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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    HCL BigFix

    Score8.3 out of 10
    N/ABigFix, now supported by HCL Technologies since the acquisition of BigFix from IBM in 2018, is an endpoint management solution providing endpoint visibility and IT asset discovery, automated endpoint patching (BigFix Lifecycle and BigFix Patch) policy enforcement (BigFix Compliance), and software asset discovery for licensed and unlicensed software (BigFix Inventory).N/A

    Progress Chef

    Score6.5 out of 10
    N/AChef IT infrastructure automation suites were developed by Chef Software in Seattle and acquired by Progress Software in September 2020. The Chef Enterprise Automation Stack is an integrated suite of automation technologies presented as a solution for delivering change quickly, repeatedly, and securely over every application's lifecycle. The Chef Effortless Infrastructure Suit is an integrated suite of automation technologies to codify infrastructure, security, and compliance, as well as…N/A
    Pricing
    HCL BigFixProgress Chef
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    HCL BigFixProgress Chef
    Free Trial
    YesNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    HCL BigFixProgress Chef
    Considered Both Products
    HCLSoftware
    No answer on this topic
    Progress Software
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    80%
    Would buy again
    4 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    6 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    6 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    80%
    Happy with the feature set
    4 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    6 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    6 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    6 Answers
    Best Alternatives
    HCL BigFixProgress Chef
    Small Businesses
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    Medium-sized Companies
    Action1
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    Perforce Puppet
    Score8.5 out of 10
    Enterprises
    ManageEngine Endpoint Central
    Score9 out of 10
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    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    HCL BigFixProgress Chef
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (5 ratings)
    8.9
    (18 ratings)
    Usability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.3
    (1 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.4
    (5 ratings)
    Support Rating
    6.0
    (3 ratings)
    7.7
    (3 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    -
    (0 ratings)
    6.4
    (1 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.6
    (5 ratings)
    Professional Services
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    HCL BigFixProgress Chef
    Likelihood to Recommend
    HCLSoftware
    HCL BigFix is well-suited:
    1. Patch Management for Diverse Devices: HCL BigFix is ideal for organizations with a diverse range of devices, including laptops, desktops, cloud, virtual machines, and mobile devices. Its endpoint management functionality enables seamless patching across various operating systems such as Windows, MacOS, ChromeOS, and Linux.
    2. Comprehensive Patch Management: With HCL BigFix, organizations can achieve comprehensive patch management across their IT infrastructures. It ensures that all endpoints, regardless of the operating system, receive timely and secure patches, reducing vulnerabilities and enhancing overall security.
    3. Troubleshooting and Monitoring: HCL BigFix excels in providing a dashboard that effectively displays problematic and functional machines. This feature allows IT teams to quickly identify and address issues, improving overall troubleshooting efficiency.
      However, there are some scenarios where HCL BigFix may be less appropriate or areas for improvement: 1. Coverage Expansion: It is important for HCL BigFix to continue expanding its coverage to include all possible resources installed within the IT infrastructure. Ensuring comprehensive coverage can enhance its effectiveness. 2.On-Site and OS Upgrades: Optimizing the process of on-site and operating system upgrades can help streamline the deployment process further. Improvements in this area would contribute to a smoother and more efficient upgrade experience. 3.Communication Speed: Enhancing the speed of communication between the HCL BigFix agent and the server can help improve the overall responsiveness and efficiency of the solution.
    4. Pricing Optimization: Adjusting the pricing of HCL BigFix to be more cost-effective would make it more accessible and attractive to organizations of different sizes and budgets.
    Read full review
    Progress Software
    Chef is a fantastic tool for automating software deployments that aren't able to be containerized. It's more developer-oriented than its other competitors and thus allows you to do more with it. The Chef Infra Server software is rock-solid and has been extremely stable in our experience. I would definitely recommend its use if you're looking for an automation framework. And it also offers InSpec which is a very good tool for testing your infrastructure to ensure it deployed as intended.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    HCLSoftware
    • Software inventory.
    • Patch deployment.
    • Patch review.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Progress Software
    • Chef is great at deploying code to both small and large groups of servers.
