BigFix Reviews

It's mostly patch-inflated. For the company I currently work for, we manage about 7,000 servers, and we use BigFix Enterprise to do most of the relevant software updates and patches to stay within compliance and away from vulnerabilities for many of our product users.

I'm not sure how the company functioned before. I'm fairly new.

The product is easily accessible. We already did the network setup and things like that. It is to manage servers conveniently throughout the company if it's already listed on BigFix. Where it has the BigFix client on it, it's just a matter of sending the patches and waiting for it to run.

We have the management side of BigFix as well. Most of the time, we typically don't have any problem, however, every once in a while, we try to find out why a patch didn't work, and things like that. It helps us keep on top of things.

BigFix has always been easier to use when managing servers, especially when you deal with so many servers. We have 7,000. That's a lot of services to manage, and it's convenient to patch them all at once.

It's easy to set up. 

Once in a while, some servers don't get patched, usually from our end of things. Maybe a server hasn't been reported in the last few weeks, and we don't know whether that server has been decommissioned or not. That's not on in BigFix in particular.

The relevant language takes a little getting used to since it's not used anywhere else in the industry. It's just in the BigFix environment. If there's anything that could be improved, it would be making the relevant language more readable and more common. 

We'd like the solution to be agentless, similar to, for example, Ansible. 

I've used the solution for six months. 

It's been around for a while, according to what I've seen. It used to be an IBM product before the move to an HTC, so I'm pretty sure it doesn't have a lot of complications. It'll still be a pretty stable product moving on into the future.

For now, it seems like BigFix has been the most popular for server management.

Considering the fact that the company I work for is pretty big, if that's the product they're using for their server management, I would say it's offering pretty good scalability. It's a very scalable application for managing servers. Some people use it for one or two servers, or maybe 30 or 40. We use it for pretty much all the servers managed here, and to my knowledge, that's about 7,000. It used to be 10,000. However, we decommissioned a bunch of irrelevant servers.

We do not plan to expand usage just yet.

We talk to HTC from time to time. We do lunch and learns with them and take most of our questions directly. They're quite easily contactable for the company to reach out to and set up a meeting, and they're usually very helpful. They're a great resource.

I did not previously use a different solution. The company's been around for a long time, and it seems like everybody's just known BigFix to be one we used. I'm a bit newer to the company.

The implementation was fairly straightforward. Documentation was online, so you just have to read it and follow instructions. It's pretty straightforward.

The deployment strategy more or less depends on our current environment for the company. It took me a while, not due to BigFix, just due to the company restrictions for onboarding employees. You have to have permission to access this and that. So it took a little longer than it would if it was on a local system, my private system, or something like that. 

Currently, we have two teams that can handle deployment and maintenance. There are those on the Window side, for managing the Windows servers, and there's the Linux OS applications team. They both pretty much do the same thing for two different operating systems.

The deployment was handled in-house. However, we are looking to try and automate more in Ansible going forward. 

I don't deal directly with licensing. 

My understanding is that it is  affordable. We have had conversations about other licenses, and other applications like Splunk, and we know that one is more expensive. Pricing hasn't been anything that's even come up in conversation.

While we are using the on-premises deployment, we are moving towards the private cloud. 

I'd advise new users to read a lot of the documents before subscribing to their licensing. Read much of the documentation and know what use cases would work for you. Before you get into it, try the trial version, as it might help to test it out to see what it is.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. 

BigFix is primarily used for patch management, compliance, and security patches.

It covers multiple operating systems and helps patch customers with patch management services, alleviating patch management issues for our customers.

It covers multiple operating systems and helps with patch management. BigFix is also valuable for its inventory, license inventory, and compliance with server hardening.

BigFix could improve its asset management capabilities to discover assets, including hardware. More improvements could be made in asset management.

We have been reselling BigFix for three years.

The overall stability of the solution is good with no reported issues.

The solution is very easy to scale.

Customer support from HCL is satisfactory and not usually an issue.

Neutral

The installation is quite smooth and can be managed by one person, depending on the complexity and size of the environment.

Our project team managed the installation quite smoothly.

There has been a significant return on investment, particularly saving time and resources in patch management and compliance. It saves approximately 40% to 50% of time and resources.

The pricing is competitive, but not the most competitive.

We are using BigFix for sending patches to our servers and desktops, such as security and regular updates.

