Symantec Client Management Suite

Score7.1 out of 10

47 Reviews and Ratings

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

Ted Jan View profile

VP Technical Services in Information Technology at Guggenheim Partners (1001-5000 employees employees)

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

Mauro Carrillo View profile

Chief Information Technology Officer in Information Technology at Drummond Community Bank (51-200 employees employees)

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

Verified User

Administrator in Information Technology (10,001+ employees employees)

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

Dan Kujala View profile

Endpoint Engineer III in Information Technology at Grainger (10,001+ employees employees)

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

Jason Iloff View profile

Altiris Product Owner in Information Technology at Secure-24 (201-500 employees employees)

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

Symantec Client Management Suite

What is Symantec Client Management Suite?

Categories & Use Cases

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