End User Review: Symantec / Altiris Asset Management Solution V 6.0 [61%]

Symantec Altiris Asset Management Solution V 6.0

Estate Size:  ~ 20,000 (52% Desktops, 33% Laptops, 15% Servers)
Reviewer: ITAM Professional, Practical ITAM, Finance

General Feedback

Strengths:
It has scaled up well. It is flexible and configurable, it connects to other data sources well. The discoverable information is generally of use, accessible, and relatively accurate. They make it easy to get data out and put it in MS Excel for analysis.
Weaknesses:
Discoverable information can overwrite manually entered information, leading to data errors. It is IE based and is thus very slow. The barcode functionality is obviously an after-thought.
What feature would you add if you had the choice?
Provide wireless access for scanners, as well as a simplified scanner and console interfaces for easier manual updates.
Support or implementation:
I believe that we have pushed this product to the limits, and the support Altiris have provided us has been very helpful. We are fortunate in having an extremely expert Altiris developer on staff, which also helps. Implementation of the AMS piece of Altiris has been… interesting! We have found a lot of discrepancies between our existing records and the data actually in Altiris. This is because Altiris will change records to match discovered information even if this conflicts with existing data. For instance serial numbers of assets will change as a result of a harddrive swap, and rather than question the change, Altiris blindly accepts it and updates records. We are constantly running exception reports to pick up data changes, remediate them, and understand why they occur.
If you had the opportunity to choose ITAM technology again would you choose the same product?
Yes. It has not been an easy road, but I do not believe any other technology would do any better. Altiris was chosen as part of the selection process for a desktop management suite, and although ITAM has been the most difficult to implement of the ‘streams’ of the project, it has performed as well as could be expected overall given the requirements we expected of it.

Rating

Implementation Success: 6/10
Day to day ease of use: 4/10
Performance: 4/10
Resources required: 6/10
Support: 8/10
Meeting requirements: 8/10
Overall Satisfaction: 7/10

Total Score: 43/70 [61%]

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