BMC Helix Discovery Reviews

Our use cases are service desk and service management.

We use it for all ITSM processes.

The license model could be more flexible and cheaper pricing.

We've been on BMC for over ten years. We use on-prem Delight, DWP build of BMC Helix Discovery, which is version 22.06.

It is a stable solution. The stability is okay. I would rate the stability an eight out of ten. There is always room for improvement. 

Scalability is really costly. So, it's not really scalable for us. We're a company of 5500, but we have maybe 150 to 200 licenses. 

We plan to increase the number of users. 

The customer service and support are okay.

We have BMC Helix, but we're looking to replace it with a fresh service.

The initial setup is complicated.

The deployment can't be done in-house, so we used an integrator.

We need five admins and engineers for the deployment and maintenance of the solution.

The solution is really expensive. We have a yearly license model. 

If we want to do anything extra, we have to pay extra costs.

Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten. 

BMC Discovery for our customers is a tool that you can put in your data center to discover all the different data center tooling for servers, physical or virtual, storage, etc. Or, BMC offers a cloud-based solution, which can also do the same level detail in your data center. In addition, it now has the features to be able to go and discover things on Azure, AWS, GCloud, etc.

If a customer has a spread out enterprise support center, then maybe they have a main data center, a backup data center, and a colocation, so they need to be able to know what's in each environment without having to go to five or six teams, like the network or storage team.

Having one solution, one pane glass, saying, "Here is what's in A, B and C." It helps with a level of capacity management decision-making, "Do we need to grow this solution? Do we need to reduce this solution?" It helps with understanding disaster recovery and business continuity. "If we lose data center B are we still okay?" In terms of supporting our application and our customers who use these applications.

One of the customer areas that I deal with is healthcare. One of our customers had split their electronic health records system across three data centers, and they needed to make sure that each module of the EHR was still up and functional regardless of what was going on. So, our Discovery solution was able to go into the data center and show all the different pieces which made up that software, then where that was in terms of if they were doing virtual server migrations and being able to track the assets related to all that to show a service model. This helped a number of areas: financial management, disaster planning, in the areas of general change management, and recording incidents against the service.

1. It is agentless, which means you don't have to install anything on all the different pieces of hardware that you are looking to discover.
2. It now comes with a very flexible deployment solution, whether you want to keep it inside your data center or want to have the cloud, depending on if you're cloud forward or not.
3. The speed at which it's able to collect a wide-range of information, then make it useful for you, like asset management, knowledge management, and incident management. 

Those would probably be the three main tenants of why Discovery is valuable to a customer.

I would like to see the ability to scan some of the newer cloud platforms. I know that BMC has them on the roadmap, and they are coming soon, but they can't come fast enough. Being able to scan more of GCloud, Alibaba Cloud, or whatever the public clouds that our customers are buying, we need to make sure that Discovery can find them as well.

There should be more education to the customer that while you can set this tool up and walk away from it, just like any other IT tool, it requires care and feeding as your environment grows and your technology library scales out. You need to sit down and think about how do you manage your asset library. Sure, you can collect everything, but is there a business case for everything you're collecting? Maybe there is some rudimentary training, or some rudimentary thought leadership, which needs to be provided around it. Because while you can discover everything, it doesn't mean you should.

The stability is great in the sense that it comes in two different versions. There is the standard scanner, then there's the Collector. 

With BMC, you're allowed to deploy in an on-premise solution, or even a cloud-based solution, with as many as are necessary. Therefore, being able to scale up or scale down, depending on the size of your environment or migration of environments, is very flexible.

Let's say that you started with one data center, and you have outgrown it, or maybe you're going from data center to a fledgling cloud deployment. Being able to scale up across those is really the key factor of the way BMC designed the Discovery tool. Because it comes in a scanning tool and a consolidation tool, you can put as many scanning out as you need, and if there are maybe specific firewall rules and you need to scale up to yet another system, you needed to scale out over the WAN to another data center, or to cloud, you have that ability. It's not going to introduce a large hindrance into your environment or to your admins to be able to support it.

