BMC Helix ITSM Reviews

I used this solution as part of my previous role where I was a solution architect designing comprehensive solutions for customers in the APAC region, including India. The customers predominantly have challenges with respect to the ITSM area.

The primary use cases could be particular incident problems and change management modules. There are of course requirements on your cellphone catalog front. Along with other BMC products, it could be discovery or it could be your monitoring solution.

Every fourth or fifth client I have worked with has had the BMC solution.

It's a cloud solution and deployed on-prem.

The most valuable features are the simplicity and the in-duty features. Most of the time people don't use the tool because they either find it clumsy or very difficult to understand. The biggest challenge is that I don't know where I need to raise the request. BMC addresses all these solutions, so that is something I like.

The second thing is the scalability, which isn't a problem at all. You go and buy any product in the market and of course to a certain limit they can work, but the scalability that BMC offers is really great. 

Thirdly, it provides tons of integration options. We haven't faced any issues with integration.

It's expensive, particularly in the emerging market where you see a lot of customers that have a budget crunch over issues. They like the products a lot, but when it comes to the costing part of it, sometimes they say it's not in their budget.

They go and they compromise, instead of compromising on the budget front. Sometimes they go with an open source or a cheaper tool. They have scalability issues, and they don't get quality support.

Sometimes on the pricing front, we lose some deals, particularly in the emerging market.

I have been using this solution for 10 years.

It's stable.

The scalability is very good.

Whenever we are stuck or whenever we need support, the technical support is very much appreciated. They have helped me a lot in these areas.

Implementation is easy and simple most of the time. The knowledge base is pretty good. The community pages are very good.

The amount of time it takes to deploy depends on the use cases. Typically, we take around two to three months for implementation, which covers at least six to seven processes of implementation, any incident problem, change, or configuration.

It's a yearly subscription but there are a couple of customers who go for the monthly subscription.

I would rate this solution 8 out of 10.

I would recommend this solution for those who want to start using it.

We use it for the entire service management portfolio. We do instant problem changes and asset management, CMDB. We use it for the entire service management module.

The out-of-the-box features are great. You can look at those before you jump into customization or integrations.

Technical support has been fine. 

The dashboard can be better. 

The remote reporting can be improved.

I'd say that the tool itself can be lighter in weight. It's too heavy.

Technical support is not very fast.

For the discovery, which is top to bottom, I would have an option for scanning sideways.

The functionality could be better.

The stability has been good. There are no bugs or glitches, and it doesn't crash or freeze. I would rate it eight out of ten in terms of reliability.

The scalability is okay. I'd rate it seven out of ten since it is a bit heavy and gets heavier quite easily.

We might have around 100 people using the solution right now. That includes end-users and developers. 

We've used technical support in the past and find them to be okay. However, it depends on the type of agreement you've got with them.

We have a service provider who contacts BMC for us. That said, there had been some occasions where I was involved with the support along with the service provider. They are okay. However, they take a lot of time to find a resolution.

Neutral

I've worked with ServiceNow in the past and find it to be a much better product.

While I wasn't around when it was installed, my understanding is that it is pretty straightforward. 

The cost is pretty good. That might have been a deciding factor when choosing the product.

I can't speak to the exact cost of the solution. It's not part of my scope to look into licensing. 

I wasn't at the company at the time it was set up. I'm not sure if they evaluated other options. 

We're customers. 

I'm not sure which version of the solution we're on. However, it being on the cloud, it does update automatically.

I would definitely recommend ServiceNow over BMC. I have an experience in ServiceNow. It's much better. It is lightweight, and easy to use, the integrations are easy, the scalability is extremely easy, the dashboard is wonderful, and the discovery is the best. I would rate ServiceNow much higher than BMC.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. It is a strong tool and is a good application to do your ITSM. It's just that it's a bit complex to integrate with your other applications. It's a big elephant. It's too heavy. The dashboard is quite confusing. It's not that state of the art in today's world and at the user level, the customization is not so easy in BMC.

BMC Remedy ITSM application solution is one of the best solutions in the market. This is one of the primary help desk management tool that we have. We use this tool for managing tickets, other employee related services, and reporting purposes.

We reduced many paper processes to electronic driven forms. It helps us a lot in tracking and managing.

Overall, the product is valuable, but we use Incident and SRM the most. We really liked the Smart Reporting tool and also the new mobile apps as add-ons.

