Symantec Client Management Suite

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What is Symantec Client Management Suite?

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

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Reviews and Ratings

(46)

January 31st 2024

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.

Reviews

(1-14 of 14)

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Symantec Client Management Suite offers good value

Rating: 9 out of 10

January 28, 2020

Ted Jan

VP Technical Services

Guggenheim Partners (Financial Services, 1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

Verified User

10 years of experience

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros and Cons

Patch management.
Software deployment.

Likelihood to Recommend

Patching and Software Deployment are the strong points for Symantec Client Management Suite. We don't really use Symantec Client Management for Desktop Imaging, we prefer to use MDT, however we are just starting to investigate using Symantec Client Management to do Windows 10 servicing and so far it looks really good.

The direction that Symantec has started with peer to peer, in my mind, made it a solid solution. The peer to peer function allowed us to reduce our overall infrastructure, primarily with smaller sites

If you want to use Symantec Client Management Suite for blacklisting applications, be very careful. It's a resource hog. It works well if you have an emergency and want to block chrome from running due to a Zero-Day, but it's not something that you want to have a lot of policies running.

Symantec Client Management Suite is a solid Endpoint Management suite

Rating: 8 out of 10

June 19, 2019

Verified User

Vetted Review

Verified User

4 years of experience

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros and Cons

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

If you need to manage a lot of endpoints SMP is a solid choice. We have over 8000 endpoints and SMP allows me to keep all devices up to date as well as track what software is currently installed. I do not know that I would recommend SMP to a small business as there can be a steep learning curve to fully utilizing SMP. You really need at least one person dedicated to managing the SMP.

Best Enterprise Class Client Management Suite

Rating: 8 out of 10

February 12, 2019

Verified User

Vetted Review

Verified User

2 years of experience

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros and Cons

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

For large enterprises, Symantec Client Management is really great to manage all the systems across locations, if it's for installation, software, licenses or even status. Also the patch, software delivery, and inventory of Symantec CMS are great.

My Symantec Client Management Suite Review

Rating: 7 out of 10

September 04, 2018

Mauro Carrillo

Chief Information Technology Officer

Drummond Community Bank (Financial Services, 51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

Verified User

4 years of experience

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros and Cons

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

If you are looking for a tool for patching and managing your endpoints this is a great system. For Windows patches, it resembles WSUS from Microsoft, in the sense that you can focus on pushing out the Critical and Security Updates first.

A management console every IT team should have

Rating: 7 out of 10

March 14, 2017

Verified User

Vetted Review

Verified User

3 years of experience

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros and Cons

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).

Likelihood to Recommend

Whenever you have computers that aren't easily accessible or you have a big site to cover (or multi location), Symantec Client Management Suite (CMS) is really great to manage all your computers, if it's for installation, software, licenses or even status. Setting up all you need from CMS can take some time, especially when you're in a multi-location site. We had to ask the Symantec engineers to help us a couple of times and set things up because even if we followed the documentation, it wasn't an easy task. But at least, the Symantec engineers are people that know what they do and they're really efficient at it.

Symantec Client Management Suite

Rating: 10 out of 10

March 01, 2016

Jason Iloff

Altiris Product Owner

Secure-24 (Information Technology and Services, 201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

Verified User

15 years of experience

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros and Cons

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

I believe any business can benefit from the Symantec Management Platform. If you're looking for a tool that can image, configure, patch, deliver software, inventory and report on multiple platforms to include MAC, Windows, Linux then I would recommend Symantec Management Platform. Of course any investment needs to have a better return so the ROI may not meet the needs for everyone.

Great solution for large enterprise environment

Rating: 10 out of 10

January 26, 2016

Filip Grasheski

Principal System Support Specialist / Service Owner

DHL (Logistics and Supply Chain, 10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

Verified User

5 years of experience

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros and Cons

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

For anyone that manages a large estate of clients, 10,000+ there are not many options on the market to choose from. Basically it comes down to Symantec or Microsoft and from what I know, Microsoft's product doesn't offer such a verbose logging for troubleshooting issues and it probably requires higher technical skills.

Symantec CMS (Cool-Magic-Spy) Client Management Suite 7.*

Rating: 9 out of 10

January 11, 2016

Verified User

Vetted Review

Verified User

15 years of experience

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros and Cons

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

Symantec Client Management Suite can perfectly support corporate devices, but is not quite mature for supporting bring your own device (BYOD).

Why we love Symantec Altiris Client Management Suite

Rating: 9 out of 10

December 10, 2015

Darren Collins

Applications Packaging & Deployment Supervisor

University of Oxford (Research, 5001-10,000 employees)

Vetted Review

Verified User

9 years of experience

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros and Cons

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

Most well suited to Windows enterprise management (it can also manage Mac & Linux in some ways but I have no exposure to this) including OS deployment, managed software deployment and security compliance. We have combined it with GSS 3.0 (formerly DS 6.9) to ensure that we have a full 360 degree solution.

Symantec Client Management Suite has helped us succeed

Rating: 9 out of 10

December 03, 2015

Dan Kujala

Endpoint Engineer III

Grainger (Business Supplies and Equipment, 10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

Verified User

8 years of experience

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros and Cons

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

If you are looking for a client management suite to perform patch, software delivery, and inventory I think Symantec is great. I would recommend it without a doubt if it was in your budget. If you are a very small company and don't use these features to often then I think it would depend on your budget.

Quick Review of the Symantec Client Management Suite

Rating: 7 out of 10

December 03, 2015

Verified User

Vetted Review

Verified User

8 years of experience

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros and Cons

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

For a small business with few clients this would be overkill. For a large enterprise, when architected correctly it can allow the administration of multiple thousands of endpoints across a global scale. Would be ideal if the networking team has QOS or COS setup to allow the traffic generated by the Symantec environment to be classified below all business critical applications, if not this product can easily kill the entire network infrastructure if used improperly.

Symantec Management Platform. The best. Period.

Rating: 8 out of 10

November 12, 2015

Josh Dye

Global Infrastructure Engineer

Atlas Copco (Machinery, 10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

Verified User

6 years of experience

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros and Cons

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

When managing an infrastructure globally, stretched out with in a country, or in a large campus style setting, I feel like this is where this product does justice. Otherwise, its cost to usefulness ratio is low.

Symantec ITMS Review

Rating: 8 out of 10

October 09, 2015

Jason Pelletier

Director of Client Service and Technology

Bowdoin College (Higher Education, 501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

Verified User

8 years of experience

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros and Cons

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

It is less appropriate for small-scale and small budgets but if you're managing a few hundred devices into the thousands, ITMS and SEP will work well to manage all of the endpoints from cradle to the grave. There are some learning curves but if you understand concepts of imaging, deployment and minor scripting, then the products will work well for you.

Symantec - how they rate

Rating: 10 out of 10

October 09, 2015

Verified User

Vetted Review

Verified User

15 years of experience

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros and Cons

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

Symantec products cover the gambit for security and endpoint control/management. I think a unified/simplified console for some of these products would do well to gain more customers. I can say that Symantec support is very, very good and can usually solve most issues first time around.