KACE had a booth at MMS 2008 this year, with Bob Kelly from Appdeploy.com manning the booth the entire time. I saw some folks stop by to chat there, and I dropped by a few times to check on Bob, and even sat through a <ahem> long demo.
The KBOX is cool. There's no disputing that. Is it a replacement to SMS/ConfigMgr/OpsMgr/Mom? Nope. In fact, the individual who shared the demo with me indicated that their primary target market was smaller organizations who are currently using LANDesk and Altiris.
So, why in the following blog post do the KACE folks try to blast Microsoft for it's "vegetable soup" product lines?
http://rmeinhardt.typepad.com/four_minute_mile/2008/05/apple-apple-eve.html
Even more interesting, as you read that blog post, is that some event folks attempted to kick the KACE representation out of the Expo center. Yep...it's true. I was a witness, and offered my help to Bob to make sure that didn't happen. That would have been a silly thing, if it happened. Paying $10,000 for a booth should ensure you can get your message across without being bullied.
But, I think the message is muddled a bit. It's not that the KBOX doesn't integrate with System Center, it's that the KACE folks have wrangled Appdeploy.com into the product so that Appdeploy.com doesn't integrate with anything else. If you walked by the booth the KACE folks used the Appdeploy.com name to pull you in. It really looked like an Appdeploy.com-only booth.
The blog post also suggests that Microsoft is threatened by KACE. Seriously. Blogs are great. They allow folks to provide commentary without having to produce any real data. The person who demo'd the KBOX for me even suggested that he was concerned why folks would even choose System Center Essentials over the KBOX. I'll agree with that. The KBOX seems a bit easier to manage from an upgrade/update standpoint. Updates are sent out through the Internet over a link to KACE. I wasn't able to discuss what kind of testing KACE does prior to updating boxes, but I'm sure it's a pretty rigorous testing procedure.
One other thing that was really hammered home during the demo was how quickly KACE can adapt to industry changes. When you hear about a new, cool technology in the industry, such as Virtualization, you hear about the KBOX providing it pretty quickly after the buzz. KACE definitely has a very quick development cycle, in my opinion. There's only one small thing wrong with that -- no innovation. If you're always developing your product based on industry buzz, or what Microsoft is doing next, how satisfied can you really be at the end of the day?
Based on the blog post, Appdeploy.com is the "largest free community for Windows systems administrators."
I don't ever want to jump into an "us versus them" discussion -- and I won't. You folks can pretty much decide for yourselves, and you do with your patronage and massive traffic. But, checking out the KBOX during the demo, seeing how Appdeploy.com is integrated into their system, knowing the average stats on the web site, and knowing where KACE's market share actually sits, I wouldn't want to put Appdeploy.com's success solely in the hands of the KBOX, and tie traffic and popularity to sales of the KBOX.
KACE should work with Microsoft - not against it. There are things that the KBOX does well -- like Macs. In my opinion, KACE should work with Microsoft to integrate Appdeploy.com into ConfigMgr. Make Appdeploy.com multi-platform just like the KACE folks provide in their product.