If BMC can add and extend the Release Management with ease, it would be great. Also, make customizable/configurable article templates in the Knowledge Management. 

Sometimes, but if you have a solid architecture, then this tool work like a charm.

Never.

Its 50-50, sometimes its great, and other times, not.

The platform was in place prior to my arrival.

Initial setup is straightforward, and if you follow best practices, then future enhancements will be smoother.

The platform was in place prior to my arrival, but we did lot of the things afterwards. When I took over, Remedy was on 7.6, and now, we are on 9.1 with Smart IT running.

If Customer and IT agents are happy, that is one of the greatest ROI. However, one of the major factors is Leadership, because at the end they have to justify the cost.

This solution needs to be in the annual IT budget. Please always get the latest quote from a BMC partner or from BMC. Check for the latest offerings. 

While purchasing, try to negotiate on per user licensing costs, associated maintenance, and purchase 20% more then what you think you should have. Bulk is always cheaper.

The platform was in place prior to my arrival.

Once you have the solution implemented, always follow best practices and have an admin in-house.

Our primary use case of this solution is as a ticketing system, it's our work order system. This is a help desk software and I deal with the server side. We are customers of BMC.

I like the fact that you can go in there and designate how you close the ticket. You can put notes in, upload files and images, and give a detailed report of how you resolved an issue. The information is stored in a knowledge-based format so people can revert back to the data that's been entered. I like the single sign-on, it works very well. Once you're in the ticket, your administrators can set up and define dropdown windows, and do some customization. I can go through the tickets I receive, fixing them through resolution, and then do a full closure of the ticket. With other software, you can get to a certain point, and then another customer has to come in and close the ticket for you. 

The dashboard and search features could both be improved. You can't edit a ticket via the console which is frustrating. It requires opening the default view that takes you to an older version of Remedy. There are other small drawbacks although there could be a couple of things that need to be improved on our end. CMDB is not up to par yet and requires some work. 

Other than the sluggishness of opening a ticket the solution is stable. 

I've never dealt with them directly and I haven't heard anything really negative about the tech support. 

I rate this solution eight out of 10. 

If we consider major players like Ford or BMW, their core focus is manufacturing products like cars. To ensure smooth operations, any arising issues, be it security concerns or issues within departments like HR or finance, require a swift resolution. This is where the product comes into play. It provides a platform for raising tickets and obtaining quick solutions.

For instance, if you require a virtual machine from a specific data center group, you no longer need to endure traditional processes. Automation kicks in, and you have all the necessary details within moments. This efficiency level isn't confined to just IT; it also permeates management levels. Beyond that, the tool offers scalability and flexibility, facilitating the maintenance of knowledge repositories and standard release processes. Additionally, it has features where users can make service requests based on their specific needs, thanks to tailored questionnaires. This ensures that only the exact resources that can support us will be allocated. 

The tool needs greater customization flexibility, particularly concerning notifications and the progressive view web page. This is significant because it encompasses various aspects like incident management, problem management, change management, work orders, and tasks. Aligning the GUI interface with these functionalities requires more flexibility. 

It also needs improvement in product categorization and information organization based on feedback and surveys. Currently, there are limitations in terms of user-friendliness and customization options. For instance, the inability to adjust certain categories or banners hampers usability, especially compared to other platforms like AngularJS or NodeJS. 

The tool needs improvement in monitoring. Every asset has a plethora of monitoring tools available in the market. Requirements may vary from customer to customer, but from what I've observed in large-scale industries, it falls short.

From my experience, it typically takes around six to seven months for BMC Helix ITSM to go through the discovery phase, provide releases, test them repeatedly, and so on. Over the past four or five years, I've raised various cases with different companies, and it consistently took a minimum of three to six months to resolve them. Sometimes, I had to close the cases because I had to move to a newer version to overcome those bugs. Apart from that, it's been quite challenging when it comes to performance because we haven't received that level of support. So, there's a need for improvement or better resources to be allocated at the initial stage. I wouldn't say that we don't receive support, but if the right resources are aligned at the right time, it would make things easier for the end customer.

I have been using the product for more than seven years. 

When evaluating the tool's overall stability, I would rate it around a six out of ten upon fresh installation. However, as the system adapts to its environment and smoothens out, the stability significantly improves, reaching around a nine out of ten. So, shortly after installation, it may start at six out of ten, but within six months to a year, it typically stabilizes and earns a rating of nine out of ten for its stability.

