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Symantec Client Management Suite offers good value
January 28, 2020

Symantec Client Management Suite offers good value

Ted Jan | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Symantec Client Management Suite

We use Symantec Client Management Suite across the whole environment. We use it to manage all our workstations and several of our servers. Specifically, we use it for patching, software deployment, blacklisting applications, and asset inventory. We particularly like the direction that Symantec has gone with software deployment. Symantec allows the use of Peer to Peer software deployment which limits the need for distribution servers in the network. We've been using it quite successfully with some of our smaller locations.
  • Patch management.
  • Software deployment.
  • Licensing is a pain.
  • Application metering while works can bog down a computer if not careful.
  • Reduction in infrastructure with new peer-to-peer functionality.
  • Reporting on assets in environment is really good.
Kace is very fast to set-up and it's good for a lot of companies if patch and software deployment is all you care about but I don't think that it is as strong as SCCM or Symantec CMS. SCCM is a strong competitor to Symantec Client Management Suite and they both share a lot of the same functionality. Our company uses SCCM on servers and Symantec Client Management Suite on workstations. Symantec has a lot of products that interconnect rather easily like Change Management, Service Desk, and SEP.
Support at Symantec isn't that great. Client Management Suite isn't even listed on the Support Portal when trying to open a ticket. Your best bet for support is actually the user groups that Symantec hosts. The members of the groups are usually very responsive. With Broadcom buying Symantec, I've seen a huge jump in personnel leaving Symantec, so I'm assuming the support is just going to get worse. Recently for a simple question, I reached out to 5 people just to find out 4 of the 5 had left the company.

Do you think Symantec Client Management Suite delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Symantec Client Management Suite's feature set?

Yes

Did Symantec Client Management Suite live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Symantec Client Management Suite go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Symantec Client Management Suite again?

Yes

Snow License Manager, BeyondTrust Remote Support (formerly Bomgar), Symantec Endpoint Protection
Patching and Software Deployment are the strong points for Symantec Client Management Suite. We don't really use Symantec Client Management for Desktop Imaging, we prefer to use MDT, however we are just starting to investigate using Symantec Client Management to do Windows 10 servicing and so far it looks really good.

The direction that Symantec has started with peer to peer, in my mind, made it a solid solution. The peer to peer function allowed us to reduce our overall infrastructure, primarily with smaller sites

If you want to use Symantec Client Management Suite for blacklisting applications, be very careful. It's a resource hog. It works well if you have an emergency and want to block chrome from running due to a Zero-Day, but it's not something that you want to have a lot of policies running.