Microsoft Intune (formerly Microsoft Endpoint Manager), combining the capabilities of the former Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager, SCCM or ConfigMgr, is presented as a unified endpoint management option. Microsoft Intune is an endpoint management solution for mobile devices, an MDM solution that allows the user to securely manage iOS, Android, Windows, and macOS devices with a single endpoint management solution. The component Endpoint Configuration Manager (the…
$5
per user/per month
Symantec Client Management Suite
Score 7.5 out of 10
N/A
Symantec Client Management Suite is designed to automate time-consuming and redundant tasks for deploying, managing, patching, and securing desktops and laptops so organizations can reduce the cost and effort of managing Windows, Mac, Linux, and virtual desktop environments.
Microsoft System Center Configuration manager was always selected because it combines several standalone solutions provided by other vendors. Has great integration with all Microsoft services including Azure. Being an enterprise standard level product, you can expect that your …
Kace is very fast to set-up and it's good for a lot of companies if patch and software deployment is all you care about but I don't think that it is as strong as SCCM or Symantec CMS. SCCM is a strong competitor to Symantec Client Management Suite and they both share a lot of …
Currently, I can't take a position [on how Symantec compares] because when I took position at my job, Symantec Client Management Suite (CMS) was already implanted. We're currently looking to try Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager to see if it'd be a contender for …
We used to use Novel Zenworks which paled in comparison. Also I have used SCCM and while it gets the job done, I believe CMS is a much more robust tool and can manage more than just Windows machines.
Verified User
Analyst
Chose Symantec Client Management Suite
I honestly cannot give an unbiased evaluation against other products since my knowledge and use is very limited. I can say that I often peruse the SCCM forums and get ideas and scripts to convert in to the Symantec Environment. This product can feel heavy handed at times but …
Similar to ITMS but is limited in its abilities to manage OS X, Linux and a large variety of devices as well as manage asset inventory all in a single place. Although SCCM would have been less expensive for us, the ability to manage more with less is a huge seller.
Windows Autopilot makes provisioning user Windows PC laptops a breeze. A user only needs to turn on the laptop, join it to their local WiFi, login with their O365 account then sit back and let Windows Autopilot handle the app installations required for work, configure the laptop settings to meet my organization requirements. I have seen this all completed in less than 30 minutes depending on how fast the internet connection is. Where Microsoft Intune needs to improve I think is the part where it can push out software updates to 3rd party apps. Right now I have to use Automox to fill in this gap.
Whenever you have computers that aren't easily accessible or you have a big site to cover (or multi location), Symantec Client Management Suite (CMS) is really great to manage all your computers, if it's for installation, software, licenses or even status. Setting up all you need from CMS can take some time, especially when you're in a multi-location site. We had to ask the Symantec engineers to help us a couple of times and set things up because even if we followed the documentation, it wasn't an easy task. But at least, the Symantec engineers are people that know what they do and they're really efficient at it.
[Microsoft Endpoint Manager (Microsoft Intune + SCCM)] helps to speed up the deployment of patches/software throughout our environment. I can easily build a package and then deploy across all endpoints.
The ability to supercede software is also quite handy. This automates the removal of old versions and replacing them with newer versions.
The Intune Autopilot option is very useful if you want to deploy software to devices straight out of the box. You can configure them to download software when a user opens a new PC and turns it on for the first time.
Patch Management: We are able to easily deploy patches to all our workstations and accurately report on compliance.
Software Delivery: We do a lot of software deployments to our end users and with CMS we can quickly create policies or tasks to perform these deliveries and get quick results on our success or failures.
Inventory: Ease of use to get reports of what workstations have what software installed, patch levels, or hardware specifications.
The program itself can be challenging to use, especially if there hasn't been any formal training on the use of the product. Either training/reviewing documentation is recommended prior to using SCCM.
At times, it can be difficult to try and find out why a certain machine that's listed in SCCM says that the endpoint has the SCCM client and shows as Active, but in fact, it's not. It's also difficult at times to try and figure out why the client can't be pushed down to the endpoint.