BigFix has enhanced our organization by demonstrating its efficacy in delivering software updates to endpoints. For example, Microsoft releases patches and we are able to easily make them available for our end-user computing platforms. Additionally, by utilizing the network inventory feature in BigFix, we have been able to substantially improve error percentages and completion statuses, and generate reports on patching percentages within a day and subsequent weeks.

The most valuable aspect of BigFix is its ability to patch desktops. While we have complete control over servers and can easily push patches to them, desktops pose a greater risk for leaks and vulnerabilities if patches are not installed in a timely manner. By using BigFix, we have significantly improved our ability to patch desktops, whether they are laptops, desktops, or other mobile devices used by end-users.

In order to derive maximum benefit from BigFix, it is essential that we configure all of its features and implement them effectively. If the automation could be improved we would be able to mitigate the risks associated with zero-day threats.

I have used BigFix within the last 12 months.

The solution is stable. The primary role of the solution is to patch the systems to the latest released security updates. We have not had any issues once we had deployed the solution correctly.

During our exploration of available solutions, we found that very few in the market offer comprehensive security features. In our evaluation of BigFix, we were particularly impressed with its VMware functionality, which far exceeded that of other solutions we considered. Rather than having to configure multiple solutions, BigFix provided us with basic security information and VMware management detection and response all in one. While the effectiveness of BigFix is certainly a key consideration, its ability to consolidate security features was a major factor in our decision to choose it.

I rate the stability of BigFix an eight out of ten.

I rate the scalability of BigFix an eight out of ten.

I rate the support of BigFix an eight out of ten.

Positive

We were using Microsoft SCCM prior to BigFix. We switched toBigFix because we wanted to have a complete solution. Microsoft SCCM was lacking features, such as managing the network endpoints, the discovery of the endpoints, VMware functionality, and Linux patching.

The deployment of BigFix is complicated. There are a lot of firewall ports that need to be configured and with a company with 50,000 employees, this can be a challenge. The configuration could improve by being more streamlined in the future.

We were assigned a project manager from the BigFix team who provided us with a comprehensive list of requirements for establishing effective communication. However, implementing these requirements across multiple countries and coordinating with various network teams posed a challenge, particularly in terms of opening the necessary communication channels through firewalls. This was a daunting task, especially if the application utilizes codes that are commonly blocked by firewalls.

The full deployment of the solution took three months.

The price of the solution is high. There are not any additional fees from the standard license.

I rate the price of BigFix a seven out of ten.

For those considering the use of BigFix, my advice is to pay close attention to the deployment phase. This involves identifying the necessary firewall ports and ensuring that the servers are configured to communicate with the internet to download patches. Proper deployment is critical for ensuring smooth operation in the future, as troubleshooting can be difficult once the solution is fully deployed.

I rate BigFix an eight out of ten.

It matches with the ILMT tool. We're trying to validate the licensing for IBM software. 

We're using the permanent discovery tool for septic for hardware and software too. For IBM, we have to use that due to the reporting of sub-capacity licenses.

It's mostly easy to use.

The sub-capacity licensing is the most valuable aspect of the product right now for us. 

It's good for reporting hardware and software. 

The solution is stable.

Technical support is helpful.

It scales well.

It's got some complexity when we're trying to figure out the IBM setup for software.

The sub-capacity licensing was a challenge for some of it. We had trouble getting it to calculate right.

It's better for hardware discovery. We get to increase its capabilities for hardware discovery. They need to enhance their sub-capacity capabilities, so we can use it easier for sub-capacity so that it is less of an art form and more of a science.

We'd like agents to be able to collect usage.

I've used the solution on and off for about eight years or so. I've used it for quite a while now. 

It is stable and reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze.

The solution has scaled well for what we are doing. 

Technical support has been very good. Sometimes they can't do things if it is not a function of the system; however, if the function of the system is possible, they help us and make it work. We are satisfied with the level of support we get. 

The initial setup was not overly complex. The complexity was the handling of configurations. 

The pricing was good. We had government pricing going into the project and it was pretty fair. 

I am using the latest version of the solution. I am not sure of the exact version number. I help different companies. Some are on the latest, and some aren't.

I'd advise people to understand what data they need and that the solution can actually pull that data in the right format for them.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. 

We used BigFix internally at my previous org. My current company is a BigFix reseller. A lot of people are looking at endpoint security now, but we primarily used BigFix for true endpoint management.

