KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) Reviews and Ratings
Rating: 8.2 out of 10
Score
8.2 out of 10
Community insights
TrustRadius Insights for KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Pros
Helpdesk Portal and Automation Features: Several users have found the helpdesk portal and automation features in KACE to be helpful for creating helpdesk tickets from emails and streamlining their support processes.
Scripting Capabilities: Many reviewers have praised the scripting capabilities of KACE, stating that it makes it easy to patch, update, and deploy software to all their users. This functionality has saved them time and effort in managing their systems.
Inventory Control Feature: The inventory control feature in KACE has been highly appreciated by users for helping them identify systems with hardware or software issues. It provides detailed information about assets/devices, including software, programs, and processes, allowing for easy troubleshooting and maintenance.
Kace is used as our public facing ticket system for technicians and users alike. We also leverage it for a knowledgebase. Additionally, it is used for our software and windows patching.
Pros
Ticket System
Knowledge Base
Interface
Features
Cons
Layout of some options
Support being able to handle some of the more extensive questions
Getting ahold of support faster/easier (phone number?)
Likelihood to Recommend
Definitely suited for a help desk that willl utilize the features. If you have a smaller help desk this may not suit you. Especially one that may have a smaller budget. The software seems to be more expensive compared to others. Goes hand in hand with KACE SDA.
VU
Verified User
Team Lead in Information Technology (1001-5000 employees)
KACE is being used by our IT team to manage devices that are connected to our organization's network like PCs, Macbooks, Chromebooks etc. We also use this software to control our inventory. It is a very user friendly tool and easy to understand and navigate. It helps alot when we need to keep track of all the asks assigned to particular user or the interactions between a user and technician.
Pros
Easy to use ticketing system for IT department
Good and easy interface to handle OS Updates and Managed softwares
Easy to integrate with end points to reduce hurdles in terms while acquiring multiple devices
Cons
Somehow we felt it is difficult to track the execution status of scheduled processes mainly when pushing OS updates.
Our users complained about frequent logouts. We tried to change some settings but nothing worked for us.
Likelihood to Recommend
If the IT department needs some robust tool to handle all activities like, inventory tracking, device management, software support then KACE is the right tool.
KACE is used to manage our systems in the environment. We are able to make sure that all of the systems that we own are kept up to date with Software updates, as well as Windows updates. KACE allows us to make sure that we can keep all of our system's applications on the same version. There is also a helpdesk feature that we use with much success in the organization.
Pros
Systems management
Helpdesk ticket system
Patching with Window's updates
Cons
Window's updates could be a little bit clearer.
Great for installing new official software but needs improvement for homegrown apps.
Patching for some software such as Java.
Likelihood to Recommend
Kace is very easy to use. It helps keep the systems in the environment easily maintained. The interface is pretty intuitive and it takes very little to learn. The product has a lot of features. The helpdesk ticketing system is a great add on as it connects with the user accounts on the PCs to help know who has what PC.
VU
Verified User
Employee in Information Technology (1001-5000 employees)
My organization has leveraged KACE K1000 and K2000 units for several years now. Although KACE isn't as robust as Service Now, Microsoft SCCM, or other tools it has everything we need. The great thing about KACE is that it's simple to use and simple to train on. This provides an excellent tool to manage software configurations, push/maintain software and ensure all computers are patched/compliant.
Pros
Patch management.
Inventory management.
Software pushes.
Cons
Interface is not HTML5.
Documentation isn't as clear and robust as many of the newer SaaS companies.
Limitations on some hardware reporting.
Likelihood to Recommend
KACE is a straightforward solution to manage all of your endpoints for a small to medium-sized organization. You can easily maintain compliance with all your endpoints, keeping software up to date and patched. The units and software are well tested and an extremely good value for the upfront cost to purchase.
VU
Verified User
Professional in Information Technology (1001-5000 employees)
KACE is being used for systems deployment, patching, service desk, inventory control, and software deployment. Our IT dept is using KACE for all IT related tasks. It addresses the main issue of administrating the systems in terms of patching1200 windows machine, imaging, handling tickets, and software push to all PCs, which has made our lives much easier.
Pros
The Agent push makes it quite effective in managing all assets on the network.
Patching is less cumbersome than Wsus and SCCM.
Ease of administering all PC assets.
The ticketing system keeps tracks of all tickets and communication between users and engineers.
Cons
The interface could use an update to look more modern and make sure it loads quicker.
There's email flooding with creating and updating tickets, which is not necessary.
More documentation would help with training.
Likelihood to Recommend
KACE is well suited for all companies that require ease of use management of network assets, and it will standardize the process of imaging, deployment, patching, and ticketing. It's not suitable for a small environment, given the expense of the software and the modules.
