SMS Key Competitive Advantages

Within the general management software space, many products compete with Systems Management Server (SMS). These asset management and change and configuration management products include Altiris’ Client Management Suite, Computer Associates’ Unicenter, IBM’s Tivoli, LANDesk’s LANDesk Management Suite, ManageSoft’s ManageSoft, Marimba’s Desktop Management Suite, Novadigm’s Radia, Novell’s ZENworks, OnDemand’s WinInstall, and ON Technology’s ON Command.

For organizations that primarily want to manage Windows-based computers, SMS has some important advantages over competing products that have little to do with how SMS compares on a feature-by-feature basis:

Bundled into Microsoft’s Core CAL. The bulk of the acquisition cost of SMS is in the Client Access Licenses (CALs) required for each managed computer. Because an SMS CAL is included in the Core CAL bundle sold to volume customers, Core CAL purchasers have low incremental software costs to implement SMS.

Close ties to Windows. Microsoft’s Enterprise Management Division, which includes the SMS team, although not part of the Windows division, maintains close ties with it, especially with the Windows Installer, Windows Update, and the Software Update Services teams. The SMS product team can coordinate its development activities with upcoming products from these teams. In particular, SMS’s patch management capability is an extremely important feature that requires support and coordination with the Windows Update and Office Update teams. It is hard for third-party products to duplicate these capabilities.