Endpoint security has become the main thing, but we used BigFix for patching and a lot of the other use cases in the past, and I think it worked pretty well. Obviously, the market has gotten much more crowded. 

The UEM component evolved into reunified endpoint management. Many of our customers used it for deployment and patching. HCL has a new endpoint security approach now, but it was really for managing that. 

BigFix can manage lost devices, so you can wipe them remotely to ensure the IP doesn't get out in public. Unified endpoint security is a new perspective. I know that HCL is also collaborating with IBM, but I'm not sure if there is any cooperation between them and MaaS360 or other endpoint components.

The main shortcoming of BigFix was integration with vulnerability management. If you had a vulnerability in your software and BigFix on the endpoint, you needed integration with Qualys, Tenable, or another vulnerability management solution to fix that. It was like, "Okay, we can identify issues, and get that information back from the endpoint, but what are we doing about it?" 

The stability has been solid when I've used BigFix with customers in the past. In that space, I don't think everybody is doing as much innovation as in other areas in the endpoint management or security market. 

I delineate between those two because endpoint management is a different use case. I think it's probably become a lot more important since the pandemic started.

We never had any challenges with scalability. Some of our customers had tens of thousands of endpoints. 

I used a few competitors a while back, but I don't know what LANDESK is up to these days. They were a big player in the market, but I don't know what other contenders are out there now.

The patching tool is $250 per client device per year. The inventory and discovery tool is $15 per client per year. They have a lifecycle management tool that is the central component for managing endpoints, which costs around $43 per year. BigFix Compliance is the other part, and that's also around $43.

I rate BigFix nine out of 10. I wouldn't recommend it to everyone. It depends on your infrastructure. If you have a pure Microsoft shop, you can probably get by deploying and managing endpoints their way. 

However, if you have a mixed environment of any kind, BigFix is good at what it does. Patch management is vital for security posture, so I wouldn't be surprised if BigFix is becoming increasingly popular.

It's primarily used for endpoint license monitoring. It's for the usage of applications, monitoring usage of CPUs, and stuff like this. When you have an audit, you can prove very fast what product you are using and what kind of CPU resources they are using.

There are other use cases. For example, I can find details for every use case where I need to know something about the software installed. Once, we had a Log4j bug. When the Log4j bug was live, we could use BigFix to analyze which of all the servers and clients this bug is used.

It's very usable for a technician, for an administrator. It's very straightforward. The usability is very close to everyday technical tools that you use as a systems administrator. So it's quite user-friendly. That said, it's not user-friendly for someone who is not working a lot with stuff like this. 

It's quite user-friendly if you are technical and if you just know what you want to do and to do the tasks. It's not user-friendly for someone who is a new user or something like this. It's specialized and user-friendly.

Maybe the online help could be improved. 

It'd be nice if you would have a lot more phrases and keywords that you could search for and find answers with the help.

It would be nice if there could be an extra interface. Not really to script something. However, if you want to make a drag-and-drop script, something like this, that would be quite useful for us.

I've been using the solution for one year now.

It is pretty stable and reliable. That's not a problem at all. 

The end users are all the teams. We have a Windows team, Linux team, application team, et cetera. All the teams work with the outputs of this tool. There might be 40 to 50 people or something working with this product.

You can have relays, and then you can scale it. It's a scalable system.

I work with it regularly, every week.

Their online help mechanisms and documentation need to be improved. It's hard to find documented answers to your questions as the search functionality isn't ideal. 

That said, their direct support is excellent. 

Positive

I have not worked with any other similar product.

I did not set up the system. It was set up when I got the task to take care of this product. It was already installed.

The product itself doesn't require a lot of maintenance. Of course, the server and client updates would be good as the tool has clients. The clients install them on all machines. However, the topic itself needs a lot of maintenance. If you want the data in BigFix to be up to date in case of an audit, you have to take care of the insights of BigFix. BigFix itself is running. However, the list of the servers needs to be correct, et cetera.

It was set up within the company. There was no outside assistance.

I don't handle the licensing aspect of the solution. I can't speak to the price. 

I am working with the latest update. I'm an end-user of the product.

I'm totally satisfied. For the use of the product that we have, it's totally working. It's fine.

I would recommend the solution if you are using a lot of IBM software in your company. If you are using BigFix and you have the client installed on every machine, you are nearly always audit-safe from out of the box. I would recommend it to everybody who has to take care of a lot of IBM product licensing. For everybody who has a lot of IBM products to be licensed, I would recommend using BigFix.

