Item: Heimdal Patch and Asset Management
Rating: 7
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

In order to update 3rd Party applications as well as custom applications we are using Heimdals Patch and Asset Management.
It gives us the possibility to stay up to date and minimize the risk of Vulnerabilities by 3rd party applications.
The module is supporting most of the 3rd Party applications in use and we rarely have to add additional ones through Heimdals Infinity Management.

Pros and Cons

Fast updates of well-known 3rd party applications
Fast Management with only seldom cases in which we need to stop a change
Quick Support-Team that will handle problems professionally
Good amount of settings in the Dashboard with Group Policy options to allow custom settings for different Departments or Sub-Companies

Updates of applications might causes unforeseen issues with applications as Add-Ins are not supported anymore after updating or they are getting removed during the update in my opinion
Applications might have problems if they are not installed by the Heimdal 3rd Party Patching Module (msi vs. exe versions) I've found. There is no Info about whether a application will fully work for updates if they got installed from another source than the patching module and they are always showing up as normally supported. So it is a good idea to install all applications from Heimdal when first executing the Patching Module as otherwise unforeseen reboots and problems with non-working applications might occur
There is no option to disallow an update, when the software which needs the update is currently running I've found. Only a scheduling is available, which will need the attention from the user so the application to close it down before so the update will not fail/break the application. Update re-runs are cached well however and new tries will be executed automatically.
It is not possible to execute a one-time install or update operation but the feature will be available soon according to support
The asset management is not able to provide a overview of all currently installed applications. Instead it will only show which application is installed (with which version) in a certain time period I've found. A Admin cannot be sure whether a application is a) currently installed on the system or b) was currently uninstalled from the system, if he doesn't choose the perfect time range in the Management Console, which basically means guessing, I've found.

Most Important Features

Updating 3rd Party Apps
Seeing an Overview of installed applications and whether all PCs are up-to-date
Removing unwanted software automatically

Return on Investment

More Support necessary than without automated patching
ROI is hard to determine as there was no 3rd party exploit in the time we have used Heimdal Patch and Asset Management

Alternatives Considered

PDQ Deploy

In comparison Heimdal Patch and Asset Management is Cheaper in a All-in-One Package but offers less capabilities than other 3rd Party Patching software.

Key Insights

Do you think Heimdal Patch and Asset Management delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Heimdal Patch and Asset Management's feature set?

Did Heimdal Patch and Asset Management live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Heimdal Patch and Asset Management go as expected?

Would you buy Heimdal Patch and Asset Management again?

Yes

Other Software Used

PDQ Deploy

Likelihood to Recommend

Good for Patching a lot of applications in bulk without big attention to the Management console. Will sometimes cause issues due to complications while updating, which then need to be addressed by support. Would not recommend to use it as primary Distribution System for applications as features like one time operations and bulk operations with custom Ranges are missing. Heimdal Patch and Asset Management will give a good overview but is a limited view due to the restriction of needing to select a time range when a application got installed/updated to make sure it can be seen in the list in my opinion.

Heimdal Patch and Asset Management Review

Overall Satisfaction with Heimdal Patch and Asset Management