Large IT departments are in a different environment than small teams. Endpoint volume is larger, device distribution across various offices, remote sites and data centres is complex, concurrent technicians are higher and compliance and auditing compliances can be much more stringent on the solution. Ten-person teams may do just fine with remote support software, but try putting the same software in a department that manages thousands of devices over dozens of locations and it fails spectacularly.
This guide rates six remote support platforms at scale and (a little) in depth for the larger IT department on scalability, concurrent session handling, enterprise integrations, access governance and centralized management across large and distributed device estates.
For IT leadership comparing platforms at this scale, a baseline understanding of the capability landscape is useful before diving into individual products. An overview covering the feature set and use cases relevant to remote support software for large teams provides the grounding context that makes platform-by-platform comparison more productive.
Enterprise-Scale Remote Support Differences
Problem-solving with remote support software is a problem that scales non-linearly to the scale of your IT department. One hundred concurrent sessions may work fine on a platform but could easily cause latency or administrative bottlenecks at ten. A permissions model that suffices for a flat organization rapidly falls apart with multiple tiers of technicians, regional teams, and distinct business lines requiring different access.
Consolidation is a persistent challenge for large IT departments. Research into enterprise endpoint management practices found that organizations using more than 11 tools to manage and secure their endpoints face disproportionate blind spots, with half of those organizations reporting more than 20% of their devices are unmanaged. The data on enterprise endpoint management challenges makes clear that tool sprawl directly correlates with reduced visibility and increased risk, a dynamic that makes the choice of a consolidated, scalable remote support platform an operational security decision as much as a productivity one.
Beyond consolidation, large IT departments increasingly need their remote support tools to align with identity-centric access models. The principle of verifying every user and device before granting access rather than assuming trust based on network location, is increasingly applied to the remote support context. Understanding the broader framework of zero-trust access helps IT leaders evaluate how well a remote support platform’s authentication model aligns with the direction enterprise security architecture is moving.
Splashtop
Splashtop scales well across IT departments, supporting numerous technician teams, centralized device group management and detailed role-based access controls from one administrative console.
The permission model of the platform enables IT admins to specify exactly which technicians can access which device groups, what features they are allowed to utilize in a remote session and what administrative capabilities each level of the IT hierarchy has access to. This granular level of access control is critical in large organizations where first-line support, systems engineers and infrastructure administrators may all use the same remote support platform; each with distinctly different needs for access.
Comprehensive session logging includes full technician identity, timestamps, and session duration for every connection event. Logs can be exported to integrate with other SIEM platforms to satisfy auditing and compliance requirements often associated with regulated industries. Admin-level enforcement of multi-factor authentication, as well as SSO integration with leading identity providers, provide centralized access management with other enterprise controls.
Splashtop’s multi-platform support, which encompasses Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android ensures that technicians can access any endpoint regardless of OS or physical location making it a scalable solution for large IT departments managing geographically distributed device estates around the world. You are familiar with the situation, as session quality is maintained regardless of occasional fluctuation in network conditions, something which counts when technicians connect to remote sites or support home-based employees.
NinjaOne
NinjaOne: NinjaOne is a remote monitoring and management solution that has been widely adopted within large internal IT enterprises as well as by MSPs managing large client portfolios. Remote support is bundled in a larger endpoint management platform which includes patch management, automated remediation, backup, and software deployment.
It has a role-based access model that scopes permissions down to organization level and devie groups too in the platform itself. Some organizations want to limit technicians by client organization or types of devices, and administrators can configure those roles accordingly; this is particularly true of IT departments containing multiple business units or regional divisions within the enterprise.
NinjaOne provides a centralized management console that gives IT leadership visibility across the entire device estate to monitor technician activity, session history, and reporting on support operations at scale. Integration with key PSA and ticketing platforms links session activity to the formal incident management record to fulfill the audit trail requirements of enterprise compliance programmes.
Let us understand a little more about the architecture built for the cloud, deployment in distributed environments with no additional burden of operating on-prem infrastructure to broker access from remote.
Atera
Atera combines RMM and remote support into a single, technician seat-priced platform ideal for those that want predictable costs as they scale up their device estate. This pricing model provides budget certainty that per-device models lack for large IT departments managing thousands of endpoints, where a technician headcount is well-defined.
It has concurrent sessions on multiple technicians, allowing IT managers to see session reports across the entire team. Meanwhile Role-based access controls determine which technician can get into which device groups and what administrative functions can be performed in the console.
Atera’s ticketing system is all-in-one and connected to support sessions, building a clear audit trail from the time of creation until it is resolved. It also runs continuous automated patch management and alert monitoring that allows technicians to understand the health of the device before they connect, saving valuable time in diagnosing issues during any active support session.
Atera’s all-in-one architecture reduces integration overhead and vendor management complexity for large IT organizations looking to consolidate remote support, endpoint monitoring, and ticketing into a single platform instead of discrete point solutions.
