We performed a comparison between BigFix and Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the above variables, we would conclude that BigFix slightly edges out Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager. Our users find that Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager is harder to use and its support is less effective.
"The most important thing for me is the autopilot feature."
"There is a single pane of glass for user access and a single sign-on facility for the user. If you have already logged in to Microsoft Azure or on-premises, you can redirect directly to Microsoft Endpoint Manager, monitor all your security threats, and analyze the data associated with the application in a single, unified way."
"A valuable feature is user enrollment, where users can enroll their devices in their organizations themselves."
"The many policies available in Microsoft Intune for managing our devices are valuable."
"It is very easy to use. It has a very easy interface."
"I like the tool's integration with Apple. Anyone who creates an ID in Intune will get an Apple ID."
"Conditional access has helped us tailor and enforce our security policies in the mobile space."
"...Intune itself integrates with that entire Microsoft ecosystem. As an individual product itself, it's okay. It holds up. But when you start saying "I've bought this as part of a wider solution, as a company we are going Microsoft throughout," then it makes more sense to have Microsoft Intune... so you have that single dashboard."
"This has very much improved our organization by saving time to deploy thousands of endpoints to our customers."
"I’ve found patching to be the most valuable feature of the solution."
"DOWNLOADING-PATCHES; It has also helped to reduce network traffic when it comes to downloading patches. By only having to download the patch once to the central location and then utilizing the relay structure to then download the patch to a specific site and then everything gathering at local, it greatly reduces the bandwidth of multiple endpoints."
"It's very straightforward."
"BigFix helped us to identify the compliance of devices and has also improved the way that we manage our software inventory for reporting to vendors."
"Having higher visibility on patching level, on patching successful, and non-successful has been a way that BigFix has improved my organization. Also, the ability to customize the content to do what we need it to do is very powerful and very flexible for us. Finally, in the area of custom interfaces like REST API really gives us the ability to provide for our external customers."
"The technical support for BigFix is really amazing."
"It's good for reporting hardware and software."
"The tool's most valuable features are easy patch management and software deployment."
"The main, clear valuable feature is updating the latest, patches and updates from Windows. This is the main feature we really utilize a lot."
"The initial setup is fairly straightforward."
"The ability to make collections and deploy to them has been great."
"We have found the scalability to be quite good."
"It saves a lot of money when you can install things automatically and they are installed the exact same way on every computer."
"Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager is valuable in keeping our systems updated. We are able to send updates to all the systems. Additionally, the Intune integration is helpful."
"The most valuable feature is the graphical-based reports of software updates that have been successful, the ones that have failed, and a summary of where the failures are what security breaches may occur."
"The difficulty of the the roll out is surprisingly difficult considering this product is supposed to be an integrated part of the 365 suite."
"There are a lot of small use cases where we realized that some technical solution was missing in Microsoft in comparison to other products. For example, it lacks something similar to sensing or location-based rules and configurations."
"Microsoft Intune has a latency response time issue. The latency has room for improvement."
"Onboarding of endpoint devices is not straightforward. The onboarding process was a little heavier than I thought it would be. That's the key improvement area. Obviously, the more control you have over the devices, the better it is."
"One area for improvement is app deployment. Another is the Windows update rollout. If you're rolling out an object to a device that's offline, Intune stops trying to reach this device after it sits idle for a bit. We are forced to find a workaround that could help manage that."
"The pricing could be improved."
"I expect Microsoft Intune to have more features in the cloud because there are two major functionalities that we need to be added. This is software metering and license management. These functionalities, for now, must be on-premise. For this purpose, we have set up a SQL Server and I hope that in near future this option will be in the cloud in Microsoft Intune."
"It would be beneficial to have a more straightforward understanding of Intune's capabilities, presented in a simplified manner."
"I would like to see the Self Service section made more user-friendly."
"I would like to see the integration of user security between the different products to be improved. There's separate security for compliance, separate security for web reports, and the console, and you have to manage those things separately."
"The deployment has room for improvement and can be more streamlined."
"I would like to see more emphasis on using the web console, to have the same power as the full fat client console that they do they now. It's a lighter way to log in and it would be faster for our operators to do their work. The console tends to take a long time for a large number of clients."
"I'd definitely like to see additional feature parody in the web UI versus the console. There are certain things that you can only do in the console and they're very cumbersome to do, like secure parameters, for example. That's definitely something that has a wide degree of utility but it needs to be easier to surface. At this particular juncture between the transition, between the legacy console and the web UI, it's hard to justify dealing with the cumbersome aspects of the legacy console when theoretically everything's been through the web UI."
"The solution should have some kind of a local caching methodology, where the patches can be taken locally into a localized relay server, and from there, the patch can be applied, so that there is not much usage of the network required."
"The sub-capacity licensing was a challenge for some of it. We had trouble getting it to calculate right."
"The product lacks AI, ML, and IIT."
"Management of Linux devices could be improved."
"Our company would prefer not rebooting computers while people are using them. There seems to be no strategy behind it."
"The tool's deployment is difficult. Microsoft needs to improve documentation with videos."
"Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager can improve by allowing us to schedule the scripts, we don't have a script scheduling option and have to do it manually."
"Built in PowerShell cmdlets would be a nice feature because managing clients remotely can be a pain without knowing the WMI calls to run."
"Initial setup was complex. There's a lot that goes into it."
"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."
"SCCM does not scale well, which is one of the reasons we are not going to continue to use it."
More Microsoft Configuration Manager Pricing and Cost Advice →
BigFix is ranked 5th in Configuration Management with 91 reviews while Microsoft Configuration Manager is ranked 2nd in Configuration Management with 78 reviews. BigFix is rated 8.6, while Microsoft Configuration Manager is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of BigFix writes "Very stable and easy to deploy with excellent patch compliance". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Configuration Manager writes "Seamless system updates, useful integration, and reliable". BigFix is most compared with Microsoft Windows Server Update Services, Tanium, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, ManageEngine Patch Manager Plus and Red Hat Satellite, whereas Microsoft Configuration Manager is most compared with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, ManageEngine Endpoint Central, Tanium, AWS Systems Manager and Red Hat Satellite. See our BigFix vs. Microsoft Configuration Manager report.
See our list of best Configuration Management vendors and best Patch Management vendors.
We monitor all Configuration Management reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
SCCM is very robust but you need more time and people to manage it.
For a company of 200 employees only can use something easier to manage such as PDQ deployment S/W. it's a lot cheaper and easier to manage.
Kumar.
We have 1500 users and even with a reasonable sized support team we find SCCM difficult to manage. I haven't experienced the other solutions, but I suspect you will be better placed with an alternative to SCCM.
Before answering to your needs, we need to understand that there are two distinctive features from SCCM and BigFix.
SCCM since 2020 has stopped its support for Linux Patching, so in its entirety, if you are only using Windows, you might consider SCCM. It still support Mac with basic features, but it depends on your requirements. Again, the operation with SCCM is also not easy at all.
Bigfix on the other side is a solution to manage different types of OS, as we say it distributed environment. Windows, Linux, Mac, etc. Bigfix is mainly used in large companies with more than 1000+ employees. It is not cheap as Bigfix is a robust enterprise solution.
You might want to consider other automated patch management tools such as LANDesk or Managed Engine which has been seen in deployment in smaller enterprises.
Cheers,
Rendy
Hi Ihsan,
Hope you are doing well, As per my experience to deploy SCCM for 200 users is not worth it, you want to be blessed use Quest product KACE System Management Appliance, easy to manage and upgrade (patching/managing end point managing and many more).
https://www.itcentralstation.c...
Thank you.