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Relax and let SCCM do the job for you to do other stuff
Updated October 18, 2019

Relax and let SCCM do the job for you to do other stuff

Junie Johwa | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM)

It is used by two departments, enterprise services (e.g Infrastructure Administration, Email, Sharepoint, etc) and Help Desk.
  • Patching lots of computers (in my case 400+) without leaving your seat!! Less administrative overheads.
  • Deploying new machines with a standard image that is the same across the organisation and no one has a different set of image and therefore consistancy within the organsation.
  • Provide a comprehensive inventory of the organisation's computer assets.
  • Provide security auditors with patching compliance reports within the organisation.
  • Driver portals for different PC/Laptop manufactures.
  • There is no dashboard for the executive summary of the organisation's patch levels.
  • Being able to see the downloaded patches (labeled with KB numbers) according to their names on the SCCM server.
  • We have various retails shops around the country and have reduced the travel bill for our Help desk team who now support our remote retail centers centrally.
  • Help Desk does not have so much work in patching as it is done centrally.
  • Help Desk does not have to manually install Operating System images manually for many machines and this has reduced their work load and enables them to do other tasks.
  • We have visibility on which machines' endpoint protection client is behind on security signatures.
GFI Lan Guard system is not user-friendly. GFI Lan Guard does not produce laptop/computer images in one place and its asset management is not very good. System Center Configuration Manager was built for asset management and therefore able to provide robust inventory management.
System Center Configuration Manager fitted into our Microsoft products we already have and the Microsoft Operating Systems (e.g Exchange Server, SQL Server, Server 2012R2 and Server 2016.
It has made our lives easier and has reduced a substantial amount of time we spend on patching, new machine/laptop provisioning, out of band patches, manually having to go one by one counting our computer assets. It has reduced our travel bill and our remote users get remote assistance from the Help Desk team.

Do you think Microsoft Intune delivers good value for the price?

No

Are you happy with Microsoft Intune's feature set?

Yes

Did Microsoft Intune live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Microsoft Intune go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Microsoft Intune again?

Yes

Well suited where you have a vulnerability and just push the needed patch without going around each and every computer and addresses issues where the patch was released out of band. This saves valuable time and definitely frees administrators to do other tasks. You can push applications to users without them requiring administrators privileges and therefore still not having to be present!

It's less appropriate when it comes to third-party software patching e.g Winrar, 7Zip, Google Chrome, Firefox and these are not covered by SCCM. I would love for them to be able to extend their patch management to other vendors.

Using Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM)

6 - Help Desk (take care of internal users' request and provide first level support and they work with machine/laptop images and use remote control to support remote sites like our retail centers around the country. Help Desk also use it to maintain the organisation's computer/laptop inventory and produce reports for security audits e.g patch level compliance on a specified audit cycle.
Infrastructure Analysts (take care of Servers, Microsoft Platform like Exchange, Skype for Business, Sharepoint, etc) who are more like second level support also. Provide Server and Endpoint protection reports and monitor endpoint protection failures or those that are not updating. Servers use the forefront endpoint protection security software and Server 2016 use Windows Defender and all are updated by SCCM. Our laptops/machines use 3rd party security software which is Kaspersky Endpoint Protection
2 - Knowledge of interpreting error logs for each module in SCCM
Knowledge of the fundamentals of creating a laptop or machine image
Knowledge of pushing software to many machines and knowing the switches used for the deployment
  • Remote Support for our retail centers which are all over the country
  • Patching 400+ machines without leaving your seat
  • Deploy many new computers/laptops image quickly for user usage
  • Provide a robust inventory of both laptops/machines and Windows Servers
  • Easily identify users of machines seen as not compliant or picked to have vulnarabilities in the network by internal security scan tools without having to go around searching. This makes machine identification very easy
  • Get reports of machine/laptops/servers if after patching when there is a Critical Security Bulletin warning of possible "wormable outbreaks" e.g Blue Keep The product helped us to make sure ALL our inventory is patched
  • Uninstalling unapproved software silently from users who have Admin rights to their machines
  • Use it to manage Windows Defender on laptops/machines IF we ditch Kaspersky Endpoint Protection due to its high CPU and Disk I/O usage on our users especially during scheduled automatic scans. Windows Defender is lighter and has been identified on Gartner as a very good tool and better than any endpoint protection software
  • Add a third party patch tool i.e ManageEngine Patch Connect to augment SCCM 3rd party software patching
Mascom Wireless is a Microsoft shop and SCCM has proved to be helpful in keeping our Microsoft products up to date every month without fail. We also have a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement which we renewed for three years ending 2022. The remote access utility works wonders for the organisation and have saved travel bills including subsistance allowance.
We have been able to fulfill security audits both internal and external. We have been able to keep a robust inventory of our computer assets and nothing falls of the cracks

Evaluating System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) and Competitors

Not Sure
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Product Reputation
  • Prior Experience with the Product
  • Vendor Reputation
  • Existing Relationship with the Vendor
Existing relationship with the vendor was important as we are already a Microsoft shop and definitely SCCM was ticking a lot of boxes and it was easy to be onboarded to the Enterprise Agreement easily included it for the organisation.
Maybe to find out whether there is a provision to patch 3rd party software e.g Google chrome, Winrar, etc

System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) Implementation

Work with a "test group" of users who you have a good relationship with so that when things don't work properly they understand!
Work with your partner nicely without forcing things especially timelines as you are bound to make mistakes and create oversights in the project
Management can also interfere with the implementation (which can cause delays) if you make too many mistakes which takes me back to having a "test group" where you have good relations
  • Third-party professional services
I think it was Dimension Data Botswana
Change management was a big part of the implementation and was well-handled - Big bang implementations always do not work according to envisaged outcomes
  • Some things that didn't work properly spilled to users and causing disturbance and inconvinience
  • WSUS caused issues and pushed all "approved updates" to clients independent of SCCM and most users were inconvenienced by the pending restarts
  • The hard disk for the SCCM server was under provisioned (the update files themselves)

System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) Support

ProsCons
Knowledgeable team
Problems get solved
Kept well informed
Support cares about my success
Slow Resolution
Escalation required
Need to explain problems multiple times
Yes - We are first level support and most of us (6) are not SCCM specialists nor certified in the product so if there is a problem we seem not to be able to solve we escalate to Microsoft Premier which we subscribe for 150 hours a year
I couldn't get to install a client to a remote server (417 kilometers away) which had a corrupted client and got help within the first initial email and I ran the command and it worked right there!

Using System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM)

ProsCons
Easy to use
Technical support not required
Well integrated
Quick to learn
Feel confident using
Familiar
Unnecessarily complex
  • Patching multiple machines
  • Doing a remote support
  • Check forefront endpoint protection/windows defender alerts and managing scans and exclusions
  • Getting third party portal for 3rd party drivers
  • Sometimes takes a long time to push a policy to client(s)
  • Too many report list and can be confused what you are looking for
The reports menu has to change because there are lots of them which can be overwhelming if you are new to the system and sometimes you can get confused on what exactly you are looking for.
Creating an image can be intimidating for new users