(imported topic written by rmnetops91)
Can any of you provide feedback of why BigFix is superior to SCCM? We have some new executive management that are very pro-Microsoft and we need to convince them why to keep BigFix (As if cost wasn’t enough). They don’t use it on a daily basis like we do and we fear switching will make our lives harder, if not require additional staff to compensate for lost functionality.
(imported comment written by NoahSalzman)
RMNetOPs,
I stole the bullet points below from our “Why switch to IBM Tivoli Endpoint Manager, built on BigFix technology?” Solution Brief. They all are important points when comparing BigFix to SCCM as we beat them in each of these categories. In short:
For more details have your sales rep get you a copy of our Total Cost of Ownership calculator that our marketing group put together which goes into cost/benefit details that can be tailored to your organizations specific needs.
Easy deployment and management. Tivoli Endpoint Manager can be installed in just days, even across very large or highly distributed environments, and can then be used to remove outdated tools quickly and cleanly
Pervasive visibility. Distributed scanning and deep agent inspection makes it possible for operators to see anything about any computer anywhere
Extensibility. No need to roll out additional software or hard- ware when purchasing additional functionality from Tivoli Endpoint Manager open database schema and SOAP APIs also makes it easy to integrate with other IT tools
Speed. Extremely specific ad-hoc queries can be executed and answered across a globally distributed environment in minutes
Superior control. Secure, manage, and report on endpoints through any type of connection: WAN, LAN, 56K, satellite, public Internet
Scalability. Support for up to 250,000 endpoints from a single management server
Low profile. Agent and query language have all been optimized for near-invisible impact to network bandwidth and endpoint performance
Real-time reporting. With the agents reporting any change in status, there is no need to initiate a new scan to know the current state of your assets
Continuous compliance. Agents continuously monitor for compliance and can be set to automatically reapply any policy, patch, or misconfiguration
Breadth of coverage. Cross-platform support for Windows, Mac, UNIX, or Linux—whether physical or virtual, fixed or mobile
(imported comment written by SystemAdmin)
I was once over our corporate SMS 2003 unitl I was switched to our Retail IT, where we selected Big Fix instead of SMS. We needed it because of our slow WAN connetion to our sites and because we had to Active Directory implemented at that time so bandwidth throttling and relay architecture was our selling point. The biggest difference on Big Fix is that it is client driven, where SMS pushes to clients hoping they will respond, Big Fix Clients pull from the BES Server.
It has now been 3 years and we are now running Big Fix for both corporate and retail IT. The only downpart I can say Big Fix had compared to SMS was the remote control, which is now included in TEM 8.1. Other then that we have been able to justify Big FIx on on all the labor costs for other departments. We can quickly scirpt anything that other departments hire interns to do manually, the WOL rolled some good savings, we can use it on our segmented network over a single firewall hole punch, troubleshooting failed tasks is a breeze *** (big difference from SMS), realtime, … I can keep going.
BigFix is just plain easier to use.