Spiceworks Help Desk vs. Symantec IT Management Suite

It's a great helpdesk solution - we currently have five years of data within it, roughly 25,000 tickets. The older edition is a great inventory and software license tracking tool. It is easy for users to use the interface and submit tickets and requests on the web, and its email integration is solid. The new version is a below-average system monitoring tool, only giving up/down status and a few other metrics.

Incentivized

The Symantec IT Management Suite is used throughout the company (global). It is efficient and reports via email any type of problem found, from threats to attacks. The update on the clients is carried out without being noticed. When the system is doing some sort of scan, older computers are slow. Other than that, I believe it is an ideal software for monitoring the entire infrastructure.

Incentivized

• It helps to multitask, even on the go with the mobile App.
• We can customize to meet your needs with automated responses, notifications, and templates.
• Detailed reports allow managers to keep track [of] and analyze data.
• Allows for a database to store notes helpful for future tickets.

Incentivized

• End to end workstation imaging with a 45 minute average for OS, drivers and base software with only 1 technician touch to name the workstation.
• Application usage reporting on what software is being used and how much - broken down by site, department and user.
• 5% of managed workstations were patched.
• IT lifecycle reports were automated with live inventory feeds to enable purchase reports.

Incentivized

• I have always wanted a way to redirect a support request into another IS bin, such as a development task.
• It's possible to extract the data from the Spiceworks database, but it would be helpful if the process to do so were easier.
• Improved ability to customize the system generated emails to improve the formatting and company branding.

Incentivized

• Increased memory consumption
• Older machines can not support the program

Incentivized

Spiceworks is a free tool, so there would be no hesitation if we are required to upgrade it. We have installed Spiceworks on a dedicated server with more than enough resources to get the most from this tool, so we will have this running in our department for years to come.

Incentivized

Spiceworks is user friendly and easy to set up. It can be customized to suit your needs. If there are any problems, you can go to the community forums for support and be in contact with many IT Pros, as well as the Spiceworks support staff and development teams who are always happy to help users out

Incentivized

I am bit biased after using Symantec ITSM for 10 plus years. However, I found its ability to wrap everything into one console for at a view enterprise health a powerful tool for my department and others. The ability to provide self healing of software packages to workstations was especially powerful. The ability to customize data connections to other tools and automate those inputs and outputs let us provide the business data to support enterprise decisions on Hardware and software usage.

Incentivized

We use it both locally on our own server so up time is decided by us and we also use the hosted help desk. We have never had an outage of that.

Incentivized

Spiceworks has been working out of the box, and some of the basic customizations have been successful with just our internal staff handling. We don't have any other issues with the tool. It provides us with the inventory information we want in a quick and concise report in a variety of formats for our team.

Incentivized

With the Blue Coat acquisition the question remains on how much support Symantec is going to give the ITSM suite. Its just not that sexy anymore to have to support a product that touches all the hardware anymore. A few of the really good support reps have gone the way of private which is very concerning.

Incentivized

If you can spin up a VM to run it on, you'll thank yourself later. If you have remote sites, set up a local server (or dedicated computer) at each site and set them up as remote collectors for the main site. You'll save time and bandwidth

Incentivized

EGroupware UI is clunky and hard to use, Jira is great but the pricing is expensive in comparison with spice works that has a free version and you can test it out properly before buying and make a correct decision based on your business plan and company objectives with the right software.

Incentivized

We evaluated Norton and Kaspersky, we chose Symantec to provide more options and more guarantees. In addition, we have used the tool for more than 10 years in the company (the time I am working). It has an interface with all monitoring data and statistics. A specific display of each piece of connected equipment in the network, making monitoring easy and, in case of a threat, it notifies us.

Incentivized

• Positive - Allow organizations to implement structured Help Desk procedures.
• Positive - IT can begin to quantify their tickets and uncover needs within the organization.
• Positive - IT can develop a solid roadmap with [the] management of future needs, equipment refresh schedules, etc.
• Positive - IT can pinpoint employees who may need extra training or updated equipment based on historical ticketing data.

Incentivized

• Reduction of virus infections
• Greater clarity in the reports
• Monitoring the network and infra

Incentivized