I have not used the technical support.

As a partner, we are able to provide the technical support for our customers. So, being able to either provide implementation, best-practice consulting on an existing solution, or we even offer a level of manage services. For example, if a customer for some reason, either through downsizing or depth of knowledge, needs somebody to run it entirely for them, we have the ability.

Customers decide to invest in a solution because a number of different reasons:

1. They want to support the work they have already been doing in their operations or service management by having an automated tool that on a regularly scheduled basis goes out and says "What's in the data center? How's it configured?"
2. Sometimes, they use it for security configuration management, making sure that all the patch levels are on the right thing. 

It just depends on the maturity of the IT service management and the operations management of where they start to see value in knowing what and how it's configured inside their environment.

The initial setup is amazingly straightforward because BMC provides the entire system as a virtual deployment. So, it comes as a VMware appliance, then your data center admin, or whoever it is, can actually just import the system and apply a static IP address, then the system is already installed and up and ready to go. I don't know of any other system that comes as packaged as well as this.

If a colleague, or even a customer, is sort of entering the idea that they are looking at Discovery, the first thing is BMC offers a trial. You can find a hundred endpoints. It is very low-impact to download and input it in a development environment.

Try it out. If you need further insights, you can go to BMC. Make sure you understand your use cases and business cases before you implement something like this. Know why you are trying to collect this specific attribute of this specific server and put it in your CMBD. If you don't have a use case for the information, there's no point in building up large amounts of data if you don't have a reason to.

Our customers do like to have that proof-in-the-pudding test, whether it's going beyond just the general demo, having us come onsite, implementing the solution in front of them, then running a level of Discovery with them. There is no better test of a Discovery tool, or an asset management tool, then to go to a customer and say "Here you go. This is what we found on your data center."

The competition is from Microsoft System Center. While it is agent-based, it has a level of being able to look at Windows systems just like BMC Discovery would. However, it does lack the ability to go into network devices and Linux systems.

The other one that we see in the market is a solution from ServiceNow called Discovery, which is still a fledgling solution. However, in another five to ten years, it might give BMC Discovery a run for its money.

From what I've heard and I've seen, the BMC Discovery solution has been in the market for over 15 years. The library of things that you can discover without having to make a custom pattern is very vast. It grows each month. BMC works with Microsoft, HPE, and all those different companies to make sure that the library is up-to-date and is all-inclusive as possible. Along with that, being able to scale to meet the demands of custom-made solutions and the ability to integrate with other BMC technologies, and even non-BMC technologies.

One of the things that sometimes people forget is the BMC Discovery tool can integrate with any CMDB. It's not just for RMDB. 

Whenever a customer says "I wish the solution had the ability to find this device," I can generally say "Well, it can." That's why I'm so proud that BMC sells this tool and I'm able to provide it. It's because whenever a customer says "Can you find this? Can it discover this?" Yes, it can. I have very little experience where a customer has asked me "Can you find this," and I'm not able to find it.

In terms of the tools that BMC sells and tools like this on the market, there is no match. It is a ten out of ten.

BMC Helix Discovery is used for data center discovery. Clients also look for client-side discovery, so desktop discovery is supported, as well as printer discovery and on-premises discovery, but the solution is more focused on data center discovery, where you discover all kinds of assets, including mapping and dependencies.

I've used other discovery tools, but I found BMC Helix Discovery to be more UI-friendly, and that's the most valuable feature of the solution.

What would make BMC Helix Discovery better is if it had more client-side discovery features, for example, printers and desktops. Right now, it's focused more on data center discovery, so if it had additional features focused on the client-side discovery, that would be great.

In the next release of BMC Helix Discovery, I'd like more client-side discovery features such as desktop discovery, printer discovery, and other IP-based client-side discovery features. The solution can discover desktops and printers, but there's still room for improvement on the client side.

I've been using BMC Helix Discovery for more than eight years.

BMC Helix Discovery is a stable solution.

