Apple Remote Desktop vs. Cisco Webex Support (discontinued)

ARD for me is based on a LAN, but can be used over WAN via VPN, but the latency makes ARD a less ideal tool. There are other cross platform tools that can do what ARD does which to me add value when managing a mixed environment

Incentivized

WebEx Support Center does what it is designed to do very well. If you need robust, efficient, and comprehensive remote support software, look no further. There are certainly other products that are simpler, and other products that are a bit "prettier" from a UI standpoint, but in terms of overall functionality, WebEx Support Center is hard to beat. If you're a company on a very tight budget, there are certainly cheaper options available, however.

Incentivized

• Automator Actions: This is a very cool feature and cost saving as it reduces human effort by automating the workflow of tasks.
• Curtain Mode: This lets you block your local user's view of the desktop while performing administrative tasks.
• Spotlight Search: It can perform lightning fast searches on machines using the spotlight search feature of OS X and thus saves a lot of time.

Incentivized

• Webex has helped us increase and streamline support to our customers.
• It allows us to enable forums or collaborative spaces to explain to clients and coworkers solution to certain problems

Incentivized

• It's onsite only without setting up a VPN or some other form of remote network access.
• It can be a little slow sometimes when compared to local access.
• It seems to be a neglected product by Apple and not continually developed.

Incentivized

• [In my experience], when there are issues, they sometimes ask for us to run tracelogs on the impacted participant's computer. Sometimes those participants use machines that are not managed by us and they are unwilling to get those logs. Ideally, [I feel] Webex can gather all the information from their side versus the participant side.
• While I do appreciate the constant follow up, sometimes it is overwhelming. I know they are trying to clear their queues, but it seems like they email once a day if they have not heard back from you [in my experience].
• Their support hours should coincide with my local hours of operation. Most of the support people I have worked with are located internationally and their hours of response are the opposite of my working hours.

Incentivized

It is a fairly unique tool in the level of integration it has with Apple Desktop products. It definitely needs some engineering attention, and it should be expanded to the iOS arena. It is not perfect, but it is very useful and fills an otherwise fairly empty niche in the support toolkit realm. The built-in screen sharing app in macOS handles the direct screen control or viewing function fairly well, but it does not have all of the other mass control features that Apple Remote Desktop supplies.

Incentivized

Webex is well known by many other companies. It is easy to use and versatile. This familiarity builds a standard to conferencing and users are more comfortable using it. If you want to be safe with a choice of the many conferencing tools out there, Webex will be your best bet

Once it is set up, it is quite straightforward to use. However, currently, it requires both a script to run to set up permissions and controls, AND a command from the MDM to authorize it to be active. The MDM management command is manual. This is not conducive to an automated workflow, and sometimes gets forgotten. Then, the endpoint is not contactable until someone realizes that the MDM command was not sent or was not successful.

Incentivized

Honestly, there are people available. But none of them will help you with your issues. They just keep assigning new service engineers who are often clueless.

I've never had to get support for ARD, so I can't give a real opinion.

Incentivized

The support team is highly incompetent. The only thing that they are able to do flawlessly is register an issue and open the case. But this case related to the issue is never resolved. They will forward the case or assign a new service engineer. But the case will never be resolved. At least not soon. They take weeks to resolve issues.

None, very easy to setup and install.

Incentivized

I would feel much more comfortable having one of these alternative solutions as our Remote Desktop management tools. Each has their drawbacks and expenses associated with them, but we simply have too large of a deployment to not be considering alternatives. If it is the only solution you can afford, it is OK to start here. I could see where this would have a return on investment, but it is really only suitable for a very small and localized scale. If employees are at all mobile, the duct taping of products necessary (VPN, distribution points, script repositories) would be very cumbersome.

Incentivized

Logmein GoToAssist

• Logmein-GoToAssist is the product we used previously and still to some degree use with WebEx Support Center. It was not always reliable and suffered with network congestion but worked quite well for us, we as a team feel that WebEx Support Center is a more reliable and a better overall product. This to me is due to the simplicity of the UI and ease of use as well as the quality of the network performance.

Kaseya with VNC Connect

• We use within Kaseya for our internally servers and local office users due to cost and efficiency, but it is more intended as console-level access and has a bit more features then WebEx Support Center, however is not good for remote support for our users who travel as it is slow.

Incentivized

• Apple Remote Desktop has a positive return on investment because for the expense to the school, the value it brings to teachers is important. The return on improved student performance is very difficult to measure financially, but there is a definite return.
• The overall objective of education is to increase student learning, ARD does that phenomenally. Parents see the tool used and are impressed at what the capabilities of the tool can do and how it impacts how active their students are as well as how well they can learn.
• One negative impact is that teachers rely too much on this tool rather than on actually teaching sometimes.

Incentivized

• Initially the ROI was very good. We tried to leave and use another platform (cost issues) and didn't have as much success so we came back to Cisco Webex Support.
• It allowed us to provide support to employees and clients as we needed to be able to provide it.