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Great tool for enterprise IT teams, must have usage experience for all IT specialists.
March 14, 2019

Great tool for enterprise IT teams, must have usage experience for all IT specialists.

Valery Mezentsau | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager

At my current and previous companies, I have used System Center Configuration Manager as one of the main tools to manage my IT infrastructure. From simple management of active directory users and computers to detailed inventorying of windows equipment (computers and server), software inventorying, software deployments and patch management. Also, it is used as a main endpoint protection solution that includes centrally managed Windows Defender and ATP. We use System Center Configuration Manager as one of the main monitoring tools to get reports of the Windows patching state, device availability and activity, to get information about what PCs users are using at a current time. Using as the only solution to capture and image new and existing workstations and servers. And, also SCCM is the main remote control/assistance tool for our help desk department.
  • We have mostly Windows environments, so SCCM provides us tons of monitoring options for computers and servers.
  • SCCM saves a lot of time and money for our Help Desk team to provide remote assistance to end users.
  • In a Windows 10 environment, SCCM provides pretty decent endpoint protection.
  • Patch management: tons of options of management, deployment, and monitoring.
  • Systems Imaging: deploying images to new PCs or servers, reimaging existed environment.
  • And of course, systems inventorying (hardware and software).
  • Initial configuration is pretty much complex and requires some additional time for preparation and deployment.
  • It would be awesome to have Patch management and endpoint security be moved to separate tabs in the SCCM management console.
  • Imaging functionality is great but over-complicated, and sometimes simple processes take way longer compared to regular WDS services.
  • Better reporting and monitoring services with customized charts.
  • Better integration of SCCM patching services with Windows Updates services on Windows 10. Sometimes it is almost impossible to say if patches were installed on Windows 10 via SCCM deployment until you get that information within SCCM management console.
  • Requires a lot of learning about the product for IT personnel.
  • In our current environment, this System Center Configuration Manager had replaced several standalone solutions for patching, imaging, remote assistance, reporting, etc. That saved a lot of time and resulted in money to manage the IT infrastructure.
  • Once SCCM is deployed and fully configured, all agents are deployed and it is easy to automate a lot of processes and just control them from time to time to make sure that everything is working as supposed to be.
  • SCCM + Windows 10: great built-in endpoint protection solution. As a result, there is no need to buy additional software for that purpose.
  • The imaging process is better compared to WDS because you can modify deployment packages and apply patches to a newly imaged machine. This saves tons of time for new employees deployment.
Microsoft System Center Configuration manager was always selected because it combines several standalone solutions provided by other vendors. Has great integration with all Microsoft services including Azure. Being an enterprise standard level product, you can expect that your IT personnel has experience with it and you don't need to spend too much time to educate them.
Azure Active Directory, G Suite, Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Exchange, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), VMware ESXi, Windows Server, MS SharePoint, Google Hangouts, Skype for Business (formerly Lync), Microsoft Azure, Spiceworks, SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor, Proofpoint Essentials for Small Business, Five9 Virtual Contact Center, Microsoft IIS, Cisco ASA, Druva inSync, Airtable, Slack
The product is great, however, due to its heavy weight, the performance of the management console and the Imaging mechanism is not the best it could be. I understand that it also depends on the environment where SCCM, SQL and other related services are deployed, but these are all Microsoft services that should be working as a single system with the best performance ever. And, unfortunately, they are not.
Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager is not an easy product to learn, deploy, integrate and, in many cases, to use. Just because it has such a huge amount of features and options, a variety of deployment options, it cannot be integrated easily and quickly unless you are MS SCCM oriented systems engineer.
This is a great work frame for managing your IT infrastructure. Tons of different options to configure systems, to manage software inventorying and deployments, patch management, systems imaging, etc. It is too hard to find a similar solution with the same number of features and options under the single management console. However, you still need to get third-party products to manage your network and Unix/Linix systems. And, of course, you need to be prepared before starting to use SCCM, it requires a lot of knowledge of the product and predeployment work to be done in advance.