Systems Management

Have you looked into using a KBOX solution? It's much cheaper than Zenworks and SCCM - we've used both. KBOX has more power and requires less administration.

Would anyone seriously contemplate adopting a strategy for an enterprise-wide management system on the say-so of a bunch of forum users, even ones as erudite as our good selves? Surely the thing to do is trial the products, if possible? At the very least you should get some referees from the vendors and talk to them about your needs versus theirs and see whether the products fit.

I hope Tentaal is planning on trial running everything before making a decision - otherwise it would be an uneducated choice, regardless of where he's getting his information.

Yes, I'm testing ZCM 10 and SCCM 2007 deeply. It's a critical and very important choice for the future, but I'm also interested about what people are thinking.

We hated Zen and SCCM, so I'd suggest testing KBOX (they offer a free trial) - but I'm obviously a bit biased. What fits my organization best may not fit yours very well. You're basically going to have to test all of your options and choose the best one for your environment.

ORIGINAL: tentaal

Yes, I'm testing ZCM 10 and SCCM 2007 deeply. It's a critical and very important choice for the future, but I'm also interested about what people are thinking.






I'd say there's a couple critical questions I'd ask myself if I were in your situation first.

SCCM is complex to implement and maintain, and does many things in a very counterintuitive fashion, so...

1. How big is my support staff?
2. How much training can you afford to provide?

3. Will you make use of Operating System Deployment through SCCM? As far as I'm concerned, that's one of the only genuinely good reasons to switch to SCCM.
4. Cost difference? I'd imagine an upgrade on an existing system would be cheaper than buying SCCM whole, but I could be wrong.


If you're only going to use it for software deployment, and your team is already proficient in the use of ZCM, I'd totally stick with that. However, if you have the time and resources to devote to properly implement SCCM and take advantage of its features, it can be very rewarding.

I can't speak for the other products, but I can say that I've used SMS 2003 and SCCM 2007 with great success over the last 4 years. It is a very robust product. I agree with Jsaylor, you really do need to have someone dedicated to managing it, as it is a very complex product. Microsoft has an un-gimped free evaluation of ConfigMgr for 180 days, why not set up a test lab?

http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/configurationmanager/en/us/trial-software.aspx