Hi everyone,
We are in the process of reviewing tools to assist with management of oour SharePoint environments.We are looking at a tool that can assist with the day-to-day management of the farm, sites, and content. What we also need is reporting on user access, implement setting accross sites/libraries (e.g. versioning etc.).
We have a relatively small farm, and let’s assume finances is not an issue. We also need good support, since we do not have the appetite or the resources to struggle with a 3rd party app when things goes pear-shaped.
We’ve had demo’s by both these parties, but I’d like to hear from “the people on the ground” 🙂
Sales people tell you all the nice tales, which is right, but I need an objective (well, as far as possible) view from the community. Your assistance and comments would be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance!
There’s going to be a lot of opinions thrown around on topics about vendors.
Which product is better overall? As people have said it’s going to depend.
I am actually looking at the best from both tools. While I can say that DocAve has strengths so does ControlPoint. In my original post I had just started to scratch the service between the two products. Each has merit in an organization. You just have to find how best they work, and how, really, they will work for your company.Â
I will give Axceler this; they are much better at communication, support, and training. I get the feel they will work with their customers to make sure they are successful.
Still working through POCs.
Just my 2 cents, but no question. Go ControlPoint. AvePoint makes very good products but I like Axceler’s better. But its the incredible Axceler tech support, customer service and training via Axceler Academy that make the difference. They are always there and really understand how to treat customers. Calls are immediately returned and they bend over backwards to help. From a technical perspectives I find ControlPoint more feature rich and much easier to use. And I am a major SharePoint geek 🙂
We selected Axceler Control Point as it provided us with a very flexible platform that would not only allow us to manage SharePoint centrally from the team, but to provide Site Collection Admins a subset of reports and actions to allow them to manage their site collections. We have also participated in the AxcelerAcademy so we can take full advantage of the tools we purchased.
BTW, I wanted to address the specific issues that Ken brought up…
Want to refresh content from Prod to Test to Dev? Only Doc Ave Does it all.Â
Change Manager! Newest addition to ControlPoint
Want to move content around, backup the destination before the action; Only DocAve Does.
Change Manager again, they just don’t touch the source.
You have Managed Meta Data to transfer around?
Change Manager does this.
The area where I’m still yet to test / score is User Permission Administration.
ControlPoint is very powerful here, their solutions Engineers will cover this on a demo call, but I believe this was one of the very first features that they instituted and it works great! Â
We have Axceller and I have to bring down the whole farm whenever we have to do an upgrade.
It’s an IIS reset, not a reboot. Your environment will be unavailable for less than 10 seconds.
Axceler’s ControlPoint has to do a discovery of the content, which can impact performance.Â
This is scheduled overnight. And isn’t actually necessary.
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I’m a fan of Axceler’s and AvePoint… They both have issues but it comes down to the Admin and configuration IMO.  I’m at a client site right now where a support ticket has been opened with AvePoint for 3 months now and the client doesn’t have any backup using AvePoint.  I had to use my MVP status just to get the ticket escalated.  I’ve used Axceler’s products in 80% of my engagements and again with the proper configuration and architecture to support the product it’s fantastic.Â
