JumpCloud vs. KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)

JumpCloud is least suited in situations where you have few devices, but lots of users. JumpCloud heavily focuses on the "One-User-One-Device" type of use, and does lack some of the features things like Active Directory is better suited for when having multiple users accessing one machine. Their Powershell APIs are fantastic and getting only more powerful. Lots of features are hidden behind these APIs, so admins not as familiar with Powershell would have more issues leveraging these tools. BYOD deployments are amazing, especially for macOS devices that are using Apple Business Manager and can leverage Zero Touch deployments. It is especially good at handling mixed systems, whereas other options, such as Jamf, are really suiting only for macOS, or Intune is more suited for Windows; JumpCloud managed to handle both systems well.

I think it has added value for any organization. It reduced our Tech Support cost by: -Supporting users anywhere -Reducing users downtime as well keep them informed with the status of their tickets -Managing software and hardware actively -Processing automation -deploy mass software installs, patching or updates - Provide approved software's to users to install without IT help

Incentivized

• User Management - The ability to control our users and set password/polices is made easy in the JC console
• Device Management - Using JC each user is assigned to their own device with only the rights to do their job - When elevated rights are required, this is done simply via the JC console for the period of time required
• SSO - Using JC's SAML SSO integrations we are building out our SSO offering and this is making for a much simpler daily user experience

Incentivized

• Inventory: KACE provides a ton of hardware and software inventory information that is easy to search, filter, and export. This is critical when we need to find the answers to questions about how many of such and such we have in our fleet.
• Patch Management: We were using WSUS before and it was altogether too cumbersome. KACE has given us the power, flexibility, and verification we need to feel comfortable our patches are up-to-date.
• Service Queue: We made KACE our help desk system and it does everything we need it to do. Great improvement over our old system.

Incentivized

• SSO via OpenID - Opening up their SSO from just SAML to including OpenID (OAuth) would allow us to make more use of the service and to also incorporate it into some internal testing suites
• Time Limited User Elevation - The ability to time limit a users elevation of privileges would be a great addition
• Extending device management to include LPA - Least Privilege Access is becoming a bigger ask from our external auditors - Being able to do this via JC would be amazing

Incentivized

• The KACE SMA needs a better way to handle different roles in the software so certain users can access or administrate certain parts of the software, but not the entire software installation.
• The KACE SMA could improve the ticketing process of projects. The aspects of the title and some information do not always flow down from the parent ticket to its child tickets.
• The KACE SMA could improve the UI of the software with the addition of different CSS color schemes.

Incentivized

It's simple. I like how JumpCloud keeps things simple. Similar to Apple's ecosystem, they give you what you want with some extra features and bells and whistles but it doesn't take a large instruction manual to use it. They have the support system and KB articles to back up their product and learn about a feature and how to implement it

Incentivized

Overall, the software is simple to understand and use. That said, most vendors have been slowly updating their user interfaces to HTML5 so that they have a clean updated look and feel. This is where KACE falls short in that the UI is great for a packaged software 10 years ago. This isn't a major limitation as the software is really meant primarily for technology users.

Incentivized

I have rarely contacted support. When I have, the responses were within expected time frames, and easy to access. Community support is incredible, both from the JumpCloud representatives, and the user base community at large. The support pages on the website also are typically very well written and strike a nice balance between having the technical information needed, and also being easy to understand for the small business types that might not have as much of a technical background as an IT Admin.

KACE does exactly what you need it to do, it maintains your computer environment. You can set patch schedules, inventory computers, setup software catalogs; basically everything you need to ensure the computers on your network are being actively managed. This is all with little need for constant configuration or updating the setup.

Incentivized

Being responsible for choosing the product after a POC and pilot we found the process to be simple and effective

Incentivized

Incentivized

We have selected this software because it rolls several different systems into one. We have a helpdesk system with this and an asset and inventory management system as well. We pay one price for the whole system instead of paying multiple companies different amounts that would have totaled more than we pay for the single system.

Incentivized

Some features would make more sense for us to be bundled by machine, instead of the user. We have fewer machines, and multiple users log into one machine, so doing something like paying per user for services like Patch Management are difficult to warrant the cost. I also feel a more complete package that includes common addon features; Patch Management and Password Manager, would be an improvement. It would also be nice if we could change packages, addons, and other billing services via self-service instead of reaching out to our account manager.

services and professional team and support teams are good

Incentivized

• Very easily add, or disable employee logins
• Reduce "password fatigue" by being able to reduce password expiration requirements, and having single sign on
• Higher security and visibility of security issues
• Reduced onboarding time from days to minutes
• Enabled easy reassignment of user accounts to another user via groups when employees leave
• Quick securing of terminated users, or otherwise compromised accounts
• Reduced user disablement time from previous manual methods requiring days, to literal minutes

• KACE has saved us from having to spend several days of employee hours in crafting DVDs and duplicating them (100+ DVDs)
• KACE has saved us on the postage required to send out those DVDs for every update (monthly) to all of our customers electronically

Incentivized