The new changes to KACE Cloud reflects what Quest believes to be a completely modernized approach to patch management, where customers select the patches they want and use KACE’s catalogue rather than Windows to schedule and maintain them.
Today, Quest Software is announcing the general availability of what it is terming a reimagined KACE Cloud platform that will transform endpoint management with automated patching for all devices in the cloud. The service will now provide automated endpoint patching and management for all cloud-based devices, with its offerings covering 65 new vendors, 350 applications, and over 10,000 different patches.
“I’ve been with KACE since before the Dell acquisition,” said Kent Feid, Senior Director of Product Management at Quest. “KACE was originally founded in 2003 with the original K1000, now the K system Management Appliance, and we added more system management functionality over the years. 2006 was our first patching product, for both OS and applications. We have been in the patching game for a very long time.”
KACE was than acquired by Dell (just before Quest, which was a separate acquisition) then divested out in 2016 as part of Quest, initially owned by Francisco Partners, and since last year, by Clearlake Capital. They are now within Quest’s information system management group, one of three groups in the company, together with One Identity and the Microsoft platform.
“Since divesting out of Dell, we began a project that stemmed out of enterprise data management and mobile device management, which could stand up a product from scratch,” Feid said. “We have now rebranded it as KACE Cloud. It is cloud native, and based on the Azure stack.”
KACE’s legacy flagship products remain, but the company now sees KACE Cloud as the growth product within their organization.
“We feel that this will further allow us to accelerate adoption,” Feid said.
Kent Feid, Senior Director of Product Management at Quest
“KACE Cloud before this evolution of the product was a feature relevant competitor, but it and all the other modern management solutions were limited to the capability sets provided by the manufacturer,” Feid continued. “Intune and Workspace One were all hindered by this. The approach that they took to patching relied on traditional patch schedules and jobs. Our modern management doesn’t rely on Windows updates to deploy Windows patches. We can interact and select the patches you want and deploy these natively from the cloud using a modernized approach.”
Feid said that with KACE Cloud they have built a proprietary system that lets customers select the exact patches that they want, which determines the identity of the user, allows for the fact that all devices can be completely remote and takes into account the fact that all networks are basically insecure.
“Our proprietary system is used as the trigger to deploy patches – not Windows,” he stated. “Gone are the days where schedules must be run. We don’t care if the network is secure or where the device is located. People don’t have to give up management capabilities at the expense of security and compliance.” Thus, the enhancements require no infrastructure to install, manage and update, and customers can get complete, granular endpoint management at half the cost of competitor products.
