SmartDeploy, now from PDQ.com (acquired January 2022), provides a software deployment solution supporting computer imaging, app deployment, driver management, and Windows migration.
$960
per year
Symantec Client Management Suite
Score 7.0 out of 10
N/A
Symantec Client Management Suite is designed to automate time-consuming and redundant tasks for deploying, managing, patching, and securing desktops and laptops so organizations can reduce the cost and effort of managing Windows, Mac, Linux, and virtual desktop environments.
It works really well as an image maintenance and roll-out platform, allowing maintenance of a single "Gold" image. New features allow the deployment of some software packages as part of image deployment. It does not work very well as a maintenance platform in any use for us, but especially not well-suited for Windows 7 to Windows 10 migrations over WAN.
If you are looking for a client management suite to perform patch, software delivery, and inventory I think Symantec is great. I would recommend it without a doubt if it was in your budget. If you are a very small company and don't use these features to often then I think it would depend on your budget.
The best part is it provides you with the full view of your client life cycle of devices, along with the integration of other Symantec products like endpoint security.
Creating an audit report and keeping it in a single dashboard is also easy. UI is simple.
One of the best benefits of this tool is you can install it enterprise-wide along with onsite employees.
Remote monitoring is useful but has some lagging and functionalities are not upfront to use , making it complicated for new users to be aware just by using the application
Windows migration was quite difficult in terms of updates of softwares to be migrated to new system
Integration with client systems can be tough as major usage of other softwares is done in most of client systems causing us difficulties to integrate with smart deploy on the same platform
CMS is quite clunky sometimes and the Silverlight interface is acceptable at best. Many improvements have been made in this area, particularly with performance, but the interface still needs a lot of work. When it becomes 100% HTML5 with proper compliance browser support I'll be happy!
SmartDeploy customer support has been very good. Although we do not always get a super-fast response (though always within the time stated). The tech support folks at SmartDeploy always go the extra mile to see that our immediate issues are taken care of in as timely a manner as possible. They have always been attentive to our needs and frustrations.
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.
SmartDeploy has a fantastic deployment process management with detailed and configurable aspects. Even though it has detailed configuration it still somehow makes it easy to understand and implement compared to other services which need special learning and courses to understand them completelya and use them efficiently. This is one quality highly appreciated and stacks up against any other services I have used for deployment
Currently, I can't take a position [on how Symantec compares] because when I took position at my job, Symantec Client Management Suite (CMS) was already implanted. We're currently looking to try Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager to see if it'd be a contender for CMS. The reason is that we have special support contract directly with Microsoft. So instead of managing multiple contracts, we would only have one. But for now, we're all set up with Symantec so it'd take something great from SCCM to make us switch from one to another.
New application created was deployed by SmartDeploy and saved us 20% of our deployment time on whole project providing us major time to build new functionalities and release product earlier
Computer imaging was quite elaborate and yet simple, making it helpful for our client system creation activity. Which helped us bag us new activities of system creation for more projects.
Driver management was causing lots of time consumption for system management team. Which in-turn reduced their focus on actual system issues. With SmartDeploy it helped in improving efficiency of 30% for system management team
Better efficiency through image creation, deployment and EOL as single Hardware Independent Images can be created for a large number of devices and then all managed on the same pane of glass.
Customer service is better because we can provide software across campus almost as fast as requested for one user or hundreds of users, all by a single technician without ever having to leave an office.
