BigFix as Inventory Discovery Tool

Interested in comments from anyone using BigFix for inventory discovery.

  1. For how many devices, on what platform(s)?
  2. Level of satisfaction? (H/M/L)
  3. Strengths?
  4. Weaknesses?
  5. Suggestions for optimal (effective) use?

Thank you for any insights you can share!

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Hi Sirwin,

Starting with a question - by Inventory discovery do you mean hardware inventory, software inventory or both??

Will share my feedback once I get some clarity from you.

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Hi Jeetamar! Ideally, both software and hardware; else, either one. Intent is to use for both.

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BigFix is being used in my organization to inventory both software & hardware for the server estate (~ 25 - 30 K).

Level of Satisfaction - L - why -
Software Inventory We first need to understand that BigFix is not a software inventory tool, the primary function of BigFix is patching. The interpretation of software signature in BigFix is different and not accurate. One example is Oracle. One cannot determine if Oracle options/packs are active/not active using BigFix inventory. And moreover, BigFix is not one of Oracle approved inventory tools.

Hardware Inventory - BigFix is an agent-based tool and can only discover the assets which are on the same network. your unknown, legacy, R&D etc environments cannot be discovered by BigFix if you do not have agents installed on those instances.

I don’t yet know if you already got a SAM tool (SNOW/FlexNet/SmartTrack/ServiceNow) in your organization. If you are planning for a SAM tool, check out the options of using their discovery tools as well.

Happy to connect on this if you need further discussion as many observations are dependent on what you currently got in your organization and planning.

Thanks,
Amarjeet

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Sherry,

Happy to share my experiences as well. We use both Flexera and BigFix, though opted away from BigFix for software compliance work for many reasons. Just doesn’t have the rigor needed for mature compliance, license optimization work in my opinion. Challenges with Bigfix were getting version, editions correct, usage if employed was very compute intensive vs the very light weight from Flexera. We struck a balance to use BigFix for hardware (though we still pull HW via Flexera). BigFix is our configuration management, package deployment, etc, etc. Flexera our mainstay for SAM

Hope that helps,

Bryant

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Amarjeet is spot on where it concerns Oracle. Bigfix not even a consideration for this software publisher

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Thanks for your reply - useful information!

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Thanks for your reply - very useful information!

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I have used BigFix in my previous organization for almost 3.5 years and had the same experience what Amarjeet has mentioned.

One thing I noticed, many people consider it as a Software Asset Management tool whereas it is more of a deployment tool.

Thanks,
Abhijeet

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Thank you Abhijeet, this is helpful and consistent with my understanding.

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