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Government · head to head

CentralSquare Asset Management vs Semperis

CentralSquare Asset Management logo

CentralSquare Asset Management

Government

Public sector enterprise asset management, sold for years as Lucity

From
On request
Free plan
No
Full reviewWebsite
Semperis logo

Semperis

Cybersecurity

Identity threat detection and Active Directory forest recovery for AD, Entra ID and Okta, from a privately held US vendor.

From
On request
Free plan
No
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: CentralSquare Asset Management the Lucity name is now only a suffix on a CentralSquare product, so long-standing customers should confirm which capabilities carry forward under the current release rather than assuming continuity from the Lucity they know.; Semperis scope is limited to Active Directory, Entra ID and Okta, so an organisation whose critical identity lives elsewhere gets little from it, and the recovery value declines in direct proportion to how much has already moved off on-premises AD.
  • They diverge on capability: CentralSquare Asset Management covers Esri ArcGIS integration, Semperis covers Active Directory Forest Recovery.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which CentralSquare Asset Management and Semperis actually diverge.

Attributes where CentralSquare Asset Management and Semperis differ
AttributeCentralSquare Asset ManagementSemperis
PlatformsWeb, iOS, Android, Cloud, On-premiseWeb
CategoryGovernmentCybersecurity

Identical on both: starting price (On request), pricing model (quote), free tier (No), user rating (Not yet rated).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in CentralSquare Asset Management

  • Esri ArcGIS integration
  • Public works asset breadth
  • Citizen request intake
  • Condition assessment
  • Inspections
  • Suite integration

Only in Semperis

  • Active Directory Forest Recovery
  • Malware-free restore
  • Replication-stream monitoring
  • Automated rollback
  • Attack indicator scoring
  • Entra ID and Okta coverage
  • Purple Knight
  • Forest Druid

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

CentralSquare Asset Management

  • A city consolidating streets, water, parks and facilities maintenance into one asset register instead of four departmental spreadsheetsnot Semperis
  • A county needing auditable stormwater and backflow inspection records for a regulatory programmenot Semperis
  • A public works department wanting citizen-reported potholes and blocked drains to become work orders without manual re-keyingnot Semperis
  • A municipality already running CentralSquare finance that wants asset and work costs to land in the general ledger without an integration projectnot Semperis

Semperis

  • An organisation that cannot answer an auditor or insurer asking how long it would take to rebuild Active Directory after a destructive attacknot CentralSquare Asset Management
  • Post-incident recovery where domain controllers are compromised and restoring from system-state backup would reintroduce the attacker's footholdnot CentralSquare Asset Management
  • Continuous detection of privileged group changes and directory-level tampering that domain controller security logs missnot CentralSquare Asset Management
  • Hybrid estates where AD, Entra ID and Okta all matter and no single tool currently shows changes across the threenot CentralSquare Asset Management

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

CentralSquare Asset Management

  • The Lucity name is now only a suffix on a CentralSquare product, so long-standing customers should confirm which capabilities carry forward under the current release rather than assuming continuity from the Lucity they know.
  • CentralSquare is private-equity owned and grew by acquisition, so asset management competes for development attention against public safety and finance products with larger revenue, and its roadmap is not independently controlled.
  • Pricing is unpublished and quoted per municipality, and asset management is often presented alongside other suite modules, so a department must work to get a clean, unbundled number it can defend at council.
  • Esri ArcGIS is effectively a prerequisite for the spatial capability that makes the product worth buying, and that licence is a separate cost the software quote will not include.
  • It is North America focused, aligned to United States municipal practice, funding structures and regulatory programmes, which limits its fit for local authorities elsewhere.

Semperis

  • Scope is limited to Active Directory, Entra ID and Okta, so an organisation whose critical identity lives elsewhere gets little from it, and the recovery value declines in direct proportion to how much has already moved off on-premises AD.
  • The licence buys tooling, not a proven runbook: forest recovery is only worth what your last rehearsal demonstrated, and a plan that has never been executed end to end in a lab is an untested assumption regardless of what was purchased.
  • It overlaps with backup and directory management products from Quest, Veeam, Commvault and others, so the buyer must argue internally why a dedicated product is needed alongside a backup contract that already claims to protect Active Directory.
  • Running Directory Services Protector well requires someone who understands AD internals, replication metadata and Tier 0 attack paths, and without that person the alerts on privileged changes are either ignored or auto-reverted in ways that break legitimate administration.
  • Licensing is driven by identity object counts, so directories carrying years of stale user accounts and service principals pay for objects that should have been deleted, and the cleanup project that would reduce the bill is the one nobody has time for.

