Microsoft Configuration Manager Reviews

The primary use case of this solution is the application and device management for any windows desktop and mobile device clients.

The most valuable feature is the restriction of data transfer between unmanaged applications and managed applications, specifically on mobile devices. For example, if a user wants to transfer data from email to WhatsApp, that can be restricted.

The solution can be improved by speeding up the synchronizing of the policies on the devices. Technical support can benefit from shortened response times and making sure all of the support team are at par with their knowledge regarding the solution.

I have been using the solution for four years.

The solution is stable. We currently have seven to nine thousand users.

The solution is scalable to match our needs.

The technical support team's response time can be slow at times and some people are more knowledgeable than others depending on who you have assigned to the ticket.

Neutral

The initial setup is straightforward. I give it an eight out of ten for ease.

The price is competitive and reasonable. I would give the solution an eight out of ten on price.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

The solution doesn't require any maintenance from our end because it is a cloud-based solution and Microsoft takes care of everything. 

The solution is easy to integrate with the durations and application, and administration is also very simple. When you go with the combination of licenses, the cost is also good, and reasonable.

Microsoft has done a good job with authentication solutions, such as single sign-on, or open authentication.

The downside of Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager is it's an on-premise-based solution. With the pandemic coming on board the need to support users across the globe has increased. For a while, we would use the in-built Microsoft Teams screen sharing feature but the disadvantage of that is you cannot perform privileged access. Microsoft does not give you access to that. That's where you need cloud-based tools, such as BeyondTrust or Freshservice.

There are many aspects of this solution that can be improved, such as security.

The integration could be better with other software packages.

I have been using Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager for approximately three years.

Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager is a stable solution.

Having Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager available only on on-premise creates limitations. If you want the best scalability options then you will have to move to the cloud to a solution such as Microsoft Intune.

We have approximately 1,000 active endpoints using this solution.

Microsoft has a lot of support available for Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager. When we open a support ticket Microsoft solves them in the set out the time frame in the SLA.

We were using other solutions previously.

The installation is not easy. As with most on-premise solutions, they are not easy to install. Microsoft documentation is complicated and goes on and on. It's a lot to try to assimilate the information. With a cloud solution, it makes it a bit easier. However, even with Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager being on-premise with Intune, it's still not straightforward. The time the implementation took for us to complete was a couple of weeks with a five-person team.

In recent times, a lot of companies have begun to move away from Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager. The endpoint configuration is very convoluted to implement. In most companies, you need to have a very large dedicated team to manage the solution on the back end. 

A lot of companies are looking to cost savings. With the advent of cloud solutions, companies have the opportunity to receive a lot of cost savings. There are a lot of ITSM tools that will do asset management for you, change management, converged asset management, and updates. There are other ways to configure updates and deployment. The solution is a bit convoluted and expensive.

The price of Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager is expensive.

I have a very good idea of what my present workplace pays for this solution because it's usually a mixture of different solutions. For example, if you have an Azure P2 license, it tends to cover Microsoft 365 E5. We have a number of licenses. 

The licensing is typically paid monthly or annually as part of the agreement by the customer.

I would recommend this solution to others if you're an Azure-centric organization. If you have your workloads on Azure and are a Microsoft-based organization. For example, you have Microsoft servers, Microsoft endpoints, Azure workloads, BD VMs, Data Factory, and SQL.

I would advise others to use online help forums instead of Microsoft documentation because they can tend to be complicated and lengthy.

I rate Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager a nine out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for patch management, application deployment and operating system deployment.

It has improved our ability to remediate against critical CVE's in a timely manner across the enterprise.

The patch management is great. The ability to be able to centrally purchase servers is quite useful.

The ability to monitor only after you have rebooted devices allows you to see if they have compliance or not.

The efficiency - as opposed to patching once you have the time - of having a central repository to manage everything you need is very helpful.

The solution is quite stable. 

It's perfect for enterprises.

We have found the scalability to be quite good.

In terms of the monitoring, the timeframe it takes to actually report back on the compliance of a device after it has been patched is a bit too long. That could be better. Sometimes you could be looking at a screen and may take about five to 10 minutes before you get back the actual compliance status and that could be reduced.

