Item: LogMeIn Central by GoTo
Rating: 9
Author: Jeffrey Sabotin

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use LogMeIn Central across the whole organization, and with several of our clients. It solves multiple issues, (1) people at home accessing their internal computer at the office, (2) IT support personnel accessing people's computers to give them help when they have an issue, (3) IT support accessing servers in our data center when things go wrong, (4) anti-virus software that can be integrated with the computers, and (5) seeing what patches and updates that need to be applied to these computers.

Pros and Cons

Remote access
Remote support
Anti-virus software
Getting access to the command line where there are more serious problems.
Ability to restart in safe mode a computer
Ability to see the updates and problems with computers
Ability to monitor who is online accessing their computer remotely

Not working with a Chromebook.
Their antivirus software has produced some false positives
Their phone support has been hard to get a hold of at times.
They are more expensive than other remote access / control software

Return on Investment

Time saving on resolving technical issues
Allow remote people to feel connected to main office
Allow IT staff to stay connected to remote servers at data center

Usability

LogMeIn has done a great job centralizing everything into one dashboard. Things were more or less easy to find and implement. I could figure out some of the Alerts, and the Ad hoc support was a little clumsy to get working, but most of the basic functions were easy to get to and understand.

Reliability and Availability

I don't remember ever a time when LogMeIn Central was not available. It was always available every time I needed to get in. They may have been unavailable at times, but there was never a time when I needed it and it was not available.

Alternatives Considered

GoToMeeting, Join.me, Chrome Remote Desktop, Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection Manager (RDCMan), Citrix ADC (formerly NetScaler ADC), Citrix Hypervisor (formerly XenServer), Citrix Virtual Apps (formerly XenApp) and Parallels Remote Application Server

LogMeIn Central was one of the only ones that had a fantastic dashboard where I could see everything in one place, and then group them by department. Plus I didn't have to have a server on my end to house all of this data and manage the connections. Compared to Citrix XenApp it was much cheaper and much easier to implement. It is not as full-featured in the remote access area as Citrix and Parallels, but it would work well for a company that doesn't have the infrastructure.

Likelihood to Recommend

LogMeIn Central is well suited to companies that need remote access to their work computers from home. It is well suited to companies that are spread across the country. It is well suited to companies that have more than 100 computers to support. It is well suited for IT staff that need to be able to get access to computers remotely even when they have been infected with a virus.

It is not well suited for smaller companies, or companies that only want something like remote control or access.

LogMeIn Central gets any company up and running with remote access quickly and easily.

Overall Satisfaction with LogMeIn Central