Review: Unicenter

Installing Unicenter takes a little longer than average, but the process is glitch-free and logical, setting the tone for the use of the product.

For those with serious asset management and auditing requirements, CA Unicenter will surely prove itself a valuable ally.

Like any comprehensive, sophisticated tool, there will be a learning curve. However, this will not be too onerous with Unicenter, because everything is well documented and properly explained.

As well as a good online help file, there is a succinct and helpful integral tutorial section, which can be accessed any time.

This is clearly an enterprise-level product designed for serious and in-depth use. This is confirmed by the detail of information it quickly recovers about your network environment. This is presented via an attractive, paned console interface featuring a tree view on the left that can be toggled to show history or bookmarks, and an adjacent detail section that offers different information depending upon the task.

If you get stuck, you just pop up the tutorial pane and Unicenter will walk you through. All the expected functionality is there to run audits against your computing environment, either manually or against schedules, plus software metering to understand usage and licensing issues, scripting facilities, and much more.

The ease with which specific queries can be set up and run is impressive, enabling users to find almost any information about their computing environment.

The reports section is equally comprehensive, with a similar paned dialog and a portfolio of genuinely useful pre-configured reports that can be customized, and are saved in a logical, intuitive and time-saving way.

CA Unicenter impresses as a well-considered, professional application that should find a ready home in many organizations.

For:

Depth of functionality, robustness, presentation.

Nothing.

A serious asset-management product.