Client Management Suite

Hi,

Does anyone have any documentation (or battle cards) regarding these two?

I'e been asked quite a bit lately on how KASE rates up against Altiris and i'd like to see how this shows up head to head.

Cheers Steve

yabru,
I'm about 99% sure that KACE is Altiris; they're just selling a server pre-configured with Altiris CMS (or whatever suite you want).  I'll be able to tell you more next week as I'm going to a "lunch and learn" presentation on Friday.

OK...I finally went and looked at their website.  Unless they're OEMing Altiris and significantly overhauling the UI...the software is distinctly unique and independent of Altiris (though there are alot of overlapping functionality).

Thanks,

They definately not Altiris though. And they are most definately competing for Altiris market share.

Some companies that i've approached were considering KASE over Altiris, so i was just looking for some competitive documentation on why Altiris would be better.

I have however, found some.

Cheers Steve

I looked at KACE once, and the part that concerned me, was being a self contained appliance device, you are entirely dependant on KACE for any issues with that box. I have seen applicance vendors in the past that used 'specialized' versions of Windows server, that were a challenge to patch.

What they do give you is 'everything in a box'. For small organizations, this type of 'set it and forget it' approach may work well, I don't know.

Yes - please, anyone have comments? I'm currently using Altiris CMS version 6 and we're evaluating Kace, SCCM or to stay with Altiris and go to Version 7. Altiris 6 has been very buggy for us, although has performed moderatly well. For us, Patch Managment and Inventory frequently have had issues, amoung other things.

Thanks,
Josh

KACE is a smaller toolbox to start with and its not cheap. The primary cost savings is you don't have to buy an OS license because it runs on a Linux flavor or a SQL license because it uses MySQL. In a smaller environment, I can see where this may be attractive. Less upfront cost but less integrated capability in the long run. 

Altiris is a very big toolbox. Chances are that when you have an issue in the future, you'll find a solution in CMS that can efficiently address it. If you bought CMS, you already own it. I've supported many Altiris customers who didn't know 1/2 the things the system could do! Often, customers just get frustrated and throw money at something else.

Unless you are a large Altiris customer with many remote locations and a need for multiple Notification Servers, I would wait on Altiris 7 for now.

Your system may need a tuneup or health check. Remote Altiris Admin at your service!

So, the dog and pony show I saw was OK, but the presenter wasn't a technical guy (and somehow didn't bring one with him) so couldn't answer a lot of the questions I had.  The KACE device runs in a "LAMP" environment (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP).  As stated, it is NOT Altiris (I think I was confusing KACE with NetX, who do/did sell an "Altiris-in-a-box" solution).  A lot of the functionality seemed to be proprietary, from their "KImage" disk imaging software, "Kontainer" virtualization tech, KScript scripting language, etc.  I also wasn't clear on how customizable it is; in my opinion one of Altiris's greatest strengths is the high degree of customization you can do (I'm thinking particularly of Inventory solution, which can be a huge benefit when trying to customize deployments, etc.  My impression also was that they are targeting the SMB sector and schools more than the large business or enterprise operation.  I'm sure for some businesses the KBOX would be a sufficient fit, but not for us.  Besides that we have built a huge number of processes around our Altiris infrastructure that would be hard to duplicate in a different system.

I did get a tasty steak lunch at Morton's out of it though! :-D