#1 most frequent
United States of America
76.3%29 installations of 38
What is Symantec Client Management Suite?
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.
Categories & Use Cases
Who Buys & Uses Symantec Client Management Suite
#2 most frequent
France
7.9%3 installations of 38
#3 most frequent
Canada
5.3%2 installations of 38
Symantec Client Management Suite offers good value
Pros
- Patch management.
- Software deployment.
Cons
- Licensing is a pain.
- Application metering while works can bog down a computer if not careful.
Return on Investment
- Reduction in infrastructure with new peer-to-peer functionality.
- Reporting on assets in environment is really good.
Alternatives Considered
KACE Asset Management Appliance, KACE Systems Deployment Appliance (SDA) and Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM)
Other Software Used
Snow License Manager, BeyondTrust Remote Support (formerly Bomgar), Symantec Endpoint Protection
My Symantec Client Management Suite Review
Pros
- Asset Management is a great way to manage your devices.
- End Point Protection minimizes your risk of being affected by a zero-day vulnerability.
- Symantec Client Suite allows you to enforce standard policies and make them consistent across the network.
Cons
- Symantec Management Agent Admin Console interface could be enhanced to a more modern, user friendly system.
- Dashboard display settings could be modernized to allow additional customization.
- EPM would be a great way to manage mobile devices also like a Mobile device Management tool.
Return on Investment
- It allowed for consolidation of patching. Meaning you are able to push patches of things like Adobe Reader, Java updates, etc. Hence, you have a centralized patching solution.
- No manual processes since the system allows you to create policies to implement and roll out to endpoints.
Other Software Used
Symantec VIP Access Manager, Cisco Meraki Wireless Access Point, Trend Micro Endpoint Security, Citrix ShareFile, MS SharePoint / SQL
Symantec Client Management Suite is a solid Endpoint Management suite
Pros
- You can do just about anything you would need to do as far as client management needs
- In place upgrades are a breeze
- Inventory management, Patch management are very intuitive.
Cons
- Feature updates are lacking, but getting better
- Reporting could be improved
- GUI needs to be updated
Return on Investment
- SMP allows us to centrally manage all of our endpoints with little to no end user interaction.
- With the new P2P downloading our bandwidth constraints have been almost completely removed.
- Cloud Enabled Management (CEM) allows our remote users to receive the same updates as in-network devices without the need for a VPN connection.
Alternatives Considered
Symantec Endpoint Protection, Lucidchart, Smartsheet and BeyondTrust Remote Support (Formerely Bomgar Remote Support)
Other Software Used
BeyondTrust Remote Support (Formerely Bomgar Remote Support), Lucidchart, Smartsheet
Symantec Client Management Suite has helped us succeed
Pros
- Patch Management: We are able to easily deploy patches to all our workstations and accurately report on compliance.
- Software Delivery: We do a lot of software deployments to our end users and with CMS we can quickly create policies or tasks to perform these deliveries and get quick results on our success or failures.
- Inventory: Ease of use to get reports of what workstations have what software installed, patch levels, or hardware specifications.
Cons
- Reporting: I have been using CMS/Altiris since the 6.x version, and while most things have improved in 7.5 that we use today there were some reports that were easier to find or create. While there is an easy way to tell at a quick glance software delivery results, I would like to see a report that more accurately shows success/failure, vs compliance. In the compliance report a non-compliance doesn't really mean it failed, it just means it checked compliance and may or may not have tried to run it and failed.
- Imaging: The way it does imaging tasks, could be a lot easier to perform. If you have one common image and application set among your organization then no problem, but if you are more complex and have say 40 different application sets as we do it can be very complex to manage and configure.
Return on Investment
- Reporting was something we never had before, it has enabled us to "know what we have" in our environment. Also when being audited for software license compliance we can easily generate a report and provide the vendor vs having them have to install software on our devices.
- Software delivery has been able to be pushed down to lower support levels allowing higher levels to focus on things that are not as trivial anymore
Symantec Client Management Suite
Pros
- Software Delivery has great features like compliance checking, custom compliance inventory and execution reporting. Once compliance has been configured you can leave the policy active and if the software is uninstalled the policy will reinstall the software.
- The ability to use different scripting to create custom inventory. If you're good with scripting and SQL the platform can be utilized as a configuration manager.
- The ease of setting up the Symantec Management Platform 7.6 is easier and faster than previous versions. The use of the Symantec Installation Manager performs pre checks to identify areas or applications that may need to be installed and the links provided are up to date.
Cons
- I would like to see some improvement around filters as it pertains to making a report from a filter. This would be great for end users that are not familiar with database schema.
- MAC patch management could improve by creating more policy based options.
- Please allow custom data class guides to remain the same after they are updated.
Return on Investment
- As a hosting provider we are able to provide a low cost solution to multiple customers with different needs.
- Symantec Client Management Suite allows us to manage several platforms and allows our customers to focus on growing their business while we take care of their IT Assets.
Other Software Used
Symantec Server Management Suite, Microsoft SQL Server