Even though the remote assistance features in SCCM are really good, it can be challenging at times when the remote options don't work for a particular endpoint, even though the machine is active, online, etc.
More transparency with the roadmap would be a welcome change. New and upcoming features are usually a surprise until a major Symantec Event takes place but little is heard about those features before and even after, in some cases, leading up to a release.
Documentation for some items is poor. Especially around the Workflow product. It was intended that the documentation for the elements in a workflow would be crowd-sourced, which is a good idea, but in order for that to happen, more people need to be using it and taking the time to draw up the documents.
Cost. Its always a big topic, especially in higher-ed, but Symantec could do more to lower its costs for some product lines in order to gain more acceptance and support. If that was done and more institutions could get their student workers to use the product, once they leave college and go into the "real-world" there is a possibility that they would start recommending Symantec products because of their use in College.
Mascom Wireless is a Microsoft shop and SCCM has proved to be helpful in keeping our Microsoft products up to date every month without fail. We also have a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement which we renewed for three years ending 2022. The remote access utility works wonders for the organisation and have saved travel bills including subsistance allowance. We have been able to fulfill security audits both internal and external. We have been able to keep a robust inventory of our computer assets and nothing falls of the cracks
The console is not intuitive and does not work well often. Due to the complexity of the product, documentation can be confusing. When properly configured, routine tasks like OS deployment, remote control, and software deployment are easy to do. Troubleshooting of System Center Configuration Manager issues is hard, as there are various logs, and their content can be hard to understand.
It's a 'heavy' system, which demands a lot of resources form the datacenter perspective. So, make sure you followed the requirements to avoid frustration in the future. From the 'client' perspective, it's fine. I've never had any issue with that.
Being a Microsoft product, support was good. Out interaction was limited to our in-house IT team which was installing the Intune app in our mobile device. The installation was smooth and we haven't faced any difficulties with the app while using it. Provides a smooth and secure access to all Office 365 apps in mobile while separating the personal and professional data.
Support at Symantec isn't that great. Client Management Suite isn't even listed on the Support Portal when trying to open a ticket. Your best bet for support is actually the user groups that Symantec hosts. The members of the groups are usually very responsive. With Broadcom buying Symantec, I've seen a huge jump in personnel leaving Symantec, so I'm assuming the support is just going to get worse. Recently for a simple question, I reached out to 5 people just to find out 4 of the 5 had left the company.
Work with a "test group" of users who you have a good relationship with so that when things don't work properly they understand! Work with your partner nicely without forcing things especially timelines as you are bound to make mistakes and create oversights in the project Management can also interfere with the implementation (which can cause delays) if you make too many mistakes which takes me back to having a "test group" where you have good relations
We did not evaluate or use other products like Microsoft Endpoint Manager (Microsoft Intune + SCCM). The main reason we did not evaluate or use other products is because Microsoft Endpoint Manager (Microsoft Intune + SCCM) integrates seamlessly with Microsoft 365 and Windows PCs. Expenses would have increased as well if we had purchased another similar product.
Although there are other tools that can be utilized I don't believe those tools are as robust as Symantec Management Platform. The Symantec Management Platform was chosen because of the value it returns internally and for our customers. You can pull just about any data element from an endpoint and provide detailed reports or great graphs for the C-Level
In our current environment, this System Center Configuration Manager had replaced several standalone solutions for patching, imaging, remote assistance, reporting, etc. That saved a lot of time and resulted in money to manage the IT infrastructure.
Once SCCM is deployed and fully configured, all agents are deployed and it is easy to automate a lot of processes and just control them from time to time to make sure that everything is working as supposed to be.
SCCM + Windows 10: great built-in endpoint protection solution. As a result, there is no need to buy additional software for that purpose.
The imaging process is better compared to WDS because you can modify deployment packages and apply patches to a newly imaged machine. This saves tons of time for new employees deployment.
