Jamf Pro vs. Symantec Client Management Suite

It's well suited for firms with large or growing fleet of devices. I can only say about macOS device management, as for mobile devices we have a different solution. But I had a chance to play around with mobile device management using Jamf on one of the trainings using Sandbox, and I can say that you can totally use it for managing iOS/iPadOS/Android devices as well.

Whenever you have computers that aren't easily accessible or you have a big site to cover (or multi location), Symantec Client Management Suite (CMS) is really great to manage all your computers, if it's for installation, software, licenses or even status. Setting up all you need from CMS can take some time, especially when you're in a multi-location site. We had to ask the Symantec engineers to help us a couple of times and set things up because even if we followed the documentation, it wasn't an easy task. But at least, the Symantec engineers are people that know what they do and they're really efficient at it.

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.

• Patch Management: We are able to easily deploy patches to all our workstations and accurately report on compliance.
• Software Delivery: We do a lot of software deployments to our end users and with CMS we can quickly create policies or tasks to perform these deliveries and get quick results on our success or failures.
• Inventory: Ease of use to get reports of what workstations have what software installed, patch levels, or hardware specifications.

• 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.

• More transparency with the roadmap would be a welcome change. New and upcoming features are usually a surprise until a major Symantec Event takes place but little is heard about those features before and even after, in some cases, leading up to a release.
• Documentation for some items is poor. Especially around the Workflow product. It was intended that the documentation for the elements in a workflow would be crowd-sourced, which is a good idea, but in order for that to happen, more people need to be using it and taking the time to draw up the documents.
• Cost. Its always a big topic, especially in higher-ed, but Symantec could do more to lower its costs for some product lines in order to gain more acceptance and support. If that was done and more institutions could get their student workers to use the product, once they leave college and go into the "real-world" there is a possibility that they would start recommending Symantec products because of their use in College.

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

So far so good - no major issues with that technology.

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.

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.

Support at Symantec isn't that great. Client Management Suite isn't even listed on the Support Portal when trying to open a ticket. Your best bet for support is actually the user groups that Symantec hosts. The members of the groups are usually very responsive. With Broadcom buying Symantec, I've seen a huge jump in personnel leaving Symantec, so I'm assuming the support is just going to get worse. Recently for a simple question, I reached out to 5 people just to find out 4 of the 5 had left the company.

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.

the on-site training and implementation was a huge boon

Incentivized

We have a two-page document [that] identifies all the key features and functionality that we rely on while using Jamf Pro to manage our Mac fleet. Each time we're asked to compare and contrast other client management platforms, they all come up quite short of being able to provide the same functionality that we rely on with Jamf Pro. From there we then have to consider [the] cost for additional products to fill the gap, or lower our users' expectations. That is a non-starter.

Although there are other tools that can be utilized I don't believe those tools are as robust as Symantec Management Platform. The Symantec Management Platform was chosen because of the value it returns internally and for our customers. You can pull just about any data element from an endpoint and provide detailed reports or great graphs for the C-Level

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.

• SMP allows us to centrally manage all of our endpoints with little to no end user interaction.
• With the new P2P downloading our bandwidth constraints have been almost completely removed.
• Cloud Enabled Management (CEM) allows our remote users to receive the same updates as in-network devices without the need for a VPN connection.

Incentivized