KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) vs. PDQ Deploy & Inventory

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

PDQ Inventory is great if you have a local network of computers on or off a domain. As long as you have a way to log into them with common credentials. Great for large organizations, particularly ones interconnected with VPNs. PDQ Inventory isn't so great for PCs that aren't connected to the same LAN the server is on. (i.e. non-vpn remote users) They used to have a remote agent you could install, but it was removed after numerous issues.

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

• Push out new software
• Push out Updates to current software
• Push out patches and updates that we don't have other ways to push out
• Keep end-users updated with little involvement

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

• As good as there email support is.. would like a live operator option
• Some updates are hard to understand when 5 versions of the same program exist
• Thats about it, PDQ deploy is the best out there

Incentivized

PDQ is very useful and one of the tools that we use a lot.

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

Logical - If I want to do something with the software, it is quite clear on how I need to go about that. There isn't some weird process that is proprietary to just that vendor and is counterintuitive. What I want to see is displayed with just a couple clicks.

Incentivized

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

The built-in help menus and general ease of use render whatever systems support there might be almost irrelevant. There is stability in the system's simplicity; if you're in the position to use such a product, you're your own best friend. Simple web searches more often than not turn up the solution to any little niggles, such as what silent install switches specific applications require (a remarkably wide choice of options exist). System updates are timely and unobtrusive, installing in no time at all. Maybe I've just been lucky; if so, long may it continue!

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

This software was referred to us by an IT professional. Previously, we were installing the software with the help of remote desktop applications but it was very time consuming; it was wasting the user's time since he could not use his computer. After testing PDQ Deploy, we just never looked back.

Incentivized

• 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

• Speed of deployment is very positive for new software setup, saving hours of testing and deployment locally
• Made patching for large computer estate very efficient, another positive for staff not having to spend hours of patching individual machines
• Works well for small team of IT's and again makes various repetitive tasks much easier

Incentivized