1. Home
  2. Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) Solutions
  3. Microsoft Intune Reviews
  4. User Review of Microsoft Intune
SCCM is the ideal solution for a large Microsoft-centric global organization
March 18, 2019

SCCM is the ideal solution for a large Microsoft-centric global organization

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager

We use Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) globally across over 40 countries and over 15000 clients on Windows Operating Systems. It is our enterprise software deployment solution as well as software management for enterprise wide desktops and servers. We have previously used WSUS and Altaris but SCCM allowed us to combine them into a single seamless platform providing us with much greater scalability as well as better reporting of software deployment and management status.
  • Consistent deployment of software across the enterprise with coherent reporting tools for better management of software and patching delivery.
  • Highly scale-able for large enterprises and/or geographically dispersed organizations.
  • Great value added for large Microsoft-centric organizations that heavily leverage Microsoft systems and software.
  • Minimal administration required to maintain the system over the years once deployed despite the complexity of initial setup.
  • Complexity of initial deployment requires 6 to 8 months of planning and preparation. This is one of those projects that will take a year to implement.
  • Managing user roles in the system can be made easier with use of templates and a more robust role management tool.
  • System and agent upgrades as well as patching the SCCM back-end systems should be easier.
  • Offer a hybrid cloud-based solution with pre-built models and templates for faster deployment and appeal to mid-size enterprises.
  • Cuts down our software deployment and patch management time compared to our old tools.
  • Better reporting capability to determine the success to fail ratio of a deployed software or patch and additional information provided to mitigate the failed deployment.
  • Consistent tool usage across our global units with centralized reporting to monitor monthly patch and software deployment results.
For a Microsoft-centric organization like ours, it was a no-brainer to switch to SCCM over WSUS. I have also managed an environment with Altiris and while those other two tools are also great, SCCM integrates with Microsoft Operating Systems much better and gives more insight when using reporting function in SCCM over competitors. SCCM was also easily scalable when we had a merger and added additional 5000 devices which grew our environment by 50% and because we already had SCCM it made incorporating the added devices easy.
Due to SCCM being developed by Microsoft and meant to work with other Microsoft products, there has been no performance issues on servers nor client devices. We have done two upgrades without any unplanned downtime or issues, and there has been no requirement to roll-back any deployment or updates of SCCM due to any bugs or vulnerability found later. This is a well made product for specific use and specific platform. Other competitor products can do more and compatible with other Operating Systems, but if there is no requirement for that, SCCM is the best of breed.
We ran WSUS in parallel for almost a year only because it took longer to decommission the old systems than to deploy SCCM across global locations. If we had enough resources to setup satellite SCCM servers and if we had the bandwidth as well as dedicated human resources to setup the SCCM across global enterprise, we could have implemented sooner.
SCCM is great for large global organizations with over 10,000 devices to manage or more. It is an excellent choice for a Microsoft-centric environment and pretty much the gold standard to for software deployment and patch management for Microsoft operating system devices. If you have a more mixed environment with Linux and Mac OS X, you may want to look at Altiris or WSUS, but keep in mind those products are less scalable.