KACE Asset Management Appliance vs. Snow License Manager

The KACE Management Appliance does many different things, but does not do them as well as other products. It is an all-in-one system for Asset tracking, software management, ticketing system, Contact management, and reporting. If you require basic functionality for these, then this product will meet your needs. But when you begin needing advanced/granular functions from the appliance, it will fall short.

Incentivized

I have said at a number of events that I have attended, where other suppliers have shown their latest and greatest new thing, it is the fundamentals that need to work, and need to work well, and this is what Snow License Manager does. It does not take a team of 100 staff to get the tool working or to keep the tool functioning, it works and is stable out of the box. We have learnt that putting the right processes in at the start means that Snow License Manager can do what it has been designed to do and what we have paid for it to do. Audits from vendors now days are relatively simple actions, with the Snow License Manager doing it's job we can quickly run a report and know exactly what our position is and then act accordingly, quick, simple and accurate data at your finger tips, as long as you put the work in to enter the license details etc. If Snow License Manager could invent a robot to go around the business and find all these bits of paper for us then that would be perfect.

Incentivized

• Gives you real time data to systems on my network.
• I can get information on all applications running on devices on my network.
• I can get information on what systems are not currently patched and up to date with MS and Virus definitions!

Incentivized

• SLM finds installations of software reliably.
• SLM determines the usage of applications, web apps, and the users who employ them.
• SLM Reports help management determine current and future application usage.
• SLM notifies when forbidden programs are installed.
• SLM provides complete license management.

Incentivized

• Configuring automated software installs is difficult, and logs do not present useful information for troubleshooting.
• Customer support will just refer you to search itninja.com when you call in for support issues.
• KACE community site (itninja.com), has outdated documentation, and answers to questions are usually vague at best.
• KACE Amp agent constantly breaks, and has to be re-installed on end user computers.
• A parent-child relationship in the ticketing system requires you to create a process.
• Remote provisioning fails consistently and does not provide any useful information as to why it failed.
• K1000 is overpriced for the jobs it actually performs and the work that is required to maintain it.

Incentivized

• Recognition of licensed plugins running in another application's executable is missing
• There is inconsistent use of Wildcards like "%" across search fields in the SLM and SMACC
• The search "filter" called "Also include not installed/used" is necessary to see not installed/used applications.

Incentivized

It is a tool that works, a tool that is reliable, and trusted within the industry and our company

Incentivized

While the deployment is fairly easy, updating the agent can be tedious. For one, each new version needs a request to customer support, but too it's not possible to "update" the old version rather than reinstall the new one. The lack of customization/configuration possible for the SnowAgent installer is irritating. Putting that aside, once the system is set up it's fairly easy to maintain and with very few hiccups, update. It overall runs very smoothly with little to no error.

Incentivized

Never had issues in this area. Always up and running

Incentivized

It took some growing pains and SNOW fixed performance issues for their product, but never had any issue with it

Incentivized

Support for the most part is responsive, but there are times when it takes more time than I would like to resolve. But then, most of the time it is related to growing pains and the fact I do not have a Dev/Test environment to test items and upgrades before going to Production

Incentivized

Love it, and I got to go to Sweden

Incentivized

It went well, we took out time and verified each step as we went

Incentivized

DAM blows away what Free wear we were previous trying to tweak and change for use to benefit the County. But as we looked into DAM we saw much more available with this product compared to what we had been trying to use over the last 10 years. It took a lot of convincing to get County Administration on board with County IT but after we had Dell come in and demo software and appliand to BOS and County Administrator they saw the added benefits of going with DAM! It has been a great addition to our County IT tools!

Incentivized

The deciding factor for the decision makers was the combination of license management and utilization statistics. Our desktop people wanted the utilization and reporting to be very granular and close to real time. Snow was purchased because they promoted their real time utilization in addition to the license management, alerting and reporting. To my knowledge, only Snow was given a proof of concept before the decision was made.

Incentivized

Not quite sure I understand the deployment question. We deployed company wide

Incentivized

Worked great and accomplished the goals

Incentivized

• Asset Tracking works exceptionally well, until the AMP agent breaks an endpoint machine. Quick re-install of the AMP agent usually resolves the issue.
• The remote provisioning tool fails 90% of the time. If this worked properly or informed us why the remote provisioning failed, this tool could become an invaluable asset.
• We canceled the support contact because the renewal price was expensive and cost just as much as the initial purchase price.

Incentivized

• Allowed for reducing licenses/cost at renewal or true-up time
• Shows us new software in our environment so we can get it removed or purchase appropriate licensing to avoid compliance issues
• Shows up blacklisted software when it appears in our environment allowing us to get it removed to avoid security issues

Incentivized