KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) vs. Symantec Ghost Solution Suite

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
KACE Systems Management Appliance
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Quest now offers the KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) as an IT Asset tracking and management appliance (also available as a virtual deployment if hardware requirements are met). Beyond discovery, inventory tracking and license management, KACE emphasizes automating software upgrade distribution with minimal end-user disruption, featuring remote replication for multi-site upgrades and rollouts. KACE SMA may be bundled with KACE Cloud Mobile Device Management (MDM) to form a complete UEM…N/A
Symantec Ghost Solution Suite
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Symantec's Ghost Solution Suite is an imaging and deployment solution.N/A
Pricing
KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)Symantec Ghost Solution Suite
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
KACE Systems Management ApplianceSymantec Ghost Solution 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
KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)Symantec Ghost Solution Suite
Considered Both Products
KACE Systems Management Appliance

No answer on this topic

Symantec Ghost Solution Suite
Chose Symantec Ghost Solution Suite
Based on our particular company needs, we selected Ghost primarily for the cost. There are better products out there to deploy new computers. KACE was one of the products tested. I used KACE at a previous company and I can say KACE is a more effective deployment method, but the …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)Symantec Ghost Solution Suite
IT Asset Management
Comparison of IT Asset Management features of Product A and Product B
KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)
8.6
12 Ratings
12% above category average
Symantec Ghost Solution Suite
-
Ratings
Software and hardware inventory tracking10.012 Ratings00 Ratings
License management9.011 Ratings00 Ratings
Asset lifecycle monitoring8.010 Ratings00 Ratings
Contract management6.06 Ratings00 Ratings
Asset relationship management10.08 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)Symantec Ghost Solution Suite
Small Businesses
ConnectWise RMM
ConnectWise RMM
Score 8.1 out of 10
NinjaOne
NinjaOne
Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
Score 9.3 out of 10
NinjaOne
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Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
Score 9.3 out of 10
GitLab
GitLab
Score 8.9 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)Symantec Ghost Solution Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(12 ratings)
7.7
(4 ratings)
Usability
8.6
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.5
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)Symantec Ghost Solution Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
Quest
I think it has added value for any organization. It reduced our Tech Support cost by: -Supporting users anywhere -Reducing users downtime as well keep them informed with the status of their tickets -Managing software and hardware actively -Processing automation -deploy mass software installs, patching or updates - Provide approved software's to users to install without IT help
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Broadcom
Symantec Ghost Solution Suite is well suited to standard images of company approved software and standard configurations for all users. When every user has the same computer configuration, it is easily managed with a standard image across the board. It is less effective if you need to have multiple configurations for different groups. It becomes cumbersome to manage all the various images. When you add to the complexity by having to address the different drivers for the different hardware model computers, this only adds to the overall number of images you will have to manage, create and keep updated. I find Ghost most helpful with standard hardware model computers and one or two images company wide.
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Pros
Quest
  • Inventory: KACE provides a ton of hardware and software inventory information that is easy to search, filter, and export. This is critical when we need to find the answers to questions about how many of such and such we have in our fleet.
  • Patch Management: We were using WSUS before and it was altogether too cumbersome. KACE has given us the power, flexibility, and verification we need to feel comfortable our patches are up-to-date.
  • Service Queue: We made KACE our help desk system and it does everything we need it to do. Great improvement over our old system.
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Broadcom
  • Pushing out scripts and jobs to computers
  • Remote imaging and pushing out Windows OS Images
  • Helping to track who pushed out what jobs
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Cons
Quest
  • The KACE SMA needs a better way to handle different roles in the software so certain users can access or administrate certain parts of the software, but not the entire software installation.
  • The KACE SMA could improve the ticketing process of projects. The aspects of the title and some information do not always flow down from the parent ticket to its child tickets.
  • The KACE SMA could improve the UI of the software with the addition of different CSS color schemes.
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Broadcom
  • Initial install could be easier. Had to call support to assist.
  • Joining domains had a few kinks that had to be figured out.
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Usability
Quest
Overall, the software is simple to understand and use. That said, most vendors have been slowly updating their user interfaces to HTML5 so that they have a clean updated look and feel. This is where KACE falls short in that the UI is great for a packaged software 10 years ago. This isn't a major limitation as the software is really meant primarily for technology users.
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Broadcom
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Quest
KACE does exactly what you need it to do, it maintains your computer environment. You can set patch schedules, inventory computers, setup software catalogs; basically everything you need to ensure the computers on your network are being actively managed. This is all with little need for constant configuration or updating the setup.
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Broadcom
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Quest
We have selected this software because it rolls several different systems into one. We have a helpdesk system with this and an asset and inventory management system as well. We pay one price for the whole system instead of paying multiple companies different amounts that would have totaled more than we pay for the single system.
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Broadcom
The Symantec Ghost Solutions Suite learning curve isn't that steep.
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Return on Investment
Quest
  • KACE has saved us from having to spend several days of employee hours in crafting DVDs and duplicating them (100+ DVDs)
  • KACE has saved us on the postage required to send out those DVDs for every update (monthly) to all of our customers electronically
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Broadcom
  • A positive impact of Ghost would be time. To deploy computers form scratch is very time consuming and labor intensive for the IT Department. Ghost clearly saves the time of the IT departments staff to quickly get a new computer out to user so they can spend their time on addressing other issues and being more productive.
  • Time is money. If the IT department is spending hours preparing computers and employees are out of a computer for an extended period of time waiting for one to be loaded, this is money lost to the company in paying employees to sit around and wait for a computer to be configured.
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ScreenShots