ManageEngine Remote Access Plus
ManageEngine Remote Access Plus is an enterprise remote support platform built for scale, aimed at the requirements of large IT departments. Designed with features that fit the complexity of operation for non-trivial support coverage.
It can also master concurrent sessions with multiple technicians, and features a centralized console for real-time visibility of current technician activity, which technician is available, and which devices in the estate are connected. For compliance and training, session recording is available and all connection events are captured in detailed audit logs which can be reviewed and exported.
Access governance: Role-based permissions at the technician and device group level, with Active Directory integration support that provides automatic user and group management syncing with the organization’s existing directory infrastructure. This is especially useful in big organizations, where the members of the IT team are subject to change rather often and you would want to keep access without manually configuring it per user.
Remote diagnostic functionalities are not limited to just screen sharing from inside the session interface, technicians can pull in device information (e.g. CPU utilization), running processes, event logs, and hardware diagnostics reducing the number of separate tools required to further investigation on these failed state types that are mostly complex in nature.
Dameware Remote Everywhere
SolarWinds also offers an enterprise-level cloud-based remote support platform called Dameware Remote Everywhere. It supports attended and unattended sessions at scale on Windows, macOS, and Linux with a set of IT support-centric features that work at scale.
It enables technicians to remotely access device event logs, hardware diagnostics, process management and system information while the session is open instead of having to switch back and forth between tools during advanced troubleshooting. Session recording and chat logging provide a complete digital repository of support interactions for compliance and quality review.
The integration to IT service management and ticketing platforms associates session activity to the formal support workflow. You are equipped with role-based access controls and team reporting for the IT leadership to manage technician permissions from a single interface, as well as measure how support operations are functioning.
For large IT departments already operating in the SolarWinds ecosystem, Dameware Remote Everywhere naturally connects with wider IT operations monitoring and infrastructure management capabilities.
AnyViewer
AnyViewer is a remote access and support platform that sits on the softer end of the spectrum. Across its commercial tiers, it includes unattended and attended sessions, file transfer, and multi-monitor support all with a simple set up that’s best suited for smaller teams or those that don’t have a lot of technical overhead around deployment.
Everything you want is there, but for large IT departments, AnyViewer’s feature set and administrative capabilities lags enterprise-class alternatives profiled above. Key Pitfalls The permission model, reporting capabilities, and integration prerequisites for ITSM may be more restrictive making it challenging to manage multiple sessions across expansive technician teams, authenticated audit trails, or govern access over complex organizational structures.
IT departments considering AnyViewer at the enterprise level should perform a controlled proof of concept in realistic conditions including concurrent session load, permission management across technician tiers and log export for compliance before moving forward with a deployment.
Assessing At Scale: What To Test Or Not To Test- Before You Slip
In large IT departments, the POC (proof of concept) is king over any feature list. While demonstrably strong in controlled demonstrations, platforms can show limitations around scalability constraints, administrative bottlenecks and/or integration limits against real operational conditions.
That is you need to run the first test for concurrent session performance under load. Sets a maximum number of simultaneous sessions expected to be running and checks on a bot by bot basis connection stability, session quality and console responsiveness Push the permission model to match the real organizational chart of your organization: OOTB should have multiple levels of technician, device groups segmented by BUs or geography, and restrictions based on roles as they exist in the real world. Validate that logs for the session are being generated, can be exported in the required format, and can integrate with the SIEM or log management platform currently being used. Finally, you need to test the SSO and identity provider in association with what you are actually going to use in some part of the directory infrastructure by checking how user provisioning and deprovisioning workflows are carried out.
Frequently Asked Questions
How to Choose Remote Support Software for Large IT Department: What features are Important?
The three dimensions that matter the most are scalability, centralized management & access governance. It has to support massive concurrency across numerous technicians, which is particularly demanding at times of greater workloads; it requires a centralized console, giving the IT leadership visibility into the health and status of all devices in the estate; and it requires finer-grained role-based permissioning that mirrors how an IT organization actually works.
How can an IT department with many sub-units conduct software evaluation at scale?
Out of the box run a structured POC against what you would see in production not vendor provided features. Test Load on Parallel Session, Cross-permission Management Between Multiple Layers of Technician, Log Export + SIEM Compatibility and SSO with the Existing Identity Infrastructure Have different support tier technicians review the solution, as usability issues that may only surface in an administrator assessment will be missed.
In a big IT environment–can one remote support platform kill multiple point solutions?
Tools that tie together remote support, endpoint monitoring and patch management, ticketing together minimize tool sprawl and reduce the burdens of maintaining integrations across multiple individual systems. However the tradeoff here is that there is not one platform to rule them all – no one system can take out a category-based point solution in each area with the same depth of capability. Large IT departments can evaluate which capabilities are critical enough to need best-of-breed depth and what capabilities work well with a consolidated platform.