Having a cloud solution is better in a lot of ways. For the deployment of the operating system, with InTune and modern end-point management, you no longer have to image machines and waste a lot of hours. You no longer have your technicians spending four, five hours imaging machine sessions for drivers and things like that. You can make use of an autopilot, which reduces resources and can cut down the timeframe drastically. There's a lot of wins with the cloud technology that's coming forward, that enterprises and organizations can make use of.

I've used the solution over the three years. It's been in our organization for the past six years.

It's a very stable product. It is definitely an enterprise-grade patch management solution.

The product is very scalable. When we have migrations and we bring on additional devices, such as during an acquisition of companies, it's great. We can bring them right into our environment. It's very scalable in terms of deploying and adding a new division to the solution. 

Currently, we have it deployed to support over 20,000 PCs.

Likely, we will increase usage. There are also new tools that are modern tools that we are starting to make use of. As much as you're doing something for patch management, where you need to enter the discussion is you need to start looking at modern endpoints, which is InTune, for example. We will start making use of InTune for the patch of end-points. We could also do scheduling of those patches as well from the cloud to the client. We are using, a hybrid approach. Generally, our goal is to expand usage.

In terms of technical support, once you have a Microsoft agreement, the level of support would be the same across all our products. We have an enterprise-grade level of support. Therefore, once I create a critical case, I get support within the hour. We are quite satisfied.

We have had a deployment in our enterprise for more than five years. It's a relatively complex deployment due to the fact that we have a large organization.

I am one of the enterprise engineers. I make deployments happen at a new location and it may just be a matter of training the onsite technician at that new division on how to make use of it. We have an enterprise-grade deployment and we have divisional deployments where divisions can make use of it to still manage their in-house shops.

A consultant would've assisted in the initial deployment.

We do pay a licensing fee on a yearly basis. 

There is a license cost and it is licensed per deployment. We do pay licensing costs for all of the deployments that we have on our end, across the enterprise.

With the way everything is moving to the cloud, you need to have all of these licenses in place.

We're partners with Microsoft.

For people looking into implementing Configuration Manager at this point, I would recommend it. They should also look at InTune, which is more of an endpoint deployment. For the servers, you can still look at what we have, however, just the way, how things are developing, I can see the industry and patch management moving away from on-prem management to more like making use of the cloud and use of our Microsoft for business in terms of managing the updates, ease of updates and things like that. What is happening now is a paradigm shift.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. It's great for enterprises.

Our primary use case for this solution is deploying endpoints, applications and updates for large companies. The solution is deployed on-premises and on cloud.

It has the ability to perform mass distribution which is valuable.

It needs to be able to load faster during deployment and the new release could include this ability. This will allow us to deploy critical collections with over 50,000 to 60,000 users simultaneously.

We have been using this solution for approximately ten years and are currently using version 2203.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable.

The initial setup was straightforward.

I rate this solution an eight out of ten. The solution is the best there is in the market today. A feature that could be included in the next release is its ability to load faster during deployment.

We use Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager for application deployment, patch deployment, and many other things. If you have any script that needs to be deployed to all the devices, you can do it with this solution. 

If you have this solution in your environment, it's a win-win situation. You can deliver anything that the customer requires. If the efficacy is somewhere around 80 to 90%, everything isn't well because some devices aren't coming online because of bandwidth issues or they aren't compliant. 

However, if we have 80% to 90% efficacy, we can achieve compliance. The compliance we reached was around 95%, but that 5% was probably due to a decommissioned device or one that wasn't in the environment. So, for efficacy, delivery, and reporting, this is one of the best tools.

The major features of this product are the reporting tools. The most valuable features are package deployment and application deployment. Security management is also good because any vulnerability will be identified, and you can fix it. It's the best tool because you never know what kind of client you will have. For example, you may have your offices in low bandwidth remote areas. But it's achievable because it accommodates the bandwidth that you have available.

Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager is an excellent reporting tool for your environment. If you want to know the details about the hardware configuration, software configuration, what is causing a problem, or when a new feature update comes in for Windows, even that goes on SCCM itself. A lot of deployment stuff.

It would be better if reporting were more user-friendly. I would like to see an upgrade in the reporting structure in the next release. At the moment, you have to use an SQL query or configure it to pull reports through the graphical user interface. 

Their updates could be more regular. I think Mircosoft updates it every six months. They are also moving many things to Intune, and Microsoft decided to move the deployment solution there. I think SCCM is getting old, and Intune is new. 

I have been working with Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager for about seven years.

Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager is very stable. It's very reliable, and it's a proven product.

Scalability is difficult for the inexperienced. But if you know how to use these tools, scalability is also good. When Intune matures, you can also use it together with Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager to scale and co-manage the environment.

Microsoft support is good, but it does take time. There are two types of support provided by Microsoft, paid and unpaid. The paid option offers a real-time system, and they help because we have to pay in dollars. Sometimes it takes two or three days to get to the submission. I cannot comment much because we only had a few cases and had to connect with them. Usually, these issues are related to some upgrades and some tool-related issues. Although it's good, I think Microsoft support could be better because they still take too much time.

The deployment process is very simple. It's not difficult because it gives you a variety of features. You have to create a collection or a group, and you deploy it. It's very slow and dependent on the network. 

A single person can install and deploy this solution. If you have an application already created and tested, that's fine. If you do not have one, then you have to build the application and test it. If everything goes fine, you can simply deploy it to the list of people you want to target. I wouldn't say that you need many people, but it depends on your operation and how you manage your environment.

The deployment time depends on the location it's going to, the bandwidth, and more. You can configure a time for the application to replace the policy or when the machine will replace its policies in the configuration settings. Suppose I'm an administrator and deploying something on your device; your machine will not get turned on. I will go ahead and update the application evolution cycle and machine policies so that it happens automatically. Once the 30 minutes clock starts, it'll update, and once it refreshes, it will see something I sent, and it'll start downloading it. 

Downloading is always completely dependent on how fast your internet is. Once the package is downloaded, you can simply go ahead and install it. Small packages will take about an hour at most to deploy. For bigger packages, it's completely dependent on the internet because this tool does only one job. It's like a postman as it takes one thing from you and gives it to the other person.

There are periodic updates, and the maintenance is also done. The patch update service is critical and has a significant impact.

Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager is suitable for small businesses. If you have fewer offices and fewer users, then the efficacy of this product is very high. If the company doesn't have a system for a long time or doesn't have many employees or environmental issues, they can open Intune and have a cloud-based solution and get all the features together there.

You can stage your content, and you can share where you have no connectivity. You can go ahead and do the whole deployment and a lot of things. Intune is still improving, but SCCM has a feature of all this deployment and all other things.

So I would say that SCCM has a stronghold and is still relevant. It's an excellent product, but Intune will take it over in a few years. But not entirely because they will coexist. They are working in an environment simultaneously, hand in hand, but I think the market will move more toward Intune (if it's not moving already).

I would advise potential users to take a structural approach. They should know the customer's requirements, the number of users, and the locations. They need to have the setup, create a cache, and then binary and secondary options for these deployments. But if you're using a cloud-based solution, you don't have too much worry about it because everything will come from the internet. 

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager an eight.

Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager, formerly known as SCCM, is used for patching machine servers and application deployments. It also stores an inventory of machine hardware. We are customers and I'm a consultant. 

Patching is an important feature in the solution. Because it's console-based we can create one application or patch in the console. It will download and from the console base we can deploy to all machines. If your company has around 1,000-2,000 machines we're able to patch and deploy to all concurrently. We're also able to check, report and troubleshoot if there are any issues or errors that occur during deployment. We currently have 500 plus servers which are managed automatically on cloud.

Cloud-based improvements need to be better managed than is currently the case. 

I've been using this solution for nine years.

The solution is quite stable because it's a Microsoft product. Even though it's cloud-based it's quite stable. We have two engineers that deal with maintenance. 

The solution is quite scalable, although there is a lot of competition from products such as AWS and IBM BigFix.

We've had good experience with Microsoft technical support. 

The initial setup was straightforward. It's a matter of downloading from Microsoft, updating on the console and deploying. The amount of staff required for deployment depends on the level of infrastructure. Before the deployment, you need to test the machines to check whether a particular patch is installed and updated properly on that machine and whether there are any bugs. Installation is a step-by-step process. We can do about 20,000 per week, so within five weeks the job can be done. If there are only 10,000 machines, deployment can be completed within a week. 

