Systems Management

Our CIO thought this would be a good job because SMS is "free" with our EA. We struggled with it for nearly a year before we went back to Altiris. DO NOT DO IT. We proved that the cost was well worth it, especially when we got into Asset Management and license harvesting.

I got to see a preview of Altiris 7 at ManageFusion and you would be crazy to switch. Message me and I'll give you more details about the pains we had. I don't want to bash SMS fully out here and others may have different experiences, but when the Altiris user group in my community has so many happy people with automated environments there is no way I could see how a cheap, side product from Microsoft could compete with a company who is devoted to systems management.

Thanks for the reply. I appreciate it. I sent you a PM.

Please let us know if you decide (or get forced) to move and how it goes. Best of luck however it works out for you!

Thanks PushMyApps. I know this is going on the SMS forum but I'll just state it anyway that I have never liked SMS. It is way more complicated than it needs to be so I really hope that it isn't the road we end up travelling.

A few thoughts based on my experiences at the numerous SMS and altiris shops I've worked at.

- Typically the shops that have problems with SMS are the ones where it was poorly implemented, or have other problems in their environement that happen to affect SMS (re: DNS is probably the most common.)

- Altiris and SMS have virtually the same capabilities in most areas. SMS shines in web reporting and patch management. Altiris shines its license management, it's imaging system, and it's ability to manage non-microsoft clients.


My opinion is to figure out what your needs are and then go from there. Unless you rely heavily on one of the areas that either product specializes in, in the end you'll still have a well managed environment regardless of product.