Symantec IT Management Suite enables IT administrators to securely manage the entire lifecycle of desktops, laptops, and
servers across Windows, Mac, Linux, Unix, and virtual environments including deployment, asset management, and patch
management to reduce costs and increase productivity.
N/A
TOPdesk
Score 8.4 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
TOPdesk is the flagship highly-modular cloud-based or installed ITSM service desk and asset management solution from the Dutch company of the same name, for enterprise companies.
$76
per month Per agent
Pricing
Symantec IT Management Suite
TOPdesk
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Essential
$76
per month Per agent
Engaged
$109
per month Per agent
Excellent
$155
per month Per agent
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Symantec IT Management Suite
TOPdesk
Free Trial
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
Optional
Additional Details
—
The TOPdesk license model:
- Modular: Organizations purchase only the modules needed
- Saas or On premise
- Supports unlimited number of assets.
- Service agents based.
- Discount available for annual pricing.
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.
As TOPdesk is pretty intuitive it is often not needed to instruct colleagues on how to use TOPdesk. Most modules and fields do explain themselves. This means there aren't many additional instructions needed for the applications itself. Most information we do need to support our colleagues on based on organizational processes, not our ITSM tool of choice. And if there is more information needed, the knowledge base system can be used for this. On the other hand this could create the idea that no additional instructions are needed. Which might be true for the application itself, but not for how it is being used within your organisation
TOPdesk provides a clean and modern interface for all of its modules. Many of the modules have a similar look and feel, which makes it easy for users to utilize each one.
Its workflow system allows administrators and developers to define what needs to occur when certain events happen. This can ensure that processes happen in the correct sequence.
TOPdesk includes a vast API system to allow for external systems to integrate with it, and for TOPdesk to communicate with external systems.
It just works, has some continuous development and an easy-to-use interface, which is important especially because not all our colleagues are technical experts (or in other words, "capable of more than switching on and off the computer"). We use a large range of functions and therefore it would be really hard to replace TOPdesk in our company.
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.
Sometimes I think some things are hard to find. I often do not know if I have to search in Settings or in Modules. In some cases the user has to do a lot of clicks for example to link a key to a user. Something could work a little smarter.
Like I said somewhere else in this review: the helpdesk of TOPdesk is top of the bill! In the Netherlands, that is. I can not plea for the helpdesks in other countries, but I guess the TOPdesk organization will make sure the quality of the helpdesk is the same in every country.
Although being a SAAS solution, TOPdesk performs pretty fast. One can imagine that any SAAS solution is slow or has hiccups, but we have not experienced such with TOPdesk. Pages load quickly, logging in goes smoothly. We have made reports on premise in the past - that always took some time, as you might expect with such complex tasks. It seems that in the SAAS solution TOPdesk somehow has managed to make it even faster!
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.
Most if not nearly all questions are answered within the same or a few days. The helpdesk is very knowledgable about their product and are always willing to help. The only downside is that for more difficult questions it can take a while due to the experts being further removed from the helpdesk. But they are always willing to answer questions, even if they are not directly related to a problem with the service.
We had Topdesk in-house here training staff for almost a month (2-3 hour meetings 3x a week.) It was invaluable and we were able to take that training and share with the rest of our IT staff. Once implemented we were able to fly from there. The challenges we found were in how to get started. Once started the knowledge base offered from Topdesk has been invaluable.
Online training documentation is easy to access and consume. There is no real challenges with finding information on how to use the product and some really helpful knowledge base items that show us how valuable these options are in our own implementation of it. The online training we've used has been self driven
It was a challenge to port over years of the same thing and we ended up keeping old ideas in Topdesk that we will eventually weed out as time passes and we learn how users view categories and flows of tickets. Planning is key but bear in mind that just because you used to do it this way doesn't mean you still have to
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.
Spiceworks is an easier-to-use Help Desk solution but it lacks all other features that Topdesk has. Freshdesk was just too much for our environment. It was cost-prohibitive for our intended use. TOPdesk fit our org size and budget better than the others.
TOPdesk is very flexible and scalable. Every department in you organization can you the software. Perhaps some persons need some training, but that can be provided by TOPdesk ot some keyusers.