Licensing is better than with other solutions because it's Microsoft-based. Microsoft offers multiple options which works for us. 

The solution is good for us because most of our users are using Microsoft-based products and the solution is compatible for anyone using Linux-based or AWS.

I rate the solution nine out of 10. 

We use this solution to test out VMs.

The ability to make collections and deploy to them has been great.

The ability to integrate MDM would be great.

We just set up our lab, so we've only been using this solution for three months.

So far, we've had no issues with bugs or glitches. 

SCCM is highly scalable.

I have not had to contact technical support.

As someone who is quite familiar with IT, the initial setup was quite straightforward. It would definitely be complicated if you're not familiar with IT.

Presently, I am using a free trial version. 

I really like SCCM. I am constantly learning new things all the time. So far, it seems pretty straightforward.

It's a good product designed for medium to large-sized environments that need to automate their deployments and set them in an organized manner.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of eight.

We are using SCCM to manage the virtual machine configuration. We had around 100 or 200 virtual machines and wireless, and we need to configure different settings on all of the virtual machines. We need to handle patching, updating, and installing security updates. We prefer to use System Center instead of other solutions like GFI LanGuard that are already installed in other environments.

Previous to SCCM, the entire process was completely manual.

The solution is very flexible and very handy. It has helped us move past the process of manually updating.

It's helped us solve problems surrounding patching, installing, and reporting different patches, etc., on the virtual machines.

Based on my experience with SCCM 2016, the main, big issue is not having a good user-friendly environment. It needs much better GUI. 

We had some problems configuring Linux virtual machines. We needed to install agents. Microsoft should pay more attention to these Linux virtual machines in order to make implementation with them easier.

I've been working in the System Center on two projects for around two years. 

The solution is extremely stable. We've only really had to restart the solution twice in the first year. It's very reliable.

In terms of scalability, at that time I didn't need to scale the development. However, in the near future, it is possible. I don't have any idea of the timeline for our scaling the solution as I focus on VMware technology at this time.

Our company has around 60 users. However, we offer this solution to one of the enterprise customers that use it for bank data centers. They have around 3000 staff.

We are using the System Center to manage around 2000 virtual machines.

In my country, due to sanctions, we cannot use direct support. We just use third-party partners in different countries. Generally, we support the System Center and all their products directly and don't need outside support.

If a company migrates to a cloud environment, I prefer to use another solution. For example, in the Azure environment, I definitely use Intune instead of System Center. In other products, I use Jamf, which is a good product that is comparable with System Center in the cloud environment. 

In terms of the current initial setup, the new version is a little bit more complex as you need to design a great architecture for the enterprise environment when we use a lot of virtual machines. For example, when you have more than 1,000 virtual machines, there needs to be a high level of consideration for the design of different components of the System Center.

In terms of deployment, if you have a good design, the process may take about a week. You need, I would guess, one week for installing and preparing the environment. However, you need to relay different instructions in order to install it. In total, the process would take around one, or, at a maximum, two weeks.

Our team consists of five members; one senior and four support engineers. Their job is to configure and maintain the active directory environment and the SCCM platform.

I implemented the solution myself. I took a month to study the solution, and, after that, I was able to handle the process personally. I took only two days in terms of how long it took me to install it.

The solution is pretty expensive. A company really needs to consider their environment.

We're just a customer. In the past, we used System Center version 2012, and after one year we upgraded to System Center 2016.

Out of all the products in the market, the best solution is System Center, especially for Microsoft virtual machines and all services that are related to Microsoft Technologies.

If you are evolving in the Microsoft environment, I prefer to use the System Center due to the fact that it includes different solutions like System Center Configuration Manager, System Center Operation Manager, System Center Virtual Backup. It's a full solution and provides different services. It has great integration with other Microsoft products. 

I would recommend the solution to an engineer or administrator. And first, a new user will have to study different best practices and have a good overview of the architect of System Center and the functionality of the different components. After that, they would have to go in through the details about the Linux machines. The biggest problems we had at the time of implementation was related to Linux virtual machines, not Microsoft virtual machines. With the licensing and the price, it's a tricky point that the engineers should consider when they need to set up a license

Overall, I would rate the solution eight out of ten.