TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

Microsoft System Center vs. Symantec Client Management Suite

Save this comparison

Save this comparison

Add Product

Recommended Comparisons

    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Microsoft System Center

    Score8.4 out of 10
    N/AMicrosoft System Center is an enterprise-grade IT Operations Management (ITOM) suite designed for the centralized administration of data center infrastructure, virtualized environments, and hybrid cloud workloads. The platform provides unified management across heterogeneous environments, including support for Windows Server, Linux, and Azure Stack HCI. System Center is Microsoft's ITOM stack for organizations that maintain a significant on-premise footprint, vs the company's Azure-based…

    $1,323

    per month

    Symantec Client Management Suite

    Score2.5 out of 10
    N/ASymantec 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.N/A
    Pricing
    Microsoft System CenterSymantec Client Management Suite
    Editions & Modules
    Standard Edition
    $1323
    Datacenter Edition
    $3607
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Microsoft System CenterSymantec Client Management Suite
    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
    Microsoft System CenterSymantec Client Management Suite
    Considered Both Products
    Microsoft
    Chose Microsoft System Center
    Much better UI for system center. Also, Tivoli was discontinued, so it was an easy decision. Altiris was acquired by Symantec but was unreliable and painful. It's UI was unresponsive and generally outdated. It wouldn't clean up old packages and would hog GB of disk space, …
    Incentivized
    Broadcom
    Chose Symantec Client Management Suite
    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 …
    Incentivized
    Chose Symantec Client Management Suite
    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.
    Incentivized
    Chose Symantec Client Management Suite
    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 …
    Incentivized
    Chose Symantec Client Management Suite
    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.
    Incentivized
    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 …
    Incentivized
    Chose Symantec Client Management Suite
    The costs involved with getting the Symantec Management Suite, versus Microsoft System Center 2012, was much cheaper and allowed us to be able to pull more raw data when trying to work with management. Also, the Symantec support structure is very nice! The support group works …
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    91%
    Would buy again
    31 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    97%
    Delivers good value for the price
    33 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    91%
    Happy with the feature set
    31 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    95%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    21 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    97%
    Implementation went as expected
    28 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    User Ratings
    Microsoft System CenterSymantec Client Management Suite
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.3
    (58 ratings)
    8.9
    (14 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    8.4
    (5 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.0
    (14 ratings)
    5.0
    (2 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Microsoft System CenterSymantec Client Management Suite
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Microsoft
    For companies with more than 10 Windows devices and needing to standardize the OS, AV, access, share resources, and install software. SCCM is the way to go. This software is unnecessary if the business is all remote users and not in an office-type setting. There are cloud offerings or none to accomplish what a business needs.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Broadcom
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Microsoft
    • Allows the grouping of devices by user.
    • Allows controlling updates being deployed to user devices.
    • Allows for the repurposing of machines by being able to load new or updated software on machines that already are in the system.
    • Allows us the ability to wipe a machine clean and restore it back to the configuration that was assigned the machine.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Broadcom
    • 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.
    Read full review
    Cons
    Microsoft
    • The product could improve in the area of having better mechanisms in place with how the SCEP client is deployed/installed from the server on the management side. We have run into this firsthand with the client not installing on an endpoint, and then having to take the time to investigate why it was not installing.
    • A second improvement that can be made is to keep trying to improve the products detection rate for finding malware/viruses. The case can be made that there are some products out there that do a better job at this and have a higher detection rate.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Broadcom
    • 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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Microsoft
    Microsoft System Center Operations Manager is tightly integrated to Microsoft Windows servers os monitoring with great product support.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Broadcom
    So far so good - no major issues with that technology.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Microsoft
    It is not user-friendly for the most part. With IT infrastructure, sometimes it cannot handle excess requests. Every few months, you will need an upgrade in terms of server resources to keep up with incoming alerts and requests. This does not happen all of the time, but it does happen when there are too many requests.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Broadcom
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Microsoft
    There is a fair amount of documentation out there to help you when you have questions or run into issues with this product as well as tutorials on some of the more common tasks. Between the documentation and the overall ease of use we haven't had to deal with direct Microsoft support for this product.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Broadcom
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Microsoft
    Easy to install with intuitive interactive interface during the installation process a and integration to MS SQL was smooth
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Broadcom
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Microsoft
    We previously used a mix of FOG and Clonezilla to image machines. The biggest issues with these products is that changing one piece of the image required you to rebuild the entire image itself. These pieces of software also did not allow you to manage applications and Windows Updates, causing IT to have to constantly touch machines after they were imaged and update or manage them with a much more hands on approach.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Broadcom
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Microsoft
    • It has allowed the enterprise to standardize on a single platform for monitoring.
    • Easier troubleshooting of issues with Microsoft platforms.
    • Greater visibility of issues across platforms when applications are hosted in a mixed environment.
    • Additional costs for monitoring systems that are not directly supported with additional packs (iSeries, Linux on Power).
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Broadcom
    • SMP allows us to centrally manage all of our endpoints with little to no end user interaction.
    • With the new P2P downloading our bandwidth constraints have been almost completely removed.
    • Cloud Enabled Management (CEM) allows our remote users to receive the same updates as in-network devices without the need for a VPN connection.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots