TrustRadius Insights
Symantec products have become essential tools for organizations looking to efficiently manage their IT desktop assets. Service technicians …
Overview
What is Symantec Client Management Suite?
Symantec Client Management Suite is designed to automate time-consuming and redundant tasks for deploying, managing, patching, and securing desktops and laptops so organizations can reduce the cost and effort of managing Windows, Mac, Linux, and virtual desktop environments.
Recent Reviews
Pricing
N/A
Unavailable
What is Symantec Client Management Suite?
Symantec Client Management Suite is designed to automate time-consuming and redundant tasks for deploying, managing, patching, and securing desktops and laptops so organizations can reduce the cost and effort of managing Windows, Mac, Linux, and virtual desktop environments.
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Would you like us to let the vendor know that you want pricing?
18 people also want pricing
Alternatives Pricing
What is FixMe.IT?
FixMe.IT is a cost-effective remote support application that is designed to enable instant, secure, and trouble-free connections between remote computers anywhere in the world. The vendor's value proposition is that with FixMe.IT, support teams can quickly and securely view, diagnose, and resolve…
What is SmartDeploy?
SmartDeploy, now from PDQ.com (acquired January 2022), provides a software deployment solution supporting computer imaging, app deployment, driver management, and Windows migration.
Product Details
- About
- Tech Details
- Downloadables
What is Symantec Client Management Suite?
Symantec Client Management Suite is designed to automate time-consuming and redundant tasks for deploying, managing, patching, and securing desktops and laptops so organizations can reduce the cost and effort of managing Windows, Mac, Linux, and virtual desktop environments.
Symantec Client Management Suite Features
- Supported: Desktop and Laptop Deployment
- Supported: Patch Management
- Supported: Security Management
Symantec Client Management Suite Technical Details
| Deployment Types | On-premise |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Windows, Mac |
| Mobile Application | No |
| Supported Countries | Americas, Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia |
Symantec Client Management Suite Downloadables
Comparisons
Compare with
Reviews and Ratings
(46)
Community Insights
TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!
- Business Problems Solved
- Recommendations
Symantec products have become essential tools for organizations looking to efficiently manage their IT desktop assets. Service technicians rely on Symantec's solutions to deploy and support large volumes of computers, ensuring that clients have up-to-date and secure systems. One popular tool, the Symantec Management Platform Client Management Suite, offers a comprehensive set of features for inventory management, software delivery, patch management, and imaging of both Windows and Mac workstations. Another widely used solution is the Symantec Client Management Suite, which enables organizations to handle tasks such as patch management, software delivery, inventory management, custom inventory creation, reporting, and IT analytics across their entire environment.
Symantec's products excel at automating cumbersome processes and facilitating the efficient distribution of software updates through their Peer to Peer software deployment feature. This eliminates the need for distribution servers and streamlines software distribution across an organization's network. Moreover, Symantec Management Platform is a global solution that effectively manages end user machines and servers, providing reliable software installations, upgrades, patches, and monitoring capabilities. Institutions like Oxford University rely on Altiris CMS within the Symantec Management Platform to gain control over managed software delivery, access thorough inventory information, and conduct incident remediation.
Symantec Client Management Suite shines when it comes to imaging computers, remote software installation, inventory management, and trend analysis. It serves as a centralized hub for collecting hardware and operating system information while providing comprehensive software inventory and metering capabilities. Additionally, Symantec Client Management Suite is chosen by organizations worldwide to ensure endpoints are kept up to date with crucial software updates and Windows patches. The suite's integration with Symantec endpoint protection further enhances security measures and safeguards sensitive data.
A testament to its scalability and efficiency is how Symantec Client Management Suite successfully supports organizations managing over 35K endpoints. It simplifies day-to-day processes by facilitating gold image builds, software delivery, patch management, and asset management. Ultimately, the suite's ability to execute tasks seamlessly and generate detailed reports for management makes it a go-to solution for organizations across various industries.
Many users have praised the software for its effectiveness in securing applications on laptops. Additionally, users highly recommend utilizing the software's capabilities for managing and packaging images in large-scale environments. Moreover, it is widely recognized that the software serves as a trusted and proven platform for zero trust security architecture. Users also appreciate the convenience of managing multiple devices in a single window using the software. Lastly, Symantec is consistently acknowledged as a leader in the field of anti-virus and PC security solutions.
