Sophos AV - Console Necessary or Casper handles it all well?

I've used Sophos LOTS, the console on windows is really required, I centralises everything and provides proper reporting any alerts and secure updates..

Doesn't need to be a dedicated 'server' .. a VM will suffice... its pretty lightweight...

We're also using Sophos AV and the Windows console is very useful. It centrally handles our AV updates and emails our helpdesk queue when it finds viruses on the managed machines to report what Sophos found and what it did. From there, our Web Help Desk ticket system turns the email into a ticket and puts it in the help desk queue.

We're running the Sophos console in a Windows server VM and it works fine.

In general, all I need to do is install the Sophos AV software and then install a properly configured com.sophos.sau.plist into /Library/Sophos Anti-Virus so that the Sophos client knows the console's DNS address and authentication information. After the client checks in for the first time, the console handles management and updates automatically.

for Sophos AV, i'd want the console. For their WDE product, you could get away with managing it all from Casper.