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.
ServiceDesk Plus is very easy to configure at the start, and then adjust the categories and rules as the implementation is refined. Its greatest strength is the ability to program without requiring a full time administrator. There is very little jargon involved. Reporting not so much. The canned reports are useful but do not always cover some of the basics. Fortunately, the user groups freely share report definitions so one could springboard from something close to your desired result.
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.
Ticket logging for end users, so they can see the progress on their help requests
Asset management; it has an agent that can be installed on machines which can then feed back information on installed software, active times, logged on user etc
Project management; larger projects can be managed within ManageEngine ServiceDesk as well as end user help tickets, where progress/milestones etc can be recorded
Active Directory import of users, so that it automatically updates when users are created/deleted and links their accounts in ManageEngine ServiceDesk with their email address as well to enable email alerts
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.
When trying to select the top row ticket, you have to be careful not to select all tickets. Happened to us twice and we assigned all open tickets to one technician. Took a few minutes to correct.
Site is sometimes a bit sluggish to respond. Don't know if that is an issue with our network infrastructure or the program itself, though.
When users send emails to the help desk, we sometimes experience delays until the tickets appear on the site for the technicians.
we are looking at other tools like Zendesk which may replace ServiceDesk. We are currently evaluating both tools to see which one would serve our needs better
It is still very cumbersome, lots of data entry on the back end to build how we want it but it is still not completely user friendly. Many functions still dont work and contacting someone for help isnt always easy or we get told solutions for issues we have just arent built yet.
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.
Our network administrator usually gets a good response when contacting ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus customer service. They are quick to respond and so far have been able to eliminate most of our issues. We have been through several upgrades of the software over the years and have no issues to report in regards to customer service.
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.
Compared to Cherwell, SDP is much much faster, and easier to deploy, set up, and use. But it does not have automation, and has limited customization. Since it is smaller and easier, it does not require any development effort. On the other hand, it is far more expensive, considering its lower capabilities, and its licensing model is not concurrently based (each technician uses up a license, even if the technician is not actively logged in and using the tool).
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.
ServiceDesk Plus has helped our organization see what issues we face on a more global picture and we are able to take the time and resources to correct them in a timely manner.
The only negative part about ServiceDesk Plus is it can become costly when you see and use all the features it has to offer.