The expanding nature of the environment may be unfamiliar. The requirements BMC Helix ITSM suggests for installation are also uncertain, as they haven't been tested in the live environment. Real repercussions become apparent once you proceed with infrastructure installation, including real-time unexpected issues.

My company has more than 1000 product users. 

The ease of installation largely depends on your specific requirements when it comes to the initial installation of BMC Helix ITSM. If you're opting for a containerized deployment, it's not necessarily straightforward; I'd rate it around a six out of ten on a scale of difficulty. However, if you're leveraging cloud-based deployment, the tool manages everything, including instances and scalability. 

I have experienced all the phases of BMC Helix ITSM: standalone, on-premises, containerized, and cloud-based. I have worked in all these environments. ITSM deployment depends on various factors. Currently, we are transitioning to containers instead of the cloud. Specific dependencies influence this choice. Many large companies opt for containerization, while some move to the cloud. The primary reason is the reluctance to expose their data publicly.

I rate the overall product an eight out of ten. 

The main use case for Helix ITSM is managing break/fix tickets and all other issues with the product. It tracks customer issues using an incident model. 

We have problem management for recurring issues and do a deep dive if we need some change to fix the root cause. We can also identify if a change caused the issue with a holistic analysis. 

BMC Smart IT is somewhat rigid, but they have a powerful backend that supports our complex need for extension versus customization. Between extension and customization, you can achieve complex business processes. That's one of the main advantages of BMC.

There's some confusion with the BMC roadmap. The BMC Remedy Mid Tier architecture didn't have a good-looking frontend, but you could build any functionality, so it had a lot of flexibility. The frontend of BMC Smart IT is relatively limited in its ability to change, hide, and show fields and those kinds of things that pop up.

With Helix, they're trying to build things and add a little more capabilities, but they still have a  long way to go. It's not a complete solution. For example, they are phasing out Smart Reporting because it doesn't fit well in an ITSM solution.

It needs a more organic workflow, so every field you create is labeled throughout the stack. BMC has a few products that they try to bundle together. Generally, that solution works. BMC should take a step back and think about the overall solution—not only ITSM but also CTI Integration along with chat. They have all that, but it's not an end-to-end holistic solution with the added reporting analytics.

I have been working with BMC for nearly 15 years.

BMC is more stable than the average product. I'm not certain, but I've heard Salesforce has some performance issues with similar infrastructure. BMC has a robust backend, so we've never had issues. It's a highly stable environment, so I don't need to invest a lot of time dealing with support.

The pricing depends on the contract.  If you ask three different people, you get very three different answers, but I don't deal with it. The people in charge of procurement handle that. 

We're currently trying out Salesforce Service Cloud, and in a few months, I should be able to compare Helix and Salesforce better. Salesforce is a little more open than Helix ITSM. For example, you can integrate HR Case Management with ITSM. One kind of application can talk to another application. That's the biggest advantage of Salesforce. The Service Cloud and Sales Cloud can talk to each other. 

BMC should think about the future and redesign the whole solution. More companies are moving to low and no-code solutions, but BMC still requires a great deal of development skill to use. Businesses don't have time for that.

I rate BMC Helix six out of 10. BMC is changing, but they're still behind in 2022. 

We use BMC Helix ITSM only for managing internal tickets. I only use it for checking my tickets because I'm just an end-user. I phone the service desk or I use their self-service interface to log my tickets. I have access to the interface, which I use to receive feedback on my tickets. If there's any work that I do for internal support, I use the same interface. The interface is what I use to receive information into the system and let the service desk know how far I am. There's very little that I do on that side of things. It's less than 5 percent of the work I do on BMC Helix ITSM, and 95 percent of the work I do is with CA Service Desk.

BMC Helix ITSM gives us email and SMS notifications, we can check the tickets, and give feedback. All the basic features that we need are available.

As people progress in the life cycle of the ticket, you need to know what's happening, and the notifications BMC Helix ITSM provides are helping us a lot to know exactly what's happening.

The notifications that the solution is providing are very helpful, they should keep improving them for the future.

I have been using BMC Helix ITSM for approximately two years.

BMC Helix ITSM is stable, it has high availability.

I am not sure how scalable the solution is but it has always been working well.

I have not contacted the support from BMC Helix ITSM.

