We performed a comparison between Microsoft Configuration Manager and SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Configuration Management solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The best feature is that we don't need to worry about downtime. We don't need to worry about the network connections of our office or the virtual private network. Everything is being done through the internet. Using Intune Autopilot, we can configure and deploy everything to the devices."
"I can reach devices or computers over the internet. I don't need to worry about the network connectivity between the offices. I can manage any device. That is the most important part."
"I like the tool's integration with Apple. Anyone who creates an ID in Intune will get an Apple ID."
"This product works very well for companies already using the full Microsoft suite."
"Intune's security features for Apple iOS and Mac OS are helpful. We can check enrollment, manage public and private settings, and manage the organization's data using security key features."
"We are a remote company, and the product helps us manage the global endpoints. It helps us natively manage the endpoints in the cloud from anywhere."
"The solution is easy to use, simple to understand for those new to using it, and combined with the other Microsoft products it makes for an overall good package."
"The most valuable includes managing everything from a single console."
"I have found the solution to be scalable. We have around 50,000 users using the solution."
"Technical support was helpful and responsive."
"Endpoint Manager is valuable to our organization because it allows us to connect to our enterprise from remote locations securely. The most useful feature is its robustness and scalability. It is highly scalable and flexible, allowing us to use it in various environments. Additionally, we can specialize the policies related to each device group. This ensures that each group has access to the applications they need for their work and non-work hours."
"It works well for the endpoints for the customer I'm consulting. It has a bunch of knobs, and you can tune it to do lots of things."
"It gives us the ability to set up schedules, according to what our security requirements are, to automate the patching of our servers and desktops."
"The solution is stable."
"I like the data collection."
"We're a Microsoft-centric organization, so we are happy with the integration between products."
"It is a stable solution."
"The most valuable features the solution offers are compliance, reliability, and information about reliability."
"What's nice with NCM is you can set up policies that you can then check against the configs to ensure that your device configs adhere to a baseline or standard that you've set in place."
"SolarWinds NCM provides updates on the status of your network infrastructure. If any issues arise, such as a link failure or a device going offline, you will receive notifications and alerts. Additionally, if someone unplugs a cable, SolarWinds NCM will detect it. It also features a Topology Mapper that displays the connectivity of your network devices, giving you a visual representation of the network's structure. With SolarWinds NCM, you have a clear understanding of what's happening within your network and can generate comprehensive reports."
"It's perfect for network configuration management. It's easy to use."
"The most valuable Real-time fault detection is beneficial as it enables the identification of changes made to a device's configuration through the SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager. This makes it easy to pinpoint which configurations were added or removed, potentially causing network issues. Such changes are saved in logs for future reference."
"This solution has helped our organization by allowing us to store all the device configurations for the various network devices in NCM and making it easy for us to retrieve and look them over."
"The installation is straightforward."
"There are a couple of issues with stability."
"There is no catalog for mobile access management (MAM) security."
"There can be more logs. I do not have any other requirements."
"Reporting and troubleshooting for the application deployment could be better. It's very difficult to understand."
"In the past, I raised some tickets for the enhancement feature, which was missing in Intune."
"It doesn't economize when you scale up. We have over 14,000 employees, and we have between 7,500 and 8,000 city-owned or personal devices being used to conduct city business. Its price can be improved. It is not a cheap solution."
"The documentation about the custom image setup could be better. Although Microsoft provides the steps to configure Intune or set up or deploy Intune, it doesn't have much information related to custom images. If you ask, "how can we deploy the custom image?" There is no information. The steps they mention ask you to connect to your on-premises environment or create your own image on the cloud itself once there is connectivity. But I needed to go to multiple websites to get all this information. I had to figure out how to upload the custom image if you want to use the on-premise custom image for Cloud PC. If you have the proper subscription, you must have the right access, like global admin or owner. Then you can add your custom image to that. There are no steps mentioned over there. Microsoft Intune doesn't have Chrome browser support. I would like to have that support because they will want it if we pitch the product to clients."
"It would really be helpful to have the option to manage server operating systems as well, like Windows Server, at least. That way, we could scrap the use of SCCM, which requires a lot of on-premises infrastructure."
"The database should be made to be more stable and robust, but not so much the configuration."
"Troubleshooting in general needs improvement. There's just a ton of logs to go through, and so finding the error log that corresponds with that you're doing can sometimes be difficult."
"Could do with some cosmetic improvements on the user interface."
"They should improve their anti-malware policies like the SCEP policies. For instance, you can't have different policies for different servers, there is only one policy in all the servers, and everything is covered under that. For example, say you want to scan one group of servers on Saturday, and then you want to scan another group of servers on Sunday, you can't do that. You have to scan all your servers, a regular scan or a full scan, on the same day and at the same time. That's definitely one thing they need to resolve. In the next release, it would actually be nice if they included Apple products. It will also help if you can use Intune again. Their compliance reporting feature could also be better. They can maybe work a bit on that for patching now. It would be better if SCCM came with the functions of Right Click Tools built-in. If SCCM would have all those functions already built-in, we won't have to go and spend $5,000, just as an add-in from another company to get those functions."
"Their compliance reporting is not accurate, and they admitted it on the phone when we had a call with them. We were trying to understand why their numbers didn't match on our compliance reports. It is not accurate and you cannot depend on the compliance reports. The numbers just don't match, and we can't figure out why. We called Microsoft and they said, "Yeah, that's a known issue." But there is no word that they're working on it."
"It would be nice to have everything in one place. Now they have Intune for the desktops and SCCM to handle their servers."
"It should provide the ability to remotely connect to mobile devices. There are some solutions that are doing that, but with Microsoft Intune, the only way to remotely connect to devices outside the organization and mobile devices is by using TeamViewer. It is pretty strange for a big company like Microsoft to not have something for that."
"The cost of the product can be improved."
"For each device, when you open the network performance monitor, it will give you all of the information about the device, but many of the natural configuration management features are not on that page."
"The network flow is a problem for this solution."
"Its look and feel can be improved. They can also put in more effort into building the THWACK community and use the information about various customer issues and requests to build the new releases."
"Its customer service response could be faster."
"When it comes to the way of managing the network devices, SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager should provide the simplest way that devices can relate to the server. For example, when we want to get the devices on board, we go by SSH to make the SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager create the connectivity with the device. After that, we pull the configuration. It would be helpful if they could combine both so that everything will be done in one step."
"The network logs could be improved. When the error logs come across with those false positive alarms in the error logs."
"I'd like to see additional features like support for devices that don't use CLI for configuration backups, expanded inventory support for other vendors beyond Cisco, and compatibility with newer SD WAN devices. These enhancements would further improve the product's versatility and utility for users. we hope for future enhancements, especially in supporting security devices that lack CLI backup options."
"We want to be able to store it in a data warehouse format and integrate it with Google single sign-on."
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Microsoft Configuration Manager is ranked 2nd in Configuration Management with 78 reviews while SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager is ranked 10th in Configuration Management with 22 reviews. Microsoft Configuration Manager is rated 8.2, while SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Microsoft Configuration Manager writes "Affordable, easy to use, and easy to understand". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager writes "Streamlines network configuration and compliance processes through its centralized dashboard, although its compatibility with multi-vendor devices may present limitations". Microsoft Configuration Manager is most compared with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, ManageEngine Endpoint Central, BigFix, Tanium and AWS Systems Manager, whereas SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager is most compared with Cisco DNA Center, Cisco Prime, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, OpenText Network Node Manager i and DataMiner. See our Microsoft Configuration Manager vs. SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager report.
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