Just recently (well, somewhat recently), I started the process of upgrading my management platform instrastructure to the new cloud plug-in know able CEM (or Cloud Enabled Management). Before I started the 'process', I did a lot of research to see how revelant and helpful this would be to my infrastructure. I read quite a few different forums (non-Symantec) and others stated how unnecessary it was to put the time and effort into this project; stating the time 'wasted' was not outweighed by the benefits. With these, questionable, opinions being said I must completely disagree! By putting forward the time and effort I was able to acheive the following things:
1) Better patching and/or policy compliance. A large group of my end users enjoy working from home during the evening or use there machines on the weekend (for some strange reason or another), so during these times they will get any patches and/or policies that their machines were needing.
2) Because some of my users are hardly on the intranet/internal network, they have a really hard time receiving newer/upgraded software. With CEM being enable for (some of) these users, we have had great success on getting them up to date.
3) Although I have already mentioned policies, I cannot stress enough how great it is to be able to resolve issues that are happening on a large scale (for instance a simple registry fix) while end users are not on the intranet; this really helps with meeting SLA's.
So, to answer the question if CEM is useful....HECK YES!
I hope this post helps anyone who has been on the edge of the fence regarding CEM. :)
Great post. Thank you for share your research.
Cloud-enabled Management is very useful in the following scenarios:
- An organization with many employees traveling or working outside of the office (outside the corporate intranet). - A managed service provider (MSP), managing external companies. - Highly distributed companies with many small offices or employees working from home.
Regards,
Fábio Sanches