Alternatives to SCCM

[Allen]

Hey all,

Due to company growth, we are looking at getting ISO 27001 in the near future. One of our project managers has been tasked with overseeing this and has decided to get Cyber Essentials in the meantime to start us in the right direction (reason being, we just received a contract with an MOD contractor and need something soon). Most of this is IS related, so I have been given lots of tasks to sort out including the following:

Standard build for new desktops/laptops
Password policies
AV and Malware protection/Security
Windows Updates/software patching
Hardware inventory

SCCM was advised by someone in the company so I have started to look in to it, however as we only have ~30 servers (all virtual, mainly Windows, but quite a few Linux based Cisco appliances) and ~50 desktops/laptops it seems rather expensive, although I still haven't got my head around licensing for SCCM yet, so I have asked our MS Partner to give me some information and pricing.

SCCM seems to do all of the above, yet as I have never used it before, I will have to learn how to use it whilst setting it up. So it seems only fair that since I am not already familiar with SCCM, I should look at alternatives due to the fact I will have to learn how to use anything we purchase.

The only product I know of which I think does all of the above as well as SCCM is LANDESK. However from past discussions with various people I believe this is also very expensive. Does anyone know what price we might expect to pay for either of these? Does anyone have any recommendations as to which is best out of the two, or any other suggestions for software to handle this?

[shaithis]

You might find that system center essentials is enough for what you need and the size of your company.

SCCM is a behemoth of a product that seems overkill unless you have 100s of servers and 1000s of clients. Essentials is considerably cheaper as well as having a much shallower learning curve and resource requirements. I'm fairly sure I heard that Microsoft won't be releasing any more though, so you might be looking at a dead end product, the last one was 2010 IIRC.

I have heard good things about Absolute Manage but have never used it personally.

You could of course use multiple products:
Standard build for new desktops/laptops - WDS (Free)
Password policies - Group Policy (Free)
AV and Malware protection/Security - Choose any of the bloated POS that companies install. I hate to say it but I have found SEP to be the best of a bad bunch
Windows Updates/software patching - WSUS (Free)
Hardware inventory - Spiceworks (Free)

[Splash]

Disclosure: the company that I work for has done business with the company that Allen works for in the not too distant past, and may or may not be the MS partner to whom he refers.

With my corporate hat off, and with someone who is currently working through Cyber Essentials Plus I can almost hand on heart state that you don't need SCCM. Don't get me wrong: System Center is an amazingly capable suite of products but it's also a potential nightmare. There's a lot you need to get your head around, and for a company your size I'd agree with Shaithis that it seems like overkill from my point of view - smaller, individual products are ideal. That said: I've never really gotten on that well with Spiceworks (though for free it's hard to argue) and prefer either something built into whatever your ITSM tool of choice is (which is where your CMDB should live) or something like LanSweeper (not free, but not too far off for small environments dependent on what your requirements are).

(Just don't tell them that I told you that)



EDIT - possibly worth looking into is the Dell Kace series of kit.

[Allen]

@Splash, yes, I am referring to your company. I am just waiting to hear back about the prices and what we need.

I kind of knew that SCCM is over the top for a company of our current size, but we are expanding fast, and although we may not meet the recommended minimum for a while, I want to avoid if at all possible a scenario like we have been in until recently where I had to remove SBS from our infrastructure as we vastly outgrew it's capabilities. The removal of SBS turned out to be a nightmare for me taking approximately 3 months to complete (considering I am on my own as sysadmin, haven't had to remove SBS before, and only put about 50% of my workload in to IS activities).

So with that in mind, I want something that will expand with the company and last us many years without having to worry about reaching any kind of limitations in the not-so-distant future.

I will check out the above mentioned products and see if they fit the bill, thanks guys!

[Smudger]

You might find that system center essentials is enough for what you need and the size of your company.

SCCM is a behemoth of a product that seems overkill unless you have 100s of servers and 1000s of clients. Essentials is considerably cheaper as well as having a much shallower learning curve and resource requirements. I'm fairly sure I heard that Microsoft won't be releasing any more though, so you might be looking at a dead end product, the last one was 2010 IIRC.

I have heard good things about Absolute Manage but have never used it personally.

You could of course use multiple products:
Standard build for new desktops/laptops - WDS (Free)
Password policies - Group Policy (Free)
AV and Malware protection/Security - Choose any of the bloated POS that companies install. I hate to say it but I have found SEP to be the best of a bad bunch
Windows Updates/software patching - WSUS (Free)
Hardware inventory - Spiceworks (Free)

Pretty much agree with most of that. I worked for a company that undertook ISO 27001, and we used all of the above apart from McAfee EPO for AV and Norton (Symantec now?) Ghost for system build. We eventually went to LANdesk, but I do remember it was very expensive, and we didn't really touch on the full capability of the suite.

For machine builds, I would recommend MDT 2013, it's kind of WDS-Plus. The same core build, but it gives you a bit more flexibility with what you do afterwards in terms of scripts, app installs etc.

[Biscuit]

Pretty much agree with most of that. I worked for a company that undertook ISO 27001, and we used all of the above apart from McAfee EPO for AV and Norton (Symantec now?) Ghost for system build. We eventually went to LANdesk, but I do remember it was very expensive, and we didn't really touch on the full capability of the suite.

For machine builds, I would recommend MDT 2013, it's kind of WDS-Plus. The same core build, but it gives you a bit more flexibility with what you do afterwards in terms of scripts, app installs etc.

My old company also went through a few different ISO qualifications (27001 and 9000 IIRC) and the situation was the same for us, except our hardware inventory wasn't done by spiceworks... cant remember what we used. I was always under the impression that ISO was as much about having the processes detailed in handbooks as it was actually following through with them?

[shaithis]

Using Certero Asset Studio for inventory where I am working at the moment, just had a look around it and it seems really nice, although no idea on pricing.

[Smudger]

My old company also went through a few different ISO qualifications (27001 and 9000 IIRC) and the situation was the same for us, except our hardware inventory wasn't done by spiceworks... cant remember what we used. I was always under the impression that ISO was as much about having the processes detailed in handbooks as it was actually following through with them?

I think we ended up going with Landesk for the inventory stuff because the guy that was assessing us for 27001 had an aversion to free software. There's also the fact that Spiceworks is web-based, so all your inventory data is held online, which may be a no-no...

[Allen]

Yeah, I wouldn't be keen on that.

Someone at work just suggested Kaseya, but there website isn't too clear on what exactly it does, they just seem to throw buzzwords about without explaining what the features do. Also, it's a subscribed service, which leads me to believe it is also web-based.

Anyone have any thoughts on Kaseya?

I do like the look of Absolute Manage I must say, need to check prices, but I guess you have to speak with their Sales team for that as they aren't listed on the website.