We performed a comparison between Chef and Quest KACE Systems Management 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."Its security is most valuable. It gives us a way to secure devices, not only those that are steady. We do have a few tablets and other devices, and it is a way for us to secure these devices and manage them. We know they're out there and what's their status. We can manage their life cycle and verify that they're updated properly."
"Easy to use."
"The solution appears to be stable and scalable."
"While Microsoft Intune boasts a wide range of features, its user-friendliness and bundled licensing cost are key considerations for me."
"Intune's most valuable features are the device, compliance, and configuration policies."
"The most valuable feature is the UEM capabilities."
"It is very easy to use. It has a very easy interface."
"It's really easy to access."
"The most valuable feature is the language that it uses: Ruby."
"Automation is everything. Having so many servers in production, many of our processes won't work nor scale. So, we look for tools to help us automate the process, and Chef is one of them."
"We have had less production issues since using Chef to automate our provisioning."
"Chef recipes are easy to write and move across different servers and environments."
"This solution has improved my organization in the way that deployment has become very quick and orchestration is easy. If we have thousands of servers we can easily deploy in a small amount of time. We can deploy the applications or any kind of announcements in much less time."
"One thing that we've been able to do is a tiered permission model, allowing developers and their managers to perform their own operations in lower environments. This means a manager can go in and make changes to a whole environment, whereas a developer with less access may only be able to change individual components or be able to upgrade the version for software that they have control over."
"Manual deployments came to a halt completely. Server provisioning became lightning fast. Chef-docker enabled us to have fewer sets of source code for different purposes. Configuration management was a breeze and all the servers were as good as immutable servers."
"The most valuable feature is automation."
"Asset management is most valuable. It is essential for all customers. The other features are also useful, but asset management is most important."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to monitor updates—the software versions—on machines so that we can keep everything compliant."
"There is ease of use, and its pricing was a driving factor."
"Pretty much all of the features are valuable. The inventory is very helpful to be able to keep track of our devices. The deployments make it easy to deploy new software packages or upgrade packages. The help desk is also a great tool for tracking problems and problem tickets."
"The service desk can be configured and customized to better serve our environment."
"It is excellent in terms of updating and configuring everything the way we need. For anything more complex, we do professional service engagements, and they're exceptional. For anything less complex, we just need to ask questions. Their support division is extremely good too."
"I am impressed by the service desk ticketing and asset management."
"The scripting is a very valuable feature, as it saves us time on pushing certain things out to the users, such as software and patches."
"Microsoft Intune could improve by being more user-friendly and having it geared toward device management. The graphic interface is not very good."
"The policies we had in SCCM and AD offered features that are missing from Microsoft Intune."
"It should be easier to define policies and comply with those policies."
"Intune's areas for improvement revolve around security and certificate management."
"It would be better if I could integrate it with my core group policy. I would like to have a group policy in my current environment, which has strict control, but those things are still missing. Although it has maximum compliance and security, it's not available on-premise."
"They need to add more group policies. Intune currently does not have many group policies that you can deploy. Its reporting, which is very limited at the moment, also needs improvement. It will be great if they can add report customization. Its stability needs to be improved. Sometimes, when you register a device in Intune, it doesn't show up instantly on the engine portal on the admin side. They need to provide better support for complicated issues. They also have a long turnaround time."
"The solution could improve by having better integration with Apple."
"There should be more support for macOS. Even though macOS is supported by Intune and Microsoft is working very hard to get more features into Intune to manage macOS, that's one thing they can give a lot more attention to."
"I would also like to see more analytics and reporting features. Currently, the analytics and reporting features are limited. I'll have to start building my own custom solution with Power BI or Tableau or something like that. If it came with built-in analytics and reporting features that would be great."
"Chef could get better by being more widely available, adapting to different needs, and providing better documentation."
"Third-party innovations need improvement, and I would like to see more integration with other platforms."
"The solution could improve in managing role-based access. This would be helpful."
"I would rate this solution a nine because our use case and whatever we need is there. Ten out of ten is perfect. We have to go to IOD and stuff so they should consider things like this to make it a ten."
"The AWS monitoring, AWS X-Ray, and some other features could be improved."
"The time that it takes in terms of integration. Cloud integration is comparatively easy, but when it comes to two-link based integrations - like trying to integrate it with any monitoring tools, or maybe some other ticketing tools - it takes longer. That is because most of the out-of-the-box integration of the APIs needs some revisiting."
"It is an old technology."
"It took a little bit of time to figure out how to use the KACE Service Desk. I like the way that I'm able to customize it. But when it comes to how our techs are able to use it, it's not as functional as our current solution, which is BMC FootPrints Service Desk."
"The solution needs to have the ability to push out managed feature updates from Microsoft in a more seamless way."
"The GUI needs some work. I love all that it can do, however, it can be just be so cluttered at times."
"The software asset management functionality is an area that needs to be improved. It could be more automated because when connections need to be made, such as when I connected Adobe and my malware removed, the process was pretty much manual."
"The only hiccups we had were some power issues, where the box was a little under-powered early on."
"I would sure like them to be able to copy and paste out of OneNote. That drives me nuts. You can't copy from OneNote into KACE."
"Sometimes the information is not as real time as it's supposed to be."
"Its dashboard needs improvement. Currently, there is no way to modify the dashboard. There should be more flexibility so that we can create views according to our use case."
More Quest KACE Systems Management Pricing and Cost Advice →
Chef is ranked 16th in Configuration Management with 18 reviews while Quest KACE Systems Management is ranked 10th in Configuration Management with 38 reviews. Chef is rated 8.0, while Quest KACE Systems Management is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of Chef writes "Useful for large infrastructure, reliable, but steep learning cureve". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Quest KACE Systems Management writes "Easy to use, saves us time, and increases IT productivity". Chef is most compared with Jenkins, AWS Systems Manager, Microsoft Azure DevOps, Microsoft Configuration Manager and SaltStack, whereas Quest KACE Systems Management is most compared with Microsoft Configuration Manager, Microsoft Windows Server Update Services, BigFix, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and Automox. See our Chef vs. Quest KACE Systems Management report.
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