through the use of farm snapshots to highlight differences that exist between two or more environments.
Discovery. When trying to learn the ins and outs of an unfamiliar SharePoint farm configuration, SPDocKit creates a complete and accurate picture.
Documentation. Documenting farm configurations manually is a very time and labor intensive process, so I turn to SPDocKit to automate the process for me.
Change Tracking. SPDocKit can take a series of farm snapshots over time, and it can highlight and track differences in configuration and settings from snapshot to snapshot.
Cloud Readiness. Unfortunately, SPDocKit cannot run against SharePoint Online (SPO) environments due to its reliance on server APIs that aren't exposed in the cloud.
Variations. SPDocKit exists in a number of forms for licensing purposes, and not all versions are equivalent. It's sometimes difficult to know what version of the product houses the feature that I want to use, as well as whether or not I'm licensed for it.
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.
SysKit support is second to none. On occasions where I've had questions about any aspect of SPDocKit, I've reached out to SysKit through available channels and usually gotten back a detailed and helpful answer within 24 hours of my request submission. They're also very friendly and supply more information that may be related to my inquiry or problem. I never feel like customer support is an afterthought with SysKit.
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.
I am unaware of any other product on the market that does what SysKit SPDocKit does. SPDocKit has certainly been doing it the longest, and it offers a unique value proposition and set of capabilities.
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.
The product cost may appear large, but when you compare the cost and reuse of the product to what it would cost in time and effort to carry out its functions manually, the cost is truly a drop in the bucket.
Since I operate as a consultant, I consider the SysKit SPDocKit tool essential to the work I do. It allows me to go into new environments, generate a farm report, and use that report as something I provide to the client - as well as for my own purposes.
