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KACE Systems Management Appliance

Score10 out of 10

24 Reviews and Ratings

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What is KACE Systems Management Appliance?

Quest now offers the KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) as an IT Asset tracking and management appliance (also available as a virtual deployment if hardware requirements are met). Beyond discovery, inventory tracking and license management, KACE emphasizes automating software upgrade distribution with minimal end-user disruption, featuring remote replication for multi-site upgrades and rollouts. KACE SMA may be bundled with KACE Cloud Mobile Device Management (MDM) to form a complete UEM solution.

Categories & Use Cases

Key Features

Learn about the best (and worst!) features KACE Systems Management Appliance has to offer, as determined by TrustRadius' reviewers.
Based on 24 ratings of KACE Systems Management Appliance's features
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Top Performing Features

  • Software and hardware inventory tracking

    Discovery and management of hardware and software inventory

    Category average: 8.2

  • Asset relationship management

    Asset relationship management is the ability to see relationships between assets to help with troubleshooting

    Category average: 7.6

  • License management

    Tracking license agreement compliance to ensure that infrastructure is neither over nor under licensed

    Category average: 7.6

Areas for Improvement

  • Asset lifecycle monitoring

    Monitoring asset lifecycle from acquisition to retirement

    Category average: 7.5

  • Contract management

    Tools to assist in managing purchase orders and contracts

    Category average: 7.3

Reviews

What users are saying about KACE Systems Management Appliance.
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KACE is the ACE

Incentivized
Verified User
Team Lead in Information Technology (1001-5000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Kace is used as our public facing ticket system for technicians and users alike. We also leverage it for a knowledgebase. Additionally, it is used for our software and windows patching.

Pros

  • Ticket System
  • Knowledge Base
  • Interface
  • Features

Cons

  • Layout of some options
  • Support being able to handle some of the more extensive questions
  • Getting ahold of support faster/easier (phone number?)

Return on Investment

  • If utilizing the features, the cost may be easier to swallow
  • It is a one stop shop for different features. Eliminating the need for multiple products (patching, license management, windows updates, etc)
  • Inventory management of devices is easier.

Alternatives Considered

BMC Track-It!

Other Software Used

KACE Systems Deployment Appliance (SDA), PDQ Deploy & Inventory, VMware vCenter Server

KACE is great to manage all asset in your environment.

Incentivized
Gus AwadView profile
Senior Systems Engineer in Information Technology at BELLA + CANVAS (51-200 employees employees)

Pros

  • The Agent push makes it quite effective in managing all assets on the network.
  • Patching is less cumbersome than Wsus and SCCM.
  • Ease of administering all PC assets.
  • The ticketing system keeps tracks of all tickets and communication between users and engineers.

Cons

  • The interface could use an update to look more modern and make sure it loads quicker.
  • There's email flooding with creating and updating tickets, which is not necessary.
  • More documentation would help with training.

Return on Investment

  • It has improved productivity in terms of ticketing tracking, and has cut down on repetitive tasks.
  • It has great reporting features that help us modify our processes to make us more efficient.
  • A cost is associated with each module, which drives up cost.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Jamf Pro and Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager

Other Software Used

Netwrix Auditor, LastPass for Business

KACE is worth every penny

Incentivized
Thayer RamahiView profile
Director, IMIT in Information Technology at Calgary Foothills Primary Care Network (51-200 employees employees)

Pros

  • Helpdesk portal and automate create helpdesk tickets from helpdesk emails
  • Scripting made it easy to patch, update and deploy software to all our users
  • Inventory control to identify systems with hardware or software issues
  • Keep monitoring out of warranty systems
  • Easy to identify the user hardware (it associate the user with the hardware using it)
  • Easy to create process such as Change Management and Helpdesk
  • Easy to modify and create helpdesk categories

Cons

  • Quest Help desk is slow to respond
  • Hard to customize the reports, you need to engage Quest help desk and it might be at a cost

Return on Investment

  • High ROI
  • Saving time deploying softwares and updates
  • Improved technical support response time

Alternatives Considered

Spiceworks

Other Software Used

Netwrix Auditor, Adobe Acrobat DC, Sophos Intercept X, Sophos Endpoint Protection, Cisco Meraki MS Switches, Cisco Meraki MX Firewalls, LastPass, Duo Security, WhatsUp Gold

Great System Management Platform for Small to Mid-size Organizations

Incentivized
Jeff NicklesView profile
Vice President, Information Technology in Information Technology at INSURICA (501-1000 employees employees)

Pros

  • 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.

Cons

  • Some of the recurring scheduling options for certain types of jobs are not as flexible as we'd prefer. It is enough to get the job done, but further enhancements in this area would make our jobs even easier. This is mostly related to the scheduling of patching jobs.
  • An even more powerful reporting/querying feature would be welcome. Again, what is there in KACE does the job, but it isn't as easy as we would prefer.

Return on Investment

  • KACE has solved our patch management woes. As everyone knows, consistent and effective patching is crucial in today's security environment. WSUS was no longer getting the job done for us. We save time, money and hassle with KACE. Plus, our systems are much more current and protected today as a result of our implementation of KACE.
  • We have a much stronger overall handle on our IT assets as a result of implementing KACE. The inventory features are very strong.
  • We've been able to consolidate to a single system instead of multiple point solutions. This has reduced our IT operations cost.

Alternatives Considered

Ivanti Endpoint Security for Endpoint Manager and powered by Landesk

Other Software Used

KnowBe4, Mimecast Secure Email Gateway

KACE SMA is the Windows systems management software you need to get work done!

Incentivized
Andy AnschutzView profile
Quality Assurance Analyst II in Information Technology at Ashland University (201-500 employees employees)

Pros

  • The automatic patch management by the KACE SMA helps keep our Windows systems up to date.
  • The ticketing system in the KACE SMA is very helpful for submitting tickets, tracking workloads, and keeping the clients up to date on progress.
  • The software inventory feature in the KACE SMA is really helpful in tracking of software and insuring that we stay in compliance with software licensing.

Cons

  • 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.

Return on Investment

  • The time savings on Windows patching through the KACE SMA alone has helped us in saving hundreds of technician hours.
  • Ticket tracking through the KACE SMA has reduced the amount of calls to our helpdesk asking about the status of a ticket.
  • The tracking of licensed software through the KACE SMA has kept us in compliance and saved time from having to run around and look to see where the software is installed.

Alternatives Considered

BMC FootPrints Service Core

Other Software Used

Jamf Pro