Pricing, plan by plan

CentralSquare Asset Management

On request
  • CentralSquare Asset Management$undefined/year
    • Subscription or on-premise licensing, quoted per municipality
    • Priced on population, module selection and user counts
    • Esri ArcGIS licensing purchased separately

Semperis

On request

No published plan breakdown. See the Semperis review.

Which should you pick?

Choose CentralSquare Asset Management if

  • You need esri arcgis integration.
  • You work on Web, iOS, Android, Cloud, On-premise.
  • You also want public works asset breadth.
CentralSquare Asset Management review

Choose Semperis if

  • You need active directory forest recovery.
  • You also want malware-free restore.
Semperis review

Questions people ask

Is CentralSquare Asset Management or Semperis better?
Neither clearly leads. CentralSquare Asset Management starts at On request and Semperis at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, CentralSquare Asset Management or Semperis?
CentralSquare Asset Management starts at On request and Semperis at On request.
Does CentralSquare Asset Management or Semperis run on more platforms?
CentralSquare Asset Management runs on Web, iOS, Android, Cloud, On-premise. Semperis runs on Web.
What is CentralSquare Asset Management best used for?
CentralSquare Asset Management is most often used for a city consolidating streets, water, parks and facilities maintenance into one asset register instead of four departmental spreadsheets, a county needing auditable stormwater and backflow inspection records for a regulatory programme, a public works department wanting citizen-reported potholes and blocked drains to become work orders without manual re-keying, a municipality already running centralsquare finance that wants asset and work costs to land in the general ledger without an integration project. Of those, a city consolidating streets, water, parks and facilities maintenance into one asset register instead of four departmental spreadsheets and a county needing auditable stormwater and backflow inspection records for a regulatory programme are not what Semperis is typically brought in for.
What can CentralSquare Asset Management do that Semperis cannot?
CentralSquare Asset Management covers Esri ArcGIS integration, Public works asset breadth, Citizen request intake, Condition assessment. Semperis covers Active Directory Forest Recovery, Malware-free restore, Replication-stream monitoring, Automated rollback.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

CentralSquare Asset Management: Can I still buy Lucity?

Not under that name alone. It is sold as CentralSquare Asset Management powered by Lucity, and quotes and contracts will use the CentralSquare name.

Semperis: Does this replace my backups?

No. It replaces the Active Directory recovery procedure specifically. You still need backups for everything else, and the point of Semperis is that a generic system-state backup of a domain controller is a poor way to recover a forest because it restores the operating system along with whatever compromised it.

CentralSquare Asset Management: Do I need Esri?

In practice yes. The spatial asset handling that distinguishes the product depends on ArcGIS, licensed separately from Esri.

Semperis: Is it useful if we are cloud-only on Entra ID?

Partly. Directory Services Protector covers Entra ID and Okta for change tracking and posture, but the forest recovery product, which is the strongest reason to buy, applies to on-premises Active Directory. A genuinely cloud-only organisation should weigh it against Microsoft's own tooling.

CentralSquare Asset Management: Is it cloud only?

No. Both hosted subscription and on-premise deployment are available, which matters for municipalities with data residency or network policy constraints.

Semperis: Are Purple Knight and Forest Druid really free?

Yes, both are free downloads with no licence requirement, and they are widely used by organisations that are not Semperis customers. They are also, transparently, the top of the sales funnel.

CentralSquare Asset Management: Is pricing published?

No. It is quoted per municipality based on population, modules and users, usually through a public procurement process.

Semperis: How long does forest recovery actually take?

The honest answer is whatever your rehearsal took. The vendor's case is hours instead of days, and automation genuinely removes most manual steps, but the number that matters for your board is the one from a test in your own environment.

Semperis: Does it require agents on domain controllers?

It collects directory changes from the AD replication stream, which is what lets it see changes that bypass the security log. Deployment details vary by product and version, so confirm the exact architecture against your domain controller change-control rules.

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