    • We use chef to standup new servers as well as deploy updated code to existing servers and it does this very well.
    • Being able to make a change and have it push manually or automatically to any subset of servers has changed the landscape of how our IT teams operate.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    HCLSoftware
    • The patching function is difficult for RedHat Linux servers, and can be improved.
    • The site configuration and access control appears to be cumbersome.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Progress Software
    • Chef could do a better job with integration with other DevOps tools. Our company relies on Jenkins and Ansible, which took some development and convincing for plug-ins to be created/available.
    • It would be nice if kitchen didn't only have a vagrant/virtual-box prerequisite. Our company one day stop allowing virtual-box to run without special privileges, and that caused a lot of issues for people trying to do kitchen tests.
    • Chef could use more practice materials for the advanced certification badges. There was not a lot of guidance in what to study or examples of certain topics.
    Incentivized
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    Usability
    HCLSoftware
    No answers on this topic
    Progress Software
    The suite of tools is very powerful. The ability to create custom modules allows for unlimited potential for managing all aspects of a system. However, there is pretty significant learning curve with the toolset. It currently takes approx 3-4 months for new engineers to feel comfortable with our implementation
    Incentivized
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    Performance
    HCLSoftware
    No answers on this topic
    Progress Software
    It loads quick enough for basically all our systems. Because we have this for local dev environments, speed isn't really a big issue here. Yes, depending on the system, sometimes it does take a relatively long time, but it's not an issue for me. One thing that is annoying is that if I want to make a small change to a cookbook and re-run the Chef client, I can't just make the change in the cache and run it. I have to do the whole process of updating the server.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    HCLSoftware
    Recently we noticed the customer service on the support has dropped compared to when we first deployed the software.
    Incentivized
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    Progress Software
    Support for Chef is easily available for fee or through the open source community as most the issues you will face will have been addressed through the Chef developer community forums. The documentation for Chef is moderate to great and easily readable.
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    HCLSoftware
    We have significantly enhanced our ability to patch desktops, including laptops, desktop, cloud, virtual machines and other mobile devices used by end-users. BigFix's endpoint management functionality allows us to seamlessly patch a wide range of operating systems, such as Windows, MacOS, ChromeOS, and Linux systems, ensuring comprehensive patch management across IT infrastructures. We have established a track record of delivering secure and hassle-free patching solutions to our clients
    Read full review
    Progress Software
    We considered the three leading competitors in the field: Chef, Puppet and Ansible. Ansible is a very strong competitor and has a nice degree of flexibility in that it does not require a client install. Instead the configuration is delivered by SSH which is very simple. Puppet seems like it has fallen off the pace of the competition and lacked the strong community offered by Chef. We chose Chef because of the strong support by the company and the dynamic and deep community support.
    Incentivized
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    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    HCLSoftware
    No answers on this topic
    Progress Software
    The pricing seemed inline with our products in this space. Nothing out of the ordinary in contract, term, or pricing structure
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Professional Services
    HCLSoftware
    No answers on this topic
    Progress Software
    The entire professional services team was great to work with. The curriculum was tailored to our specific use cases. The group we worked with were very responsive, listened to our feedback, was very easy to schedule and accommodate. I cannot say enough good things about our professional services experience
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    HCLSoftware
    • When there is a need to patch a Windows System it has worked
    Incentivized
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    Progress Software
    • Chef is a good tool for baselining servers. It will be a good ROI when there are huge number of servers. For less number of servers maintaining a master will be an over head.
    • One good ROI will be that the Operations Team also gets into agile and DevOps methodologies. Operational teams can start writing scripts/automations to keep their infra more stable and their application stack more reliable.
    • Implementation of Chef eliminates the manual mode of doing things and everyone aligns to automation mind set. It helps in change of culture.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    HCL BigFix Screenshots

    Screenshot of HCL BigFix Inventory DashboadScreenshot of HCL BigFix Inventory - Spend OverviewScreenshot of DEX ScoreScreenshot of Modern Client ManagementScreenshot of Tenable Vulnerability