Jamf Pro vs. Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM)

Well suited for any organization that wants to manage apple products. It's extremely easy to integrate and has many connectors for existing enterprise infrastructure applications. Certificate management is a breeze. Not so suited for smaller businesses that only have 10-20 devices. Jamf has another product called JAMF Now that would suffice for those areas.

More appropriate for:

• Pure Microsoft ecosystem environments (Windows Server and SQL server) and the most common Linux and UNIX platforms.
• Environments where cost is less of a factor than settling on a single platform for monitoring
• Environments where the administrators are familiar with the setup and installation of SCOM.

Less appropriate for:

• Pure UNIX/Linux shops, especially versions not supported out of the box by SCOM.
• Shops that cannot afford the engagement to setup/configure and maintain on a continuous basis.
• Shops that cannot dedicate personnel to the care and feeding of SCOM, especially when supporting larger environments.

Incentivized

• Jamf Pro's Self Service is a great mechanism for making software available to end uses as they need it.
• Jamf Pro is also great for creating plans called PreStage Enrollments that allow for computers to skip many of the setup screens, as well as automating account creation.
• Jamf Pro in combination with Apple Automated Device Enrollment (formerly DEP) allows for devices to supervised and managed, this combination allows for locking, remote wipe of devices, and finding locations of devices when put into lost mode.

• Allows us to visualize our systems in a single interface and see the status of health as well as relevant performance metrics.
• A flexible and powerful interface with active alerting covering domain controllers, SQL servers, etc...
• Allows you to customize your views and workspaces for specific tasks and needs.
• Reporting is powerful and flexible.

Incentivized

• Training options are terrific, but costly.
• Finding what you need in Jamf Pro can be tough at times. The interface is not what I would call friendly.
• You'll need static credentials for Jamf Pro. They don't integrate with the Jamf Account, and it doesn't offer 2FA. SSO is an option, but it's not simple to set up.

• One of the biggest drawbacks to SCOM is the sheer scope and complexity of the system. This can be a pro and a con. The system is very customizable, what you put into it is what you'll get out of it. That said, the learning curve is fairly steep. An organization needs to be committed to putting time and resources into SCOM to get the most out of it. I've heard stories from colleagues of several different companies that invested in SCOM and then abandoned it due to the excessive time and care required.
• SCOM is expensive. Not only is the enterprise licensing costly, SCOM requires it's own servers, operational and warehouse databases to be maintained.
• The OOB SCOM reports are a bit clunky and feel outdated.

Incentivized

We stepped away and are looking at different products that integrate with our entire fleet MDM solution rather than focusing specifically on Apple products. An all in one solution fits our needs better and is more cost-effective in the long run. Jamf Pro needs to improve some features and support but overall its a good product.

Incentivized

Microsoft System Center Operations Manager is tightly integrated to Microsoft Windows servers os monitoring with great product support.

Incentivized

Jamf Pro has done pretty much anything we've needed with little setup headache. If we hit a wall, the Jamf user community and tech support departments both are more than willing to help solve problems. Tech support is excellent, but the surprising thing is the user base is by far the biggest resource. Jamf users love to help each other, by directly chatting about issues, posting best practices, or just posting info on the forums.

Ease of Use and user friendly dashboard

Incentivized

Jamf Support is very responsive and usually assists in any challenge we are tackling. They are also very transparent when they are allowed to be. I personally love our Jamf Pro support rep and don't fear messaging their support team.

Hard to get support. The product is not being actively developed anymore, so it is hard to get new features for the product.

Incentivized

They made me more comfortable using the product.

The training session was beneficial because it expanded my knowledge about Jamf products and really learn what I am capable of doing with Jamf Pro in terms of managing Apple computers and devices. Immediately after the training course, I was able to implement what I learn to our cloud instance.

Migration from an existing MDM requires device wipe and reenroll for full supervision of the device. It's somewhat painful. User enrollment makes things easier, but you miss out on full management.

Easy to install with intuitive interactive interface during the installation process a and integration to MS SQL was smooth

Incentivized

Even thought we are using this solutions for different purposes (macOS device management VS mobile device management), I think at the end Jamf Pro is more focused or aimed for macOS management, and mobile device management is just a good addition to that. Same I can tell about Ivanty, is more about iOS/Android management rather than macOS

We used Altiris and WSUS and in the beginning Altiris had the better admin interface than SCOM, but it is no longer the case as SCOM has refined their admin interface. Altiris still has better and more robust group assignments for management roles and those two other tools can better manage non Windows OS devices than SCOM but for a large enterprise Windows shop, if you can afford it, SCOM is the way to go.

Incentivized

• Jamf Pro has allowed us to minimize the time it takes to deploy devices. We can use zero-touch deployment methodologies which allow devices to go directly to end users and allow end users to get up and running without needing IT's help.
• We have implemented both a third-party & macOS patching service, which allows us to ensure all apps and versions of macOS are updated and secure.

• It has allowed us to provide an Enterprise Event/Alert management solution to the Global company
• It has taken a long time to get it to provide valuable alerts and information, lots of user resources and investment.
• It assists with 24/7 monitoring and out of hours support

Incentivized