Network Computing is part of the Informa Tech Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

Dell Kace Applies Itself To The SMB Market: Page 2 of 2

The appliance-based approach provides a simple, turn-key solution for managing IT assets while eliminating infrastructure costs inherent in software-based solutions, such as costs associated with management consoles, operating systems, SQL licenses and system maintenance, says Brasen. "Although EMA generally recommends that enterprises invest in a centralized platform that provides a single interface for end-to-end IT management, we recognize that many smaller businesses are financially unable to adopt a consolidated solution set, so the scalability of the Dell KACE solution is critical. Organizations interested in asset management can adopt the M300 platform today and then easily expand to the full management appliance when appropriate in the future."

According to EMA’s research, the M300 platform provides all the functionality most commonly required by SMBs--including endpoint detection, asset discovery, application discovery and license management--for a broad range of Windows, Linux and Mac endpoints. "The weaknesses in the feature set would be in their ability to support requirements more commonly experienced in large enterprises, such as third-party CMDB [configuration management database] integration and support for large computing platforms, but very few SMBs will require this level of support."

Dennis Callaghan, an analyst with The 451 Group, suspects that Dell has gotten consistent feedback from the field that the K-Box is too much product and too expensive for the smaller of the SMB companies, 200 employees and below, so it came up with something smaller, simpler and cheaper. "They have to be expecting high-volume sales to make this effort worthwhile. I don’t know about setting the space on fire; we’re talking pretty small companies buying a necessary but not terribly sexy product, and they can only buy one of them."

While the M300 gives companies the basic tools they need, Callaghan adds, it will be something many companies will grow out of. "Once you surpass 200 nodes, you can’t buy another box; you have to upgrade to the K. Also, I wonder how well it will support users working remotely, which I have to think a lot of businesses of this size often have. In that case, I would think it would require some additional networking software, VPN, that sort of thing."

See more on this topic by subscribing to Network Computing Pro Reports The OS Mess (subscription required).