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-14 of 14)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
January 28, 2020
Symantec Client Management Suite offers good value
We use Symantec Client Management Suite across the whole environment. We use it to manage all our workstations and several of our servers. Specifically, we use it for patching, software deployment, blacklisting applications, and asset inventory. We particularly like the direction that Symantec has gone with software deployment. Symantec allows the use of Peer to Peer software deployment which limits the need for distribution servers in the network. We've been using it quite successfully with some of our smaller locations.
- Patch management.
- Software deployment.
- Licensing is a pain.
- Application metering while works can bog down a computer if not careful.
Symantec Client Management (SMP) is being used throughout our entire organization on all of our desktops, laptops, and eventually servers. We have been a Symantec shop for almost as long as I have been with the company which is almost 20 years. We rely on SMP to keep all of our endpoints up to date with software updates as well as Windows Patches.
- You can do just about anything you would need to do as far as client management needs
- In place upgrades are a breeze
- Inventory management, Patch management are very intuitive.
- Feature updates are lacking, but getting better
- Reporting could be improved
- GUI needs to be updated
February 12, 2019
Best Enterprise Class Client Management Suite
Symantec is the real-time client management tool using by our complete organization. The suite also integrates with the Symantec endpoint protection to provide superior security and data safety in cases of loss and theft. Higher availability for Mac, Linux and Windows platform. It is the best in class solution, and provides everything you need out of the box CMDB. It also improves the business process system and customer services. This solution has also stretched into business process automation through integrations with HR systems, and external systems such as CRM and Cloud-Based Files Services.
- The best part is it provides you with the full view of your client life cycle of devices, along with the integration of other Symantec products like endpoint security.
- Creating an audit report and keeping it in a single dashboard is also easy. UI is simple.
- One of the best benefits of this tool is you can install it enterprise-wide along with onsite employees.
- Symantec is having great customer support.
- With Symantec, setting permission sets is difficult. The very vast product takes time to learn.
- The UI can be more intuitive and match the new market. It looks 90's.
September 04, 2018
My Symantec Client Management Suite Review
I have used this product in the past 12 months to manage devices and software throughout their entire lifecycle. The solution is ideal for Windows, Mac and VM environments. It's a great deployment tool for patching and securing both desktop computers and mobile devices such as laptops.
- Asset Management is a great way to manage your devices.
- End Point Protection minimizes your risk of being affected by a zero-day vulnerability.
- Symantec Client Suite allows you to enforce standard policies and make them consistent across the network.
- Symantec Management Agent Admin Console interface could be enhanced to a more modern, user friendly system.
- Dashboard display settings could be modernized to allow additional customization.
- EPM would be a great way to manage mobile devices also like a Mobile device Management tool.
March 14, 2017
A management console every IT team should have
Symantec Client Management Suite (CMS) is currently used for 90% of our operation on our business computers. We use it to image the computers with a pre-defined image of Windows with custom settings for the computer. We customized it by looking up the computer model so it automatically fetches the right drivers. After this it is used to remotely install most of our softwares and keep and inventory of those. The computers are all filtered by department. We also use the data from CMS to keep inventory and trend of our computer inventory for the future (what we will be our needs in 6 months and 12 months). And finally, we use the automation policy to push specific fixes, software or updates to all the computers or specific department.
- Keeping track of your all your managed computers.
- Keeping track of your licences and number of installation for a specified software.
- Imaging a computer with an adaptive driver installation.
- Unattended remote installation (when available and compatible).
- Flexibility: Some newer software that are cloud based or updates that are now cloud-based aren't really compatible.
- The link between your computer inventory and your active directory could be easier to set up.
- No way to resume a job from a specific step if it failed (you have to restart it completely).
March 01, 2016
Symantec Client Management Suite
We currently use Symantec Client Management Suite internally and provide administration for three customers. We currently manage over 10,000 endpoints across several Symantec Management Platforms. Our largest use of the console is with Patch Management, Software Delivery, Inventory, Custom Inventory, Reporting and IT Analytics. Patch Management allows us to be somewhat creative with policy and filters to manage patch compliance across all Windows platforms. Software Delivery provides us the 'set it and forget" by utilizing compliance checks. The new 7.6 platform has better capabilities around importing and managing software. Inventory now provides a nice flip book page for agent health statistics. There are several scripting languages provided within the console to help you easily custom script inventory. Reporting can be done from an ad hoc perspective within the Activity Center if you're not a SQL guru. Otherwise there are several predefined reports, SQL creation tools, copying and editing tool or you can find many reports on Symantec Connect.
- Software Delivery has great features like compliance checking, custom compliance inventory and execution reporting. Once compliance has been configured you can leave the policy active and if the software is uninstalled the policy will reinstall the software.
