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F5 BIG-IQ Centralized Management vs. Microsoft System Center

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    F5 BIG-IQ Centralized Management

    Score8.8 out of 10
    N/AF5's BIG-IQ provides centralized management of app services and security policies.N/A

    Microsoft System Center

    Score8.4 out of 10
    N/AMicrosoft System Center is an enterprise-grade IT Operations Management (ITOM) suite designed for the centralized administration of data center infrastructure, virtualized environments, and hybrid cloud workloads. The platform provides unified management across heterogeneous environments, including support for Windows Server, Linux, and Azure Stack HCI. System Center is Microsoft's ITOM stack for organizations that maintain a significant on-premise footprint, vs the company's Azure-based…

    $1,323

    per month

    Pricing
    F5 BIG-IQ Centralized ManagementMicrosoft System Center
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Standard Edition
    $1323
    Datacenter Edition
    $3607
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    F5 BIG-IQ Centralized ManagementMicrosoft System Center
    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
    F5 BIG-IQ Centralized ManagementMicrosoft System Center
    Considered Both Products
    F5
    No answer on this topic
    Microsoft
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    33%
    Would buy again
    5 Answers
    91%
    Would buy again
    31 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    40%
    Delivers good value for the price
    4 Answers
    97%
    Delivers good value for the price
    33 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    20%
    Happy with the feature set
    3 Answers
    91%
    Happy with the feature set
    31 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    11%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    1 Answers
    95%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    21 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    55%
    Implementation went as expected
    6 Answers
    97%
    Implementation went as expected
    28 Answers
    User Ratings
    F5 BIG-IQ Centralized ManagementMicrosoft System Center
    Likelihood to Recommend
    4.2
    (15 ratings)
    9.3
    (58 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    7.3
    (1 ratings)
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    4.3
    (12 ratings)
    8.4
    (5 ratings)
    Support Rating
    6.4
    (1 ratings)
    9.0
    (14 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    F5 BIG-IQ Centralized ManagementMicrosoft System Center
    Likelihood to Recommend
    F5
    F5 BIG-IQ Centralized Management works perfectly in Software upgrades and simple daily changes. We are successfully using it to create and or delete objects. It doesn`t works well when we need reports. I usually have to create custom scripts to get a list of objects, for example. Performance is also something that could be improved in Big-IQ
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    For companies with more than 10 Windows devices and needing to standardize the OS, AV, access, share resources, and install software. SCCM is the way to go. This software is unnecessary if the business is all remote users and not in an office-type setting. There are cloud offerings or none to accomplish what a business needs.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    F5
    • Common system level changes like cipher suite customization, ssh protocol settings etc can be pushed to all F5 gear through one click of a button
    • Enterprise standard templates for profiles/protocols etc., can be efficiently managed across F5 gear through a single interface
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    • Allows the grouping of devices by user.
    • Allows controlling updates being deployed to user devices.
    • Allows for the repurposing of machines by being able to load new or updated software on machines that already are in the system.
    • Allows us the ability to wipe a machine clean and restore it back to the configuration that was assigned the machine.
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    F5
    • There a lack of the going forward to next
    • The second site product does not do what we need and we are forced to write our own scripts
    • Many of the alerting that was in enterprise management is no longer in F5 BIG-IQ Centralized Management
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    • The product could improve in the area of having better mechanisms in place with how the SCEP client is deployed/installed from the server on the management side. We have run into this firsthand with the client not installing on an endpoint, and then having to take the time to investigate why it was not installing.
    • A second improvement that can be made is to keep trying to improve the products detection rate for finding malware/viruses. The case can be made that there are some products out there that do a better job at this and have a higher detection rate.
    Incentivized
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    Likelihood to Renew
    F5
    There is some room for improvement around RBAC. The access to certain features, options and menus is not straightforward and not that granular.
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    Microsoft System Center Operations Manager is tightly integrated to Microsoft Windows servers os monitoring with great product support.
    Incentivized
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    Usability
    F5
    I feel pinning policies are killing you guys when it comes to being able to add multiple LTMs that have different naming conventions.
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    It is not user-friendly for the most part. With IT infrastructure, sometimes it cannot handle excess requests. Every few months, you will need an upgrade in terms of server resources to keep up with incoming alerts and requests. This does not happen all of the time, but it does happen when there are too many requests.
    Incentivized
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    Support Rating
    F5
    The support is a bit complex and not straightforward. It seems there aren't many engineers supporting this platform. There are many components in the solution that makes it complex for troubleshooting. Documentation needs to be more in depth, and I have opened a few cases around cluster sync issues and objects stalled. In the end I was able to find and fix the problem.
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    There is a fair amount of documentation out there to help you when you have questions or run into issues with this product as well as tutorials on some of the more common tasks. Between the documentation and the overall ease of use we haven't had to deal with direct Microsoft support for this product.
    Incentivized
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    Implementation Rating
    F5
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    Easy to install with intuitive interactive interface during the installation process a and integration to MS SQL was smooth
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    F5
    Of all the centralized Management platforms I have ever used, BIG-IQ is the worst. It constantly breaks and requires fixing in some way or another.
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    Microsoft
    We previously used a mix of FOG and Clonezilla to image machines. The biggest issues with these products is that changing one piece of the image required you to rebuild the entire image itself. These pieces of software also did not allow you to manage applications and Windows Updates, causing IT to have to constantly touch machines after they were imaged and update or manage them with a much more hands on approach.
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    F5
    • Cut costs by requiring less manual hours to manage F5 OS installations
    • Great monitoring and alerting tool for general F5 gear health
    • Provides critical information for capacity planning of the F5 resources
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    • It has allowed the enterprise to standardize on a single platform for monitoring.
    • Easier troubleshooting of issues with Microsoft platforms.
    • Greater visibility of issues across platforms when applications are hosted in a mixed environment.
    • Additional costs for monitoring systems that are not directly supported with additional packs (iSeries, Linux on Power).
    Incentivized
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