System Center Service Manager

System Center Service Manager Reviews

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August 28, 2020

Microsoft System Center Service Manager Review

Mostafa Dakam | TrustRadius Reviewer
Mostafa Dakam
IT Administrator
Libyan Norwegian Fertilizer Company (Oil & Energy, 1001-5000 employees)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We have more than 400 computers in our company, almost all of them running Windows OS. With Microsoft System Center Service Manager, we are able to manage them all together. We are able to install/uninstall software to all machines at once, install updates, configurations, and also deploy images to the computers. It is a complete package to maintain infrastructure with lots of features available. The tool indeed saves us a lot of time.

Pros and Cons

  • Simplifies the operations of IT services
  • Flexibility in configuration
  • Application deployment across Windows machines
  • Server and workstation provisioning
  • The software requires a lot of memory to run smoothly, otherwise it will be slow.
  • It takes some time to learn, and training prices are a bit high.
  • The price is a bit high; System Center is not a cheap solution.

Likelihood to Recommend

I think any organization that runs windows on their computers that is size over 50 workstations and looking for a complete package to manage their windows machines must have Microsoft System Center Service Manager, especially if they have Windows servers and VMs. The capability of managing multiple devices at ones can save a lot of time for the IT jobs.

Support Rating

9
The customer support service is excellent. They help from start/deployment through to any time later on. They responded quickly and resolved our issues professionally and in no time.
February 18, 2020

Service Manager, Solid overall!

Verified User
Technician in Information Technology
Higher Education Company, 1001-5000 employees
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use this tool for tracking IT service requests in our organization. We use this specifically as an internal IT tool that we use between technical staff across the company. We also are leveraging this tool to automate some of the more routine items that we run across on a daily basis.

Pros and Cons

  • This tool is used to track support requests among our IT staff.
  • We use this tool to automate some more routine tasks.
  • It takes a while to configure everything.
  • It lacks some more advanced features of other ticketing tools.

Likelihood to Recommend

I do believe that this is an overall positive tool that can be leveraged to solve internal issues and to also automate some of the more common and repetitive tasks that you might be running into as an organization. It does take some effort to get everything set up but once that is completed and you leverage your templates it does become much easier.

Support Rating

8
There is a fair amount of documentation out there to help you when you have questions or run into issues with this product as well as tutorials on some of the more common tasks. Between the documentation and the overall ease of use we haven't had to deal with direct Microsoft support for this product.
February 13, 2019

Great all inclusive tool, but needs to be babied.

Matthew Smith | TrustRadius Reviewer
Matthew Smith
System Administrator
Questar Assessment Inc. (Education Management, 1001-5000 employees)
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Microsoft System Center Service Manager for patching physical machines, as a tool for remoting into end-user machines, getting quick info on devices, and building and deploying packages and software to end users. It's a nice, central solution for much of what needs to be done via our service desk.

Pros and Cons

  • Remote control.
  • Quick info on end users.
  • Deploying software.
  • Kind of clunky.
  • Takes a lot a lot a lot of configuration.
  • There is a lot of jargon to learn to be able to use it to its full ability.

Likelihood to Recommend

If you're building and deploying packages and would like to have a central "place," this is the software for you. It should probably be used for a larger enterprise environment as it requires a dedicated team or person to administer it and keep it running on all cylinders -- especially if you want to utilize all the "options."
December 10, 2018

Good ITSM

Andrey Perepelitsyn | TrustRadius Reviewer
Andrey Perepelitsyn
Senior SQL Server DBA
Atos IT Solutions and Services A/S (Information Technology and Services, 10,001+ employees)
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Used as the main ticketing system on one of the customers. SCSM helps to drive IT processes like incident and change management according to ITIL. Rich reporting capabilities allows us to create informative reports about things going around IT infrastructure, and analyze the trends. It natively integrates into the Microsoft stack-based environment and does not require huge administrative efforts.

Pros and Cons

  • Incident management according to SLAs.
  • Change management following internally approved processes.
  • Reporting.
  • Sometimes clients are working slowly and we are not able to find the reason.
  • Hardly customizable.
  • Need to spend some time to learn the administration part.

Likelihood to Recommend

Works well for companies with huge IT infrastrucure and ITIL processes in place, so entire management is consolidated in a single place and does not require consolidation of data from lots of different information systems.
May not be a good choice for small companies as it a bit expensive and requires the SQL Server to keep data.
January 25, 2019

MSCSM is a solid tool

Verified User
Manager in Information Technology
Financial Services Company, 5001-10,000 employees
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Microsoft System Center is used to push software and security updates throughout the organization. The tool is used for a number of reasons including providing consistent updates, saving manpower and, validation of configuration. We save a significant amount of time, using this tool compared to other tools. The system has configuration into Active Directory which helps to have better control of systems

Pros and Cons

  • Integration with Microsoft Products
  • Availability of 3rd party configurations using the tool
  • Very large install base promotes administration familiarity
  • Reporting in System Center could be more user-friendly. While the data is there, sometimes several reports have to be run to get what you want
  • SCCM would be better making updates to SCCM easier. We see risk in updates, so it causes delays, which creates more risk
  • Improving the application deployment log files , making them easier to read

Likelihood to Recommend

SCSM is well suited for environments that 50 systems to thousands of systems. The company does need a technician or engineer who has good familiarity with Microsoft products and is willing to spend time getting the configuration set up properly. SCCM is well suited to service the services management of applications. Many manufacturers have created integrations to save engineering time.
February 19, 2018

SCCM for the win!