I'd rate it eight out of ten. 

We are using BigFix for desktop management, endpoint management, inventory, application control, remote control, building machines, master images, OS deployment, and software distribution.

The most valuable and essential features of BigFix are all of them, they are needed when serving the purpose of the desktop operation framework. We cannot run operations without patching or without having an appropriate mechanism for deploying software, et cetera. The features all serve their purpose for our use case.

The one feature that provided the most value and efficiency would be patch management. It's the most powerful feature in BigFix.

BigFix can improve the way machines report back to the console. In the external relay management environment, it has become more of a hybrid environment with most of the machines not being on-site. The need of having public-facing reporting items interconnected is becoming more and more crucial. In general, the reporting could use some enhancement.

In a future release, it would be a benefit to have a cloud-based solution with external cloud-based relays. Additionally, having a remote control in the cloud feature would be interesting.

I have been using BigFix for approximately four years.

BigFix is stable. However, there have been a few minor issues, such as the relay's not reporting.

The scalability of BigFix is good. How deployment is not that large in size. The exercises that we do are pretty limited.

We have approximately 30 administrators using this solution.

Our company has a good relationship with the reseller that we work with and the support they provide to us is fair.

The initial setup of BigFix was easy because we started from scratch, we didn't have a CCM before. The deployment of BigFix is a powerful feature, it is simple to do.

The price of BigFix could be lower. However, I am always seeking a lower price.

My advice to others is for them to take a holistic approach while designing. Don't look at one functionality, but look at the environment as a framework. View it from all aspects and merge operation with security. Don't let your focus be on the compliance of your environment or on the operation element alone, take other aspects into consideration, such as the security aspect, which is fast remediation, vulnerability management, and end-of-life management.

I rate BigFix an eight out of ten.

We use this solution for vulnerability management and patch management. We use BigFix to get information about the vulnerabilities that exist in the environment. We complete prioritization of those vulnerabilities and provide recommendations to the remediation teams. We assist the teams in case of any issues with remediation.

If our customer has a high number of critical vulnerabilities inside their environment, we use BigFix to do the patching. We are able to decrease the number of high and critical vulnerabilities by at least 30% in six months. This is a huge improvement and makes the environment more secure. 

The patch management and the BigFix Inventory have been the most valuable features.

The BigFix Inventory could have an increased scope regarding the tools that can be detected. It does not cover all the possible software installed in Asset. We used the BigFix module in a ILMT module to have the proper coverage. If we had the two of them combined, this would really assist with the inventory of software. 

Sometimes we may have a few issues with the fixlet Relevance where the Windows patches sometimes identifies as a false positive. We have opened tickets with the support team. They fixed that as soon as possible.

This is a stable solution. The only issues that we have had in the past with BigFix is with the sizing. If you don't perform the right sizing of the BigFix server, you may have performance issues. We have had no major issues with the performance itself.

This is a scalable solution. They are releasing a lot of improvements in the latest versions of BigFix. That will help us monitor how the tool is performing and if it would require change or increase of the hardware or the environment to make it run in a smoother way. The scalability has improved a lot.

The initial setup is straightforward. It involves sizing and designing the architecture to put BigFix in place and set up the proper relays. We experienced no issues doing this.

To begin the setup, we tried to identify the baseline of the customer to see how many endpoints the customer has. We also looked at the locations to know if we do need to put a low-level or top-level relay in place in each one of the data centers. In our case, as it's a huge environment, we set up two top-level relays and then a low-level relay in a different data center to not put a high load into network bandwidth when we try to transfer patches over the network.

We implemented this solution in-house.

The extent to which we use the different features of BigFix depends on the needs of our customers. We often propose new features when the need arises. 

BigFix is one of my favorite tools. I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

We use BigFix for deploying applications for updating, setting up configurations, making modifications, or customizing Windows. For example, what are the applications that need to run, and what configure is needed.

The most valuable point is when you deploy an application, you have to make sure that the application has been deployed to all computers and that is working perfectly. This solution works well at deployments. 

Other solutions can have failures, such as ManageEngine, and you have to deploy the application again. In BigFix, once the computer has communicated with the BigFix server, the agent workstation, you can be sure that the application will be deployed and delivered properly.

