Lansweeper - Network Discovery and IT Asset Management Software
Lansweeper is an IT asset
management solution that provides network…
$1
per year per asset
Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM)
Score 7.3 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft's System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) is a monitoring and application performance management option, with the core datacenter and cloud-based systems monitoring.
Lansweeper I believe is well suited for any environment - its low cost and small footprint make it an easy addition to any organization, big or small, that is looking for an asset inventory solution that can either replace or supplement existing asset management systems. It may not be well suited for situations where a lot of customization is necessary, such as pulling in custom fields or details from equipment that don't reside in a registry.
Inventory - LANSweeper scans the network for devices - anything with an SNMP trap or using AD or local credentials. We can get an in-depth look at devices.
Reporting - LANSweeper can generate just about any report you can imagine. We can check RAM in groups and determine where upgrades are needed. We can find local printers (which aren't allowed on our network) and address that issue with the user. We can check CPU type to help determine end of life without our network.
Printers - It's nice to have a quick look at printer statuses. Toner levels, out of paper, and service errors are all reported via LANSweeper.
Can only scan what it sees. Doesn't show every item on the machine. Patches are also absent.
Software Recognition is OK with Microsoft. It is dire within our network of multiple products. Recognition is at about 35% with constant manual work needed to baseline for each manufacturer in each network
Datacenter compliance is a manual project. We used Excel extensively.
License optimization is limited to installations v surplus licenses. We need to know who's using what and how.
One of the biggest drawbacks to SCOM is the sheer scope and complexity of the system. This can be a pro and a con. The system is very customizable, what you put into it is what you'll get out of it. That said, the learning curve is fairly steep. An organization needs to be committed to putting time and resources into SCOM to get the most out of it. I've heard stories from colleagues of several different companies that invested in SCOM and then abandoned it due to the excessive time and care required.
SCOM is expensive. Not only is the enterprise licensing costly, SCOM requires it's own servers, operational and warehouse databases to be maintained.
The OOB SCOM reports are a bit clunky and feel outdated.
Lots of info online there are tons of SQL Reports you can copy from the web as Lansweeper and users post many of them. They also send out alerts that pop up on Lansweeper, letting you know of an update that you need for certain software and provide an SQL report so you can scan your system to see what PCs need this update.
Microsoft System Center needs to install agents on all IT asset for discovery and sometimes the agents can easily get corrupted. Lansweeper is a SaaS solution and it's easier to deploy to all IT asset that are connected to the network. This save us a lot of deployment time without the need to engage vendor for professional service.
We used Altiris and WSUS and in the beginning Altiris had the better admin interface than SCOM, but it is no longer the case as SCOM has refined their admin interface. Altiris still has better and more robust group assignments for management roles and those two other tools can better manage non Windows OS devices than SCOM but for a large enterprise Windows shop, if you can afford it, SCOM is the way to go.
It had a positive impact on solutions expense cause several teams we're using different solutions with different costs that used several servers and DB resources. Now, we've been able to simply that a lot with Lansweeper.
With my previous point, people had to train and learn about each of their solutions. Now we can put a team in charge and so the other teams can focus on other tasks.
Last year Lansweeper changed their licencing prices a lot so it slashed our budget.