Verified User
Contributor in Information Technology
Plastics Company, 1001-5000 employees
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use System Center to image and manage machines. We use it to manage several different images for all the machines in the company. It is also used to deploy individual software as the need arises. It is also a tool used to deploy patches so we can manage them at a higher level and do more thorough testing before we push out to the entire network and find an issue the hard way. It also has some useful tools that you can use to get other information like using the command line and looking into another host to see their user profile.

Pros and Cons

  • Imaging - Can hold all of your images and allow them to be deployed from one central place
  • Patching - Able to manage patches from a central database and have reporting on machines out of compliance
  • Reporting - ability to utilize several reports to check compliance and other items you may want to review
  • When imaging on occasion the system does not seem to accept your deployment. It may require you to put the image in the machine collection several times before it shows as available.
  • Patching seems to go well on the admin side but we have been having some issues with them installing on the user side. It seems like the user gets a message and then they get concerned. I have noticed that if you ignore the message the updates will install at some point. It is always a small percentage of users each time we push a patch but not able to tell why this is happening.
  • Deploying software seems to be about a 50/50 success rate. Not sure why and it is almost not worth the headache of using SCCM for this type of deployment. It would be nice if it was working consistently because you could push the software and have it installed on the user's machine without any downtime for the user.

Likelihood to Recommend

SCCM is suited for medium to larger companies. I don't think it would be worth the time on the back end to build all of the images and deal with the patch management with a small pool of machines. From a larger company standpoint, this is a plus for the system since the image is one build and you always have consistency when it is installed. I am sure the cost is prohibitive for a smaller company also.
February 17, 2018

SCSM is the right choice for an IT environment

Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology
Retail Company, 5001-10,000 employees
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

SCSM is used mainly for asset management and knowledge management, This allows us to know where and who owns what devices within our company. The knowledge management is mainly used to know how our equipment has been managed throughout the use of. This is mainly an IT organization tool.

Pros and Cons

  • Asset management. Before we used a spreadsheet for serial numbers, equipment location, etc. With having a spread out IT staff managing all this equipment, it came apparent real quick we were losing equipment, knowledge of replaced equipment, etc. SCSM resolved this with a better organization method.
  • Compliance Management has become an asset with becoming a PCI compliance shop.
  • We just started using the workflow optimizer for team asset tracking. These has helped manage who is working on what issues throughout the companies.
  • Customization of the service manage data warehouse. This is the primary function for storing lists within the data warehouse.
  • The overwhelming functions thrown at you in the beginning. I recommend a course that steps a new user through all the functionality so it doesn't seem impossible task to implement.

Likelihood to Recommend

if you are looking for an incident management and asset management suite, this software does a good job. The back end management of SCSM does a good job of allowing multiple users to update workflow of an incident. As for a less appropriate, I would say non-IT using it. This is made for true IT management with a medium knowledge of IT to function properly.

System Center Service Manager Scorecard Summary

Feature Scorecard Summary

Incident and problem management (7)
76%
7.6
Organize and prioritize service tickets (4)
80%
8.0
Expert directory (3)
70%
7.0
Service restoration (4)
70%
7.0
Self-service tools (5)
80%
8.0
Subscription-based notifications (4)
70%
7.0
ITSM collaboration and documentation (6)
90%
9.0
ITSM reports and dashboards (6)
73%
7.3
ITSM asset management (3)
78%
7.8
Configuration mangement (6)
93%
9.3
Asset management dashboard (7)
80%
8.0
Policy and contract enforcement (5)
61%
6.1
Change management (3)
67%
6.7
Change requests repository (6)
61%
6.1
Change calendar (5)
61%
6.1
Service-level management (5)
80%
8.0

What is System Center Service Manager?

Microsoft System Center Service Manager is an integrated platform that is designed for automating and adapting IT Service Management best practices to an organization’s requirements. The platform includes built-in processes for incident and problem resolution, change control and asset lifecycle management.

System Center Service Manager Pricing

System Center Service Manager Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

What is System Center Service Manager's best feature?

Reviewers rate Configuration mangement highest, with a score of 9.3.

Who uses System Center Service Manager?

The most common users of System Center Service Manager are from Enterprises and the Banking industry.