What is our primary use case?
We carried out a POC on Desktop Central before implementing and it's been in production for two months. Our use case is for patching third-party applications and Windows applications. We use the solution extensively so that aside from the monthly scanning we use it to work on Microsoft vulnerabilities.
We are customers of Desktop Central and I'm an IT Manager.
How has it helped my organization?
Previously, our monthly maintenance would have taken about eight hours, and two or three people continuously on a laptop. Our maintenance is now carried out by this solution and once it's done there just needs to be a check for errors. It's time-saving and resource-saving which is pretty good.
What is most valuable?
The patch management is really wonderful, it's effortless and just a matter of building a few configurations and creating a few templates which can be reused. The UI is quite good and user-friendly.
What needs improvement?
There are a few basic things that haven't been configured in the tool. We're dealing with 600, 700 servers. The way the solution has been configured means you can only see 500 systems at a time. The company has acknowledged that this is an issue but they haven't worked on it yet. It's a little strange given the amount of time the product has been on the market.
We're working on migrating to Azure. It involves a new patch that was not picked up by Desktop Central. I think it's a problem for them because Azure is everywhere right now and they don't seem to be up to date with the new patches. More needs to be included because everything Microsoft is launching now is more related to Azure.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using this solution for six months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Performance is good and stable. If it's working on 600 servers at a time, there is a 90-minute window that it uses to communicate with its agent, and that's divided between all the servers. It can hamper performance at times when compared to other tools where you just click and everything is communicated without any wait time. The IT Ops team uses Desktop Central which, in our company, is two or three people.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We haven't yet scaled but I believe it will be quite easy.
How was the initial setup?
All the ManageEngine products are pretty straightforward when it comes to implementation. There are a few configurations you have to do on a network level for the codes, but it's not complicated. I carried out the deployment with one other person. We contacted the vendor a few times for some assistance but that was it. The POC took about a month and the actual deployment took a week to 10 days including configuring everything on the network level.
In terms of maintenance, the server and installed agent need to be updated on all servers. You do have to check it on your test environment to make sure everything is compatible with a virtual environment, otherwise it could crash your VM.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The solution is relatively cheap because we purchased the full package. For now, we're only using patch management, but it offers many other things such as software deployment, the ability to create configuration packages and install new software. There are no additional costs to the licensing fee.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We only recently started using Desktop Central, so we're comparing the results with another solution use, BatchPatch. The Desktop Central UI is very good and easy to use. BatchPatch is a cheaper product so it's more complicated and the UI is not as good. What BatchPatch does have that's lacking in Desktop Central is the granular representation of progress and what's happening on the backend. BatchPatch gives you a clear picture of what's happening step by step and progress per server; it gives you specific errors so you can check and troubleshoot. Desktop Central lacks that visibility. If you're carrying out maintenance of 600 servers, you need to have that visibility, so that if something's not right, you can look into it instead of having to wait eight hours.
What other advice do I have?
If you're new to the solution, check your requirements because the solution is not suitable for every situation. We're using it for a data center, so we configured it differently. If, for example, you're dealing with local laptops on office premises and you're looking to do patch management, a product like Ivanti might be more useful. For us, Desktop Central is pretty good because we are working on servers, and the vulnerability checks we do on the security base are pretty high, so the patch management option of Desktop Central is pretty good.
There is room for improvement, so I rate the solution eight out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.