We have been using the KACE 1000 appliance for the past 4 years. We are using it for hardware and software inventory, change management, helpdesk ticketing system, change management control, knowledge-base, patch deployment, and our software update portal. With KACE 1000 we have Bomgar remote assistance, which cut our support travel over 75% and enabled us to provide support to our teams wherever they are located. All our tickets are customized and it is generating the reports we need to provide to our boards. KACE is also helping us keep our licenses in check for all Microsoft software, and other software such as Adobe and SnagIt.
Pros
Helpdesk portal and automate create helpdesk tickets from helpdesk emails
Scripting made it easy to patch, update and deploy software to all our users
Inventory control to identify systems with hardware or software issues
Keep monitoring out of warranty systems
Easy to identify the user hardware (it associate the user with the hardware using it)
Easy to create process such as Change Management and Helpdesk
Easy to modify and create helpdesk categories
Cons
Quest Help desk is slow to respond
Hard to customize the reports, you need to engage Quest help desk and it might be at a cost
Likelihood to Recommend
<p>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</p><p>-deploy mass software installs, patching or updates</p><p>- Provide approved software's to users to install without IT help</p>
We originally were looking for a patch management solution. However, we soon discovered that there aren't very many point solutions in this arena. However, a reseller introduced us to KACE SMA. We were pleased to discover we could get a system that would help us with patching our nearly 700 Windows endpoints that are spread out in 30 branch locations. Plus, it offers us many more features to boot. The patch management, inventory, service queues and software deployment capabilities of KACE have made our jobs easier.
Pros
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.
Cons
Some of the recurring scheduling options for certain types of jobs are not as flexible as we'd prefer. It is enough to get the job done, but further enhancements in this area would make our jobs even easier. This is mostly related to the scheduling of patching jobs.
An even more powerful reporting/querying feature would be welcome. Again, what is there in KACE does the job, but it isn't as easy as we would prefer.
Likelihood to Recommend
I think that if you have less than maybe 2,000 endpoints to manage and you've outgrown your current patching solution or help desk system, then you should take a hard look at KACE. I suspect that for larger entities there are some more powerful systems management platforms out there that you may want to look at. KACE fits us well and it was fairly easy to deploy. Our instance is a virtual appliance which made it easy to get started with.
We use the KACE SMA for software inventory, hardware inventory, helpdesk tickets, patch management for Windows devices. The inventory aspects are used mainly by us, the IT department. The university as a whole uses the helpdesk ticketing feature to submit trouble tickets, track technology and software purchases, and help with simple to answer technology questions.
Pros
The automatic patch management by the KACE SMA helps keep our Windows systems up to date.
The ticketing system in the KACE SMA is very helpful for submitting tickets, tracking workloads, and keeping the clients up to date on progress.
The software inventory feature in the KACE SMA is really helpful in tracking of software and insuring that we stay in compliance with software licensing.
Cons
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.
Likelihood to Recommend
The KACE SMA is well suited for a large corporate and higher education environment. It would not be useful in a smaller 20-machine office setting.
We are primarily using the system as a help desk ticketing software. Our whole organization uses the system to submit help desk tickets to the IT department. We also use it as an inventory and asset management software as well. There are many features that exist in the software that we do not utilize at this time. We like the system and have been overall satisfied. We looked at going to other options when the product was bought from Dell by Quest, but we have been satisfied with the support of Quest and have chosen to remain with the system.
Pros
Helpdesk ticketing, the software allows not only the building of a portal that the users can log into to submit the tickets, but it also allows them to generate a ticket via email, which is a huge successful implementation that we have had.
Live inventory tracking. With an agent installed on a PC, as long as we maintain the data, it can report back information that is crucial to the machine.
Web portal makes for easy maintenance and implementation of the software and updates.
Cons
Prior to Quest, we had issues with Dell support on the product. Since the buyout, it has been better to deal with support on issues.
Sometimes there are issues with the software itself. We have to resync some items sometimes to get things to work. For example, the helpdesk system stopped generating email created tickets, we re-entered the password in the KACE system and saved the settings and it fixed the issue. The password had not changed at all, so it doesn't really make sense as to why that happened, but there have been other things similar to the issue I just listed.
Likelihood to Recommend
It is well suited for our educational environment because we get multiple products in one system. That is handy and allows us to tie multiple things together. A user can generate a ticket and it is tied to that user's device, so we can view reports based on past issues that the user may have had on the device. If a device is having many issues, we can justify replacement of the device because we have history on the asset linked to the tickets that have been created.
VU
Verified User
Technician in Information Technology (1001-5000 employees)
