Item: N-able N-central
Rating: 10
Author: Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with SolarWinds N-central

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use N-Central solely in our MIS department. We replaced the Kaspersky Remote Administration Console as well as GoToAssist for internal remote management sessions. We have many remote plants and users and use this tool to do remote sessions, check software and hardware inventory and patching levels as well as usage and performance reports.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Remote control sessions are seamless and quick to connect.
Software inventory list is very complete even including windows update patch levels.
The amount of data N-Central gathers from the end-PCs is great for a performance snapshot and makes it quick to diagnose simple RAM issues etc.

Cons

Navigation between the view screens could be a bit simpler. Once you click a machine your list goes away and isn't simple to get back to.
I would love to add more negative points here but really it's a well-built piece of software.

Return on Investment

For what we pay, it is a great tool. It was a bit of an investment to switch over from what we had, but worth every penny.
The more we use it the more we learn about how it can save our IT staff time and energy and therefore saves us money and resource time.
Ease of use. If you've ever run any remote tool you'll be able to find your way around this one with ease and enjoy all of it's features.

Alternatives Considered

Goverlan Reach, Kaspersky Endpoint Security and Ivanti IT Asset Management Suite (formerly LANDESK IT Asset Management Suite)

N-Central has all of the features of previous software I have used all rolled into one package. I can push software and check anything and everything about every machine on our network in one place now instead of multiple interfaces and programs. N-Central saves us time and money at every turn!

Other Software Used

Palo Alto Networks Traps, WorkDeskPro, Microsoft Office 2016, Box

Likelihood to Recommend

It is not the best tool for remotely managing machines outside of your network, but fantastic and gives a TON of data on those machines inside your network. We have plants around the world and I can see real-time live usage and performance data at the click of a button. Issue with a machine locking up in Ireland? You can look at the performance, services, apps and whatever else might be running as well as check the error logs and about anything else you can think of to check without even interrupting the user experience. Invaluable.

Comments

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You won't find much better than this one!