- The ability to use different scripting to create custom inventory. If you're good with scripting and SQL the platform can be utilized as a configuration manager.
- The ease of setting up the Symantec Management Platform 7.6 is easier and faster than previous versions. The use of the Symantec Installation Manager performs pre checks to identify areas or applications that may need to be installed and the links provided are up to date.
- I would like to see some improvement around filters as it pertains to making a report from a filter. This would be great for end users that are not familiar with database schema.
- MAC patch management could improve by creating more policy based options.
- Please allow custom data class guides to remain the same after they are updated.
January 26, 2016
Great solution for large enterprise environment
We manage a huge client environment with about two thousand clients and the responsibilities include software delivery, patch management, inventory collection etc. The SMP makes all this quite easy to do. It has the ability to create sites based on geographical location and subnets and also the bandwidth throttling feature is quite helpful to ensure that the networks don't get overloaded while delivering software and patches.
- Flexibility of filters makes it very easy to create any kind of computer collections imaginable that can be then used for deliveries.
- The console is very easy to navigate and has a lot of different functionalities that make managing huge environments a breeze, so even people without vast experience in the field can accomplish quite a lot.
- Huge amount of data that can be collected from the clients enables one to create many different reports required by the business.
- PCAnywhere got discontinued without any suitable replacement.
- No integration with the mobile management suite.
- Some bugs here and there, though Symantec support tries to get this sorted on, the soonest once reported.
January 11, 2016
Symantec CMS (Cool-Magic-Spy) Client Management Suite 7.*
We have implemented the Symantec Client Management Suite (CMS) to get control over all end user machines, desktops laptops and tablets. We collect hardware and operating system information to assist in asset management. We collect software inventory and metering for license harvesting. We detect and deploy patches and distribute software requested by users. We have customized the Symantec Client Management Suite to detect and reconfigure whatever configuration is required on machines.
- Inventory collection is quite accurate - and customizable as needed.
- Software delivery is quite powerful and offers several ways to deploy software to machines and users.
- Patch Management currently supports a fair list of vendors and products.
- Scaleability allows implementation in wide range of environments.
- CMS Reporting should have a form showing details of one asset (Computer HW+OS+SW) available for user's review.
- Pity that vendor dropped Wise Package Studio and integration with anothre SW packaging tool is absent.
- Remote Tool (Symantec pcAnywhere) has been dropped recently and CMS users have to look for tool from another vendor.
December 10, 2015
Why we love Symantec Altiris Client Management Suite
Altiris CMS 7.x is used by many departments in Oxford University. My department uses it mainly for managed software delivery across 3500 nodes, but it's also used for inventory information and 2nd / 3rd line support for incident remediation.
The main business problem it addresses is security compliance, particularly third party plug-ins like Flash Player, Shockwave, JRE, QuickTime etc.
- I doubt that any other technology we could implement would be able to do so much with so little administrative overhead. With a short process that we developed we can quickly get a software package (e.g. IE 11) out to thousands of computers with on-next-reboot remediation and the user is not even aware that anything has happened.
- No other solution makes it so easy to create our own tools to plug-in to the CMS toolset. For example our custom scripts can interrogate and manipulate the database to create great bolt-on automated functionality.
- Real-time management built in means our second line techs can interrogate problematic computers, and because this is handled via the agent, we do not need the local PC firewall's opened up to half the organisation for WMI.
- CMS is quite clunky sometimes and the Silverlight interface is acceptable at best. Many improvements have been made in this area, particularly with performance, but the interface still needs a lot of work. When it becomes 100% HTML5 with proper compliance browser support I'll be happy!
December 03, 2015
Symantec Client Management Suite has helped us succeed
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I currently use Symantec Management Platform Client Management Suite. I utilize it for Windows and Mac workstations for: Inventory, Software Delivery, Patch Management, Imaging. Using these components of CMS, we are able to maintain our environment and accurately know what workstations have what software or patch levels. We are also able to identify older hardware and where it may be in the environment in order to provide reports for life cycle replacement.
- Patch Management: We are able to easily deploy patches to all our workstations and accurately report on compliance.
- Software Delivery: We do a lot of software deployments to our end users and with CMS we can quickly create policies or tasks to perform these deliveries and get quick results on our success or failures.
- Inventory: Ease of use to get reports of what workstations have what software installed, patch levels, or hardware specifications.