Sometimes the workstations communicate back to the BigFix server two or three days in a week or something similar. Sometimes there can be a delay reporting back to the server for a variety of reasons, such as users turning their computer off when they go home. When the user comes back and turns the computer back on BigFix needs to synchronize and sometimes it can take some time, approximately one week. The communication between the agent and the server should be faster, there is room for improvement in this area.

I have been using BigFix for approximately two years.

BigFix is reliable and stable, it is perfect.

Performance-wise is the best. When you have to do deployments you are sure that all the workstations will receive it, even though that there is sometimes a delay in reporting back to the server. The only time the deployment would not work is if the computer is decommissioned or not available.

BigFix is simple to scale, we are using the solution regularly. We use it every other week whenever we have meetings, we rely on it.

We have approximately 10 technicians and 3,000 users who receive a patch or use the solution in some way.

We have not had any big issues that would need the support. However, we did have some minor issues and the support was good and responsive.

I have used ManageEngine previously.

In my usage, I have found BigFix is more professional than ManageEngine. The reason that I'm saying this is when you deploy an application, you are sure and you are guaranteed that all workstations will receive it. However, for the ManageEngine, for some reason, you will find it may fail for 13 workstations. You might have to redeploy again, otherwise, you have to do it manually.

One of the positives of ManageEngine is it can be easy for users to deploy an application compared to BigFix.

The deployment process of BigFix was straightforward. You need to have a small number of programming skills or scripting skills to complete it. If you have skills, it is very easy to deploy. For somebody who's experienced, and has knowledge of some programming or scripting skills, it's very easy.

There were approximately three people, the vendors, and our technical teams that did the implementation.

BigFix requires specific maintenance, whenever there is a new release we manage it.

You are charged per server and per workstation when using BigFix. ManageEngine is a lot cheaper than BigFix. There are some additional costs, such as support.

I recommend BigFix as long as they have the budget. If they don't have that much money, they can use ManageEngine, which is satisfying for small and medium companies. For example, companies that have 250 computers. I have used ManageEngine at companies that had multiple locations. You can use some ManageEngine on one central location and then deploy it to all your branch offices.

I rate BigFix a nine out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for patching.

The solution offers great patching, even for third-party patching. Many organizations know how to patch Microsoft products. However, the biggest benefit for BigFix is third-party patching. It can patch Notepad and Java - all of these third-party products that are non-Mircosoft.

It's stable. 

The implementation process is simple. 

It can scale. 

I'm not sure if there are any extra features needed.

It could use better integration with Hypervisor products like VMware. This is where it is lacking right now. There are articles available explaining how to integrate with VMware. However, it's my understanding that it is somewhat difficult. 

I am not sure if this is available on the cloud or not. 

I've been using the solution for three years. 

The solution is stable. I'd rate it eight out of ten. We've had no issues with stability. Performance-wise, it has been fine. 

One of the issues that my guys come across is it can take up to 48 hours before the Microsoft patches are available in BigFix since we are a day ahead in New Zealand. 

I'm not sure how many people are using the solution in our organization. 

The scalability is okay. I'd rate the solution seven or eight out of ten in terms of the ease of scaling. My experience with scaling has been pretty good. 

There is a lot of web access and online groups available, which are quite good. I don't necessarily have access to support and, therefore, cannot speak to their level of support.

We do have an internal team that would be able to get hold of support.

I'm also familiar with ECCM. However, it only patches Microsoft products. We've also used BatchPatch, used for pushing scripts, among other solutions.

I helped with the installation process for two customers. The installation was reasonably swift; however, the actual consideration and moving the patching products across into BigFix that can take a long time. The configuration took six to 12 months. 

A massive gain for BigFix would be if it was able to go and interrogate products like SCCM and import the patching sequences and groups, it would make it much easier. 

I'd rate the initial setup process seven out of ten. It does take quite a long time to bring everything across from other products. 

I'm not sure of the exact licensing structure. It might be about $23 a client. Some of the modules, such as security compliance and lifecycle, may cost extra. For example, the integration with BigFix and Micorosft Defender may require an extra license. 

I'm an avid BigFix fan, and we use it in my company quite a bit.

We're the biggest vendor in New Zealand, and we have it installed in our organization and fed out to clients. 

This is our patching product of choice. All new customers get BigFix implemented, and existing customers are encouraged to have it as well. 

We're an integrator. 

We're completing a new client install and working on the configuration of patching, and this is the best tool we've ever implemented for this customer. I love this tool. It could just be a bit more accessible.

I'd recommend the solution. I'd rate it nine out of ten.