Action1 vs. KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)

[Action1 Cloud Remote Monitoring and Management Solution is a] really great tool for organizations looking at a solution that doesn't rely on on-premise infrastructure to manage multiple sites or work-from-home devices. As long as the endpoints are connected to the internet they will show as online in the system.

I think it has added value for any organization. It reduced our Tech Support cost by: -Supporting users anywhere -Reducing users downtime as well keep them informed with the status of their tickets -Managing software and hardware actively -Processing automation -deploy mass software installs, patching or updates - Provide approved software's to users to install without IT help

Incentivized

• Easy remote access to devices. That simple. We have some very unskilled users in the field where asking them to access their PC via conventional remote tools like TeamViewer, Anydesk, etc. was always a pain. Now, all they have to do is ensure their PC is online, and we can connect to them.
• Remote software deploy. Before Action1, we did have some GPOs and scripts, but again - being able to deploy to PCs outside of our office/LAN, is just beautiful. On top of the standard repository, being able to create new packages is very useful for our scenario.
• Inventory Reporting. Recently we had to identify PCs running old versions of Windows. Can't highlight enough how easy it is.

Incentivized

• Inventory: KACE provides a ton of hardware and software inventory information that is easy to search, filter, and export. This is critical when we need to find the answers to questions about how many of such and such we have in our fleet.
• Patch Management: We were using WSUS before and it was altogether too cumbersome. KACE has given us the power, flexibility, and verification we need to feel comfortable our patches are up-to-date.
• Service Queue: We made KACE our help desk system and it does everything we need it to do. Great improvement over our old system.

Incentivized

• Lots of times Action1 will identify a program that needs to be patched, but then not really have a path laid out to get that done...so they just remain as they are, but are tagged as such.
• Really wants to replace the windows update mechanism. Resists (or did at least) you if you try to keep updates as they are and update occasionally from Action1
• Could develop the scripts section a bit more, looked pretty sparse last time I checked it out.

Incentivized

• The KACE SMA needs a better way to handle different roles in the software so certain users can access or administrate certain parts of the software, but not the entire software installation.
• The KACE SMA could improve the ticketing process of projects. The aspects of the title and some information do not always flow down from the parent ticket to its child tickets.
• The KACE SMA could improve the UI of the software with the addition of different CSS color schemes.

Incentivized

Price, functionality, and continuous improvement of the product.

Incentivized

Agent deployment is simple (and silent) - once that is done, you're good to go. Everything is simple, centralized and very easy to work with. There isn't one aspect of this platform that requires crawling over forums and Google, it just works!

Incentivized

Overall, the software is simple to understand and use. That said, most vendors have been slowly updating their user interfaces to HTML5 so that they have a clean updated look and feel. This is where KACE falls short in that the UI is great for a packaged software 10 years ago. This isn't a major limitation as the software is really meant primarily for technology users.

Incentivized

I never contacted support services

Incentivized

KACE does exactly what you need it to do, it maintains your computer environment. You can set patch schedules, inventory computers, setup software catalogs; basically everything you need to ensure the computers on your network are being actively managed. This is all with little need for constant configuration or updating the setup.

Incentivized

very easy to start using it.

Incentivized

Action1 excels with patch management and their ability to show if applications have been marked as vulnerable. It is also hard to beat their free model where the first 200 are free. When I first started with Action1 it was only 50 endpoints so seeing that expand so much is awesome.

Incentivized

We have selected this software because it rolls several different systems into one. We have a helpdesk system with this and an asset and inventory management system as well. We pay one price for the whole system instead of paying multiple companies different amounts that would have totaled more than we pay for the single system.

Incentivized

• Saved hours per week on patching and able to ensure a 100% patching success rate.
• Able to create custom alerting on potential problems as well as able to create some automation to automatically address problems.
• Improved support to our remote locations and users.
• Custom deployments allow us to have a mechanism to deploy custom applications we build as well as other third party applications we need to distribute.

Incentivized

• KACE has saved us from having to spend several days of employee hours in crafting DVDs and duplicating them (100+ DVDs)
• KACE has saved us on the postage required to send out those DVDs for every update (monthly) to all of our customers electronically

Incentivized