I used to work for another company in 2004 and they were using a solution called Remedy, but the interface was a lot different. There are a lot of similarities to BMC Helix ITSM. The company has been using Remedy for approximately 10 years.

There are licenses to use this solution.

I would recommend this solution to others. From what I've read BMC Helix ITSM has a lot of features and far more than the CA Service Desk. I haven't been part of the team to experience the other solutions but from what I've read, it's very rich in its features.

I rate BMC Helix ITSM a nine out of ten.

The most valuable feature is the ability to have ITIL Out Of The Box (OOTB) functionality that can be readily customised to fit the specific needs of any given business organisation. This coupled with the open API that allows for integration with existing and legacy data sets means that you can rapidly implement ITSM in an organic fashion. Another valuable feature has to be the fast prototyping environment with allows an organisation to develop customisations in a reactive, agile manner.

The use of templates, both Incident and Change templates, has allowed for a more consistent approach to processing these types of tickets. Developing a standardised approach to these has also improved the associated reporting for post-Incident and post-Change reviews. Another important improvement has been with the implementation of the Service Request Module which has improved the end-user experience and is helping move towards a more "Self-Help" environment.

The two main areas for improvement are the User Interface and ad-hoc reporting. The User Interface still has the appearance of being clunky and not user friendly. This has changed with the release of Remedy/ITSM V9 and related products such as SmartIT and MyIT. Reporting has always been an issue with the Remedy/ITSM paradigm. It is not user friendly, too limited and clearly not intended for the End User. With Remedy/ITSM V9 comes the SmartReporting module. I look forward to using this in the future.

I have involved with Remedy since 1996. Starting with Version 3.2 of Action Request System and v1 of Helpdesk. This was long before ITSM came onto the scene.

Having been involved in migrations from version 3.2 up to and including v8.1.02 I can honestly say that very few of the migrations have induced deployment issues. The Remedy, and latterly BMC, engineers, have successfully maintained backwards compatibility throughout all their versions. As long as the platform and infrastructure requirements are planned and resourced correctly then the deployment process is relatively straightforward.

Stability is very much dependent on the architecture that has been implemented and also on the underlying infrastructure. For example, with the application server and mid-tier being deployed on a Windows Server environment, I had a client who was experiencing issues with some of the Java processes on a weekly, if not daily basis. Moving to a Linux based environment has almost eliminated these issues.

Scalability is very similar to stability in that as long as the underlying infrastructure is correctly sized and resourced then the product can deal with scalability issues.

Customer Service does vary. It all depends on your Account Manager. The good ones can be a real asset and and can provide that additional effort that makes for a good relationship between all the actors.

Technical support can vary according to your location and which team picks up your issue. Over the years the quality of technical support has varied. Providing you have an administrator/developer who can do some of the initial problem discovery and debugging then you will be able, in conjunction with technical support, to more easily track down the underlying issues.

My existing client used an older version of ITSM from the same supplier. In this case there was no switch from a different solution but the upgrade/migration still needed proper planning to implement correctly. The main reasons for upgrading were to ensure that a currently supported version of the product was being used and that the old infrastructure was replaced by a more performant

For the product itself the initial setup was relatively straightforward. The main complexity arose mainly in the project management aspect of the migration. This was due to the fact the coordination had to be done with both internal and external resources.

The project was undertaken with a vendor team for the installation and migration, internal teams for the architecture and security aspects, as well as the Remedy/ITSM administrators/Process Managers and, of course, the End Users.

As I wasn't involved at the beginning of this project I cannot give any information on the ROI. However, it is clear that ROI improves as and when the relationships between the different modules of ITSM are integrated. Related to this is the integration with other applications within the organisation such as ADDM/Discovery to enhance the CMDB. Once this information is available to, for example, the Incident, Change and Problem modules then the true value of ITSM to the organisation can be realised.

When it comes to pricing and licensing, you have to have a good relationship with your Account Manager. They are the best person to guide you through this important area. You need to analyse your requirements in terms of the ratio of floating/fixed licenses to ensure that you have the correct mix of these licences. Licence and maintenance costs may be relatively high but in terms of upgrades you tend to get a good ROI.

For this particular project no other options were chosen. A SaaS option was not suitable for this client and the requirements of being able to migrate/access the data from the existing environment did not allow for other solutions to be discussed.

This solution is a complex one which does allow for flexibility and customisations. Clients should therefore be aware that there is a need for in-house administrators/developers. This may be reduced if the SaaS option is selected.