Nlyte Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM)
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
Likelihood to Recommend
Nlyte
Nlyte is well suited for keeping a detailed inventory of the assets in the hosting center. With the ability to import hosting center floor plans, knowing exactly where each asset is located is a snap. When alarms occur in monitored devices, this also provides faster resolution because the exact point of alarm can be displayed on the floor plan. Nlyte is also well suited for organizations with data center assets housed in multiple locations. In some cases, as with my organization, some of the locations are Telco rooms or closets. Again, when properly set up, a device causing an alarm can be pinpointed to its exact location.
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.
Nlyte Asset Optimizer (NAO) tracks every asset in our hosting centers and when integrated with Nlyte Energy Optimizer (NEO), which monitors the hosting center environment, we can see, at a glance, the asset causing the alarm and its exact location in the hosting center. This is a strength, as it provides for faster resolution of problems if/when they occur.
Nlyte Asset Optimizer (NAO) has a lot of built-in reports that are great for looking at. For example, servers of a specific brand, or how many Us are taken up by servers. I see this as a strength and use this capability for capacity planning.
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
Nlyte Asset Optimizer (NAO) is currently all manual entry of assets. It would be great if NAO could provide for automated discovery of hosting center assets. This automation would be limited to ICMP and SNMP communication so not every asset can provide automated discovery, but it would be great for all IP addressable devices.
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.
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.
I am still using the other three products as they have features that Nlyte does not have, and that are really out of scope for Nlyte. I can give one example because this product is an in-house application. It is our CMDB application, and it interfaces with several other in-house systems to provide data that Nlyte is not designed for. Example: If we get an alarm from a server, and if there is currently a planned outage with a Request For Change (RFC), we ignore the alarm unless it exceeds the RFC window.
Spiceworks was free, which obviously had both benefits and limitations - I will say that the community around Spiceworks has always been great. If we could replicate that experience with the ME user base, it would be terrific.
The tool does not scale well from an ROI perspective. As you add a customer, you must add a new instance, hence a new license.
The tool is probably on the expensive side (34,000 USD per 130 technicians per year).
There is no usage beyond incident, change, and problem management. The CMDB feature is extremely limited and cannot generate additional ROI. There is no knowledge-base or integration with other software (other than ME Desktop Central).
