Microsoft System Center vs Watchman Monitoring

Likelihood to Recommend

Scenarios which Microsoft System Center is useful are if:

you are the systems engineer for a company and you have a complex data center in a Microsoft environment,
you need to centralize the management of your data center in a single point
you want to check its performance, make detailed analysis after a downed service
you want to analyze what happened

Verified User

Technician in Information Technology

Gambling & Casinos Company, 51-200 employees

If you are in IT consulting or manage any fleet of computers, both Mac and PC (and yes Linux) - you should have this installed. It will be able to provide you the information needed to repair computers and avoid productivity loss by users.

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Verified User

C-Level Executive in Corporate

Computer Networking Company, 1-10 employees

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Feature Rating Comparison

Microsoft System Center

Watchman Monitoring

Remote monitoring

Multi-device monitoring

Automated alerts and notifications

Microsoft System Center

Watchman Monitoring

Software and hardware inventory

Microsoft System Center

Watchman Monitoring

Customizable reporting

Risk analysis

Pros

Provides our users the ability to deploy and manage our own datacenter based on defined software with understandable solutions for storage, compute, networking and security.
We are able to update at once all the computers from all departments without having to install the OS on every computer.
It allows us to have everything in one place for database management and datacenter inspection as well.

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Verified User

Account Manager in Sales

Computer Software Company, 501-1000 employees

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Super easy to deploy.
Integrates well with ZenDesk and YourComputerInventory.com.
Website is very clear and email to manage.
Support is awesome.
Super lightweight package.

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Verified User

C-Level Executive in Corporate

Computer Networking Company, 1-10 employees

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Cons

Needs web based storefront for requesting new software
Needs ability to manage the packaging work flow better
Sometimes is slow to download and there is no indication the entire catalog is being loaded, resulting in confused users not being able to find common software in the available list.

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Investment Management Company, 5001-10,000 employees

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Would like to see non-computer deployment agent - such as Synology.
Since it's mainly reporting, this isn't necessary improvement, but it would be good if it can receive data - so in case we can't ping a machine, maybe use Watchman as a backdoor - but that would go against it's main principles.

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Verified User

C-Level Executive in Corporate

Computer Networking Company, 1-10 employees

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Usability

Microsoft System Center 7.0

Based on 1 answer

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.

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Verified User

Account Manager in Sales

Computer Software Company, 501-1000 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Support Rating

Microsoft System Center 8.0

Based on 2 answers

If I had to dislike something about the system it would be how much it changes once you upgrade. This could be more of a problem of mine since I get used to one way and don't like it when it changes so much. I am enjoying the newest update, but it is a mess when you are actually going through the upgrades.

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Verified User

Account Manager in Sales

Computer Software Company, 501-1000 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Alternatives Considered

We are using Microsoft products for a long time, so the overall confidence played a part in the decision, the feature set and licensing cost was also very high when compared with above products, so we decided to use System Center for our environment, so far it has solved many of our problems and reduced effort and time to maintain compliance and devices.

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Verified User

Professional in Information Technology

Automotive Company, 1001-5000 employees

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No answers on this topic

Return on Investment

We have been able to automate our patch management, firmware and other security concerns.
We have a standardized "image" ensuring our setup is consistent across the enterprise. This alone has saved us in time to support and time to understand how to use our desktops.

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Mark Fitzgerald

Adjunct Professor

Boise State UniversityHigher Education, 1001-5000 employees

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I've been using it since the day it came out - there have so many times where a machine has had an error reported by Watchman that we've been able to save the client before something terrible happened.
The ROI is there - you can easily resell this product to your clients, or wrap it into your product offering.

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Verified User

C-Level Executive in Corporate

Computer Networking Company, 1-10 employees

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Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

Starting Price

$1,323 per month

Microsoft System Center Editions & Modules

Edition

Datacenter Edition	$3607
Standard Edition	$1323

none

Additional Pricing Details

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General

Free Trial

Yes

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

Starting Price

$79 Up to 25 Devices

Watchman Monitoring Editions & Modules

On-premise Edition

Watchman Monitoring	$79.00¹
Watchman Monitoring	$199.00²
Watchman Monitoring	$299.00³

Up to 25 Devices
Up to 1500 Devices
Over 1500 Devices

SaaS Edition

Watchman Monitoring	$79.00¹
Watchman Monitoring	$199.00²
Watchman Monitoring	$299.00³

Up to 25 Devices
Up to 1500 Devices
Over 1500 Devices

Additional Pricing Details

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Rating Summary

Microsoft System Center

Watchman Monitoring

Microsoft System Center

Watchman Monitoring

Microsoft System Center

Watchman Monitoring

Likelihood to Recommend