BMC Helix Discovery is a scalable solution, though sometimes you need techniques for different integrations because some work out of the box while some require an integration flow but API's support makes it easy most of the integrations.

I've contacted BMC Helix Discovery support many times, whenever there's an issue in the client environment and I need help from the BMC support team. The support is good, and I would rate it nine out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup for BMC Helix Discovery was easy. It didn't take much time because it had a clear format, so in one day, you can prepare the discovery environment, though it would also depend on the data and the requirements.

You need a license to use BMC Helix Discovery. The license is paid yearly, though I have no idea how much it costs.

BMC Helix Discovery was mostly deployed on-premises, and the rest was deployed on AWS.

My company deploys BMC Helix Discovery, ServiceNow Discovery, and other tools. 

I'm an integrator for BMC Helix Discovery.

I'd recommend BMC Helix Discovery to others because I've been working with it for the last eight years and my experience with it has been good. It's worth the money if you're using it just for discovery purposes.

I would rate BMC Helix Discovery nine out of ten because I'm able to implement it and discover assets with it and transfer those assets to CMDB. It's also very user-friendly and has several out-of-the-box features such as reporting and generating queries which I like. You don't need to know queries to be able to pick or generate a query. Currently, several dashboards are in process for BMC Helix Discovery, and it has installation facilities and CPIs, so my rating for it is a nine. I won't give it a ten because there's no perfect solution.

I use BMC Helix Discovery to search for devices on a network and monitor networks.

The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that it is easy to install and deploy. In general, BMC Helix Discovery works properly. The solution helps solve problems, so I have never witnessed any high-end problems.

I faced some minor problems with the product, but BMC updates Helix Discovery every month, which makes the product work very well.

The solution's scalability is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are needed.

I have been using BMC Helix Discovery for a year and a half. My company has a partnership with BMC Helix Discovery.

It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

It is a scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

My company provides support services for BMC Helix Discovery. My company has deployed BMC Helix Discovery in twenty different companies.

My company can be considered as an enterprise-sized business.

My company provides support services for BMC Helix Discovery. Though my company has dealt with various cases related to BMC products, we have specifically dealt with any scenarios related to BMC Helix Discovery.

I rate the support an eight out of ten.

Positive

I don't know if my company used another tool before BMC Helix Discovery.

BMC Helix Discovery is easy to install.

I rate the initial setup a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model. The solution can also deployed on the cloud.

The deployment phase takes a lot of time if you use the cluster version of the solution. The deployment process takes around half a day if you download the product on one server. In general, using the product's cluster version, which includes three machines simultaneously, takes a day and a half.

I don't know about the prices attached to BMC Helix Discovery since it is an area dealt with by managers.

I don't know if my company was involved in any evaluation process before selecting BMC Helix Discovery. I came to know about ITSM tools in detail only after joining my current company.

My company loves using the solution.

Big companies usually want to learn about their inventories, so they use BMC Helix Discovery. There are other software products or ITSM tools similar to BMC Helix Discovery in the market to deal with inventory. In BMC Remedy ITSM, you can raise two support tickets at once. BMC is a software in which all its products are linked and work together.

I rate the overall tool a nine out of ten.

I sell the product as a part of the pre-sales team in my organization.

The most valuable feature of the solution is its application dependency mapping.

The product is not fully automated. The solution should add a little more automation for vertical mapping.

I have been using the solution for seven to eight years.

The solution is one of the best products in the market when it comes to stability.

The solution is scalable. I rate the scalability an eight to nine out of ten.

The licensing fee is very low.

I have sold service management tools like BMC Helix and ServiceNow.

The product can be deployed as an on-premise solution or cloud solution. Overall, I rate the solution an eight to nine out of ten.

The modeling, service mapping. The start anywhere application mapping approach is actually a really good solution for those who use map services.

The CMDB could be improved. Getting data from the CMDB is the greatest challenge. 

Also, integration with the system, the platform itself, can be difficult. For best results, you need to integrate with internal vendors. 

I have been using this solution for roughly six years. 

BMC provides great support. As managed service support, they are gold. It's not the product itself, it's the managed service. They make this product; they can do whatever you want. They can build everything — it's perfect.