- Reporting: I have been using CMS/Altiris since the 6.x version, and while most things have improved in 7.5 that we use today there were some reports that were easier to find or create. While there is an easy way to tell at a quick glance software delivery results, I would like to see a report that more accurately shows success/failure, vs compliance. In the compliance report a non-compliance doesn't really mean it failed, it just means it checked compliance and may or may not have tried to run it and failed.
- Imaging: The way it does imaging tasks, could be a lot easier to perform. If you have one common image and application set among your organization then no problem, but if you are more complex and have say 40 different application sets as we do it can be very complex to manage and configure.
December 03, 2015
Quick Review of the Symantec Client Management Suite
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We utilize the Symantec Client Management Suite to facilitate all the gold image builds, software delivery tasks, patch management, and asset management to over 35K endpoints. The global-software team handles the day to day operations and maintenance of the product so the service desk personnel can do their job on a daily basis. The web based mechanism allows all our service desk in a region to use it with same end user experience.
- Inventory of both hardware and software.
- Policy based software installations utilizing SQL based filtering mechanisms.
- Allows delivery in near real-time all the way to slow throttling and time based executions.
- General UI speed can be improved.
- Move away from using Silverlight and Java in order to use HTML 5.
- Security role assignments can be too granular and hard to set up.
November 12, 2015
Symantec Management Platform. The best. Period.
In my organization, the Symantec Management Platform is being used to globally manage our end user machines and servers by providing software installations, upgrades, patches, and monitoring. Because it is used globally, we are able to efficiently manage software/patches and keep everyone on standardized software. Also it allows us to maintain an OS image, which is distributed globally.
- The Symantec Management platform allows you to keep your infrastructure patched using the built in patching solution.
- The Symantec Management platform allows you to create simple and complex filters (using SQL queries) to push software/patches/etc installs to the whole infrastructure.
- The Symantec Management platform allows you view and create simple/complex reports that can be very useful when trying to gather machines meeting certain requirements.
- The Symantec Management Platform has a lot of great features/functionalities that make it a pleasure to use, however there are a small amount of front end interface things that could be fixed. In particular, when creating a '\job in the Symantec Management Console you cannot select multiple tasks at once to place in a job, you must do this one task at a time. Otherwise, I have no complaints!
October 09, 2015
Symantec ITMS Review
We utilize several solutions from Symantec, mostly around the desktop or client endpoint including the IT Management Suite, Deployment Solution, Patch Management, Asset Management as well as Symantec Endpoint Protection. It is used in various ways by various people but mostly by the service technicians to deploy and support hundreds of computers and to maintain up-to-date and secure systems for all of our clients. The Symantec products we use allow us to quickly create, deploy, pathc, update, maintain and finally retire all of our IT desktop assets quickly and by fewer staff. We have 7 staff that support and use the products daily to support more than 3000 endpoints and maintain more than 20,000 pieces of inventory and 1,000 varying software package versions and executables.
- Support has improved a lot in the past several years. We're able to call in a problem and several levels of technicians and engineers will work to try to solve the issue, if needed.
- They provide community resources which allows users like myself to become a member of (at no cost) to ask and answer questions to problems that support isn't designed to answer. A lot of Symantec staff are also on the forums offering advice and assistance.
- Over the past couple of years Symantec has worked to increase its Mac presence (great for colleges and universities with large Mac populations) and work to release updates almost as fast as the major software vendors release operating systems in order to provide continued functionality.
- More transparency with the roadmap would be a welcome change. New and upcoming features are usually a surprise until a major Symantec Event takes place but little is heard about those features before and even after, in some cases, leading up to a release.
- Documentation for some items is poor. Especially around the Workflow product. It was intended that the documentation for the elements in a workflow would be crowd-sourced, which is a good idea, but in order for that to happen, more people need to be using it and taking the time to draw up the documents.
- Cost. Its always a big topic, especially in higher-ed, but Symantec could do more to lower its costs for some product lines in order to gain more acceptance and support. If that was done and more institutions could get their student workers to use the product, once they leave college and go into the "real-world" there is a possibility that they would start recommending Symantec products because of their use in College.
October 09, 2015
Symantec - how they rate
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use the full Client Management Suite as well as Disk Encryption/Universal Server (PGP) and have had great success protecting and supporting our end-users. We currently use CMS for imaging, software deployment, patch management, inventory, etc. It makes day to day processes and tasks much easier to execute and report to management.
- Client Management, Altiris. Long has it been the standard for endpoint management and control. Not perfect, but always improving and built in such a way that it can be used for many creative things on the endpoint. A very malleable product.
- Current console layout for Client Management Suite is a hard sell for new users. Very dense and somewhat cluttered for novices and those learning the product.