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KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) vs. Perforce Puppet

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    KACE Systems Management Appliance

    Score8.9 out of 10
    N/AQuest now offers the KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) as an IT Asset tracking and management appliance (also available as a virtual deployment if hardware requirements are met). Beyond discovery, inventory tracking and license management, KACE emphasizes automating software upgrade distribution with minimal end-user disruption, featuring remote replication for multi-site upgrades and rollouts. KACE SMA may be bundled with KACE Cloud Mobile Device Management (MDM) to form a complete UEM…N/A

    Perforce Puppet

    Score8.5 out of 10
    N/APuppet Enteprise is an IT automation and configuration management solution that enables users to manage and automate infrastructure and complex workflows. The vendor states Puppet Enterprise combines both model‑based and task-based capabilities in a way that enables organizations to scale their multi-cloud infrastructure as their automation footprint grows, with more flexibility from both agent-based and agentless capabilities.N/A
    Pricing
    KACE Systems Management AppliancePerforce Puppet
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    KACE Systems Management AppliancePerforce Puppet
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    KACE Systems Management AppliancePerforce Puppet
    Considered Both Products
    Quest Software
    No answer on this topic
    Perforce Software
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    80%
    Would buy again
    4 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    80%
    Happy with the feature set
    4 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Features
    KACE Systems Management AppliancePerforce Puppet
    IT Asset Management
    Comparison of IT Asset Management features of KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) and Perforce Puppet
    Feature
    KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)
    8.6
    12 Ratings
    11% above category average
    Perforce Puppet
    -
    Ratings
    Software and hardware inventory tracking10.012 Ratings00 Ratings
    License management9.011 Ratings00 Ratings
    Asset lifecycle monitoring8.010 Ratings00 Ratings
    Contract management6.06 Ratings00 Ratings
    Asset relationship management10.08 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    KACE Systems Management AppliancePerforce Puppet
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    Salt
    Score6.2 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    KACE Asset Management Appliance
    Score8.9 out of 10
    Ansible
    Score9.1 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Lansweeper
    Score8.7 out of 10
    Salt
    Score6.2 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    KACE Systems Management AppliancePerforce Puppet
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (12 ratings)
    7.0
    (12 ratings)
    Usability
    8.6
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.5
    (4 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    KACE Systems Management AppliancePerforce Puppet
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Quest Software
    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
    Read full review
    Perforce Software
    Puppet is good enough to get the job done, you can use it to automate deployments and maintain files and configurations, if this is all you're looking for it's great. If you're looking for more control over your systems as a whole without having to write your own scripts or install multiple configuration management systems then Puppet is not what you're looking for.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Quest Software
    • 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
    Read full review
    Perforce Software
    • Provides a clear map of how a system is configured
    • Eases the creation of a system in a specific cluster as it is scripted in code
    • Simplifies configuration changes to a cluster or to every system such as rolling out vhost configurations, updating ldap roles, NFS mounts, etc
    • The syntax is very easy to read and carries a lot of fluidity once the language is learned.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Quest Software
    • 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
    Read full review
    Perforce Software
    • The setup of Puppet is a nightmare compared to ansible. Anyone watching a youtube video can easily set up ansible with minimal IT knowledge. All one needs is the source IP addresses and we are good to go. Setting up Puppet is a more hands-on task and pushing the puppet agents to all the boxes is another issue. If the installation and setup were simplified like ansible that would attract a lot of people to this platform
    • The syntax of the code for Puppet is not as easy as ansible. Ansible simply follows a YAML format and it's like typing in normal English. Even complicated tasks can be written by just understanding YAML syntax. Perhaps Puppet needs to revisit the lanugage used and try to come up with a much simpler lanugage for writing code. This will make day-to-day usage easier.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Quest Software
    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
    Read full review
    Perforce Software
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Quest Software
    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
    Read full review
    Perforce Software
    Puppet has top class support. You can simply mail them with their query and they will respond to your query in a timely manner. We do have enterprise license for puppet. Also there is a vibrant community for puppet out there. So even if you dont purchase a premium support option you can simply google your queries and get answers
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    Quest Software
    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
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    Perforce Software
    HPSA is a licensed product and incurs significant upfront investment costs due to COTS licensing. Puppet Data Center Automation has a significantly lower upfront investment and product documentation is more readily available. Chef is a very similar offering, however, at the time our decision was considered, the adoption of Chef vs. Puppet was significantly less in the community.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Quest Software
    • 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
    Read full review
    Perforce Software
    • Cut deployment times down to around 1 hour from 4-5 hours.
    • Allows us to get a fully running system up from scratch in around 30 minutes.
    • Allows for a more clear view of what is required to get a host running.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
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