BMC is available for a reasonable price compared to ServiceNow — it's half the price. 

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of nine.

The use cases for BMC Helix Discovery would depend on the specific business needs of our customers. So, it varies based on their requirements. The typical BMC-ServiceNow scenario is when BMC Discovery collects data and passes it to ServiceNow CMDB to support IT and Business processes managed there.

BMC Helix Discovery can be a valuable part of the overall architecture responsible for discovering CIs and sharing the CMDB data with other systems, especially when the organization already works with the BMC platform. However, if the IT and Business practices/processes are managed in a platform like ServiceNow, then the discovery solution directly in this platform offers a more straightforward solution (one CMDB data model, no integrations needed, seamless connection to enterprise disciplines like Digital Portfolio Management).

Next to a horizontal discovery, there is also a capability of dependency modeling enabling us to see relationships between CIs.

There is still room for improvement in terms of stability and scalability. 

I have been aware of BMC (Helix) Discovery's existence since its appearance on the BMC platform. I have been working with ServiceNow for the last eight years so I'm rather using ServiceNow Discovery.

Since I am on the system integrator side, we are using the latest versions of the products.

The stability of this solution is above average but not perfect.

It is a scalable solution. The number of users depends on the specific customers we are working with. BMC Helix Discovery seems to work well for small to mid-size organizations.

From my perspective, the initial setup is quite easy.

The deployment of BMC Helix Discovery varies from customer to customer. I see it as a product that can be part of the solution from an architectural perspective.

First and foremost, it's important to understand the whole landscape of the implementation in the enterprise environment. Whether it's for ITSM or business management, you need to be aware of the target landscape and other systems in place and how the systems are interconnected. Integration of data into the system is crucial, so it's essential to assess how easy it is to integrate the data. 

Overall, this should be one of the key architectural principles to consider as any integration represents an increased complexity. There might be benefits of decentralized solutions in terms of multiple systems cooperating to provide their best value together, but there is also a huge advantage of having an enterprise platform as the real "one system of records" and "one system of action" when the provided solution is robust, scalable and modular (e.g. ServiceNow). It is also a matter of knowledge management - what knowledge do you need (and can afford) to maintain? Two platforms = two sets of knowledge.

I am using the latest version, which is 20. 

We use the solution to explore the infrastructure, servers and network devices, in respect of the database, services and storage devices and the topology into the devices.

A valuable feature concerns the ability to integrate with different solutions. BMC Helix Discovery can integrate with BMC Helix ITSM and ServiceNow ITSM. ServiceNow is another solution, and so BMC Helix Discovery provides the information and data about the devices. It is important to have visibility of the complete infrastructure in one's organization. 

While I consider the solution to be good, it should better be able to integrate with other solutions. 

The solution does not offer 100 percent availability, but 99 to 99.5 percent. 

It would be nice to see more updates to the solution. Every two months it delivers new features which contain new infrastructure and configurations. 

I have been using BMC Helix Discovery for a long time, eight years. 

The solution can be scaled without a problem to match the growth of one's organization. This can be done easily, as the resources can be rolled to the infrastructure solution. 

There are two types of support, that of the vendor and the other being full time. We are prioritized and receive the support only in English. The other support, which is global, involves the partner and is conducted in one's local language. The support can be provided with ease and customers state their preference as being in the local language. 

In brief, the support is provided quickly. It varies with the priority level of the request. 

The initial setup is easy.

While it varies with the number of discovered devices, implementation of the solution lasts two weeks. 

It takes, perhaps, a couple of weeks to discover 200 devices. In a month, one can use the complete solution and have the benefit of its use. 

The primary functionality of the solution ranks well against other solutions in its ability to discover the topology of devices, the connection into them and its relationship with different services.

We can use the solution both on-premises and on-cloud. 

I would recommend this solution to others. It provides beneficial information. 

I rate BMX Helix Discovery as a nine out of ten, as it is a good solution, but it should have better integrative capabilities with others.