How does Patch Manager compare to other products

tallyrich

My team is evaluating patch / update management. We currently use WSUS for Microsoft patching and are pretty happy with it. We use SCCM to push out packages for 3rd party applications, but I understand it's not an easy process, nor as automated as we would like. The current brand of "eww and ahh" is Shavlik, but seeing we have several Solarwinds products already I'm asking that they evaluate that as well.

So how do the various tools for 3rd party application patching stack up? Which one has the most automated process and applications that it supports? Which one is the most "user friendly?" What other criteria would you suggest to use for evaluating the right tool for this job.

For sizing we have about 2000 users, 400 servers across 2 business units (lots of very specific applications that require individual, and sometimes several servers). Our Infrastructure team is currently 9 members.

frgpugs

Shavlik is good and has more out of the box third party catalog support than patch manager has.

The easiest and largest catalog in me experience is probably PDQ deploy.

Solarwinds patch manager is pretty good for third party catalog out of the box support though and you can create custom packages even if that process can be difficult and you wont get support from solarwinds to do so.  The really great thing about solarwinds is the reporting aspect.  Its honestly second to none that I have used and very flexible, although again there is a learning curve to creating complicated reports.  Solarwinds PM also has an SCCM extension pack although I do not use SCCM so I dont know how well that works or what it all incorporates.

I also cannot ignore the fact that it seems that there are very little resources given to patch manager internally from solarwinds so there isnt much development (just my perception at least) and lately the team changed and has not done a good job keeping things current.  It used to be one day after adobe or oracle released a package we would get it in the catalog but its hit and miss now.  The community is good but ever since lawrence garvin died a few years ago we dont have a real strong vocal expert in the area, although kellytice does a pretty good job trying to give answers.