BMC Helix ITSM Reviews

We use BMC Helix for application discovery and dependency mapping the area of the nCode. It's one of the best programs we've used. We usually serve around 10 to 20 customers with this solution but it's fewer than 10 now.

Many other tools are similar. I've used these tools and find that they meet my requirements. Helix is more lightweight than these tools. It's a traditional tool that was developed more than 10 years ago. Ease of use is the operative word.

Integration could be better. If something doesn't work well with some tools and operations, then management becomes difficult, so you have to integrate other tools.

We've been using Helix for at least 10 years.

It is very stable and scalable.

I haven't really done the installation, so I do not know how complex it is.

The license is yearly.

On a scale of one to 10, I would rate it a seven. Before adopting, I would recommend evaluating how well all the options are suited to your requirements.

Helix ITSM has several great features. One of them is the chatbot — the artificial intelligence solution that BMC has. Secondly, Digital Workplace Advanced is important for the end-users — it provides great flexibility. Also, the end-users can manage all requirements and all of the information that they need related to IT services. The chatbots are also integrated with this. The workflow solution is another great feature for the end-users, as part of the engine. It has the power to automatize several different tasks in the ITSM world.

In fact, BMC had a business workflow — this is a solution that is out of the ITSM environment. This solution helps you solve business-related problems. You can automatize a lot of activities related to human resources, finances, production, and so on. It's very useful, it's another feature to emphasize. The presence of BMC in the market of ITSM has been around for more than 20 years. The maturity of ITSM processes has been very good. I think it's excellent. In fact, over the past several years, BMC has begun changing the idea of interfaces for end-users, users of ITSM, and IT people.

Nowadays, the interface is very modern, clear, and practical. It's very easy to use. The user interface is one of the best features. Also, it has a very advanced model of reporting. It's very powerful when it comes to managing metrics, in order to manage APIs. This process is constantly improving. In this arena, I think BMC has very good solutions.

Some parts of the solution are using the old interface — the contracts and contract management part of the solution. It needs to mature a little further in order to become more user-friendly. BMC has been a leader for several years now. In fact, it's a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant, along with ServiceNow. I believe BMC is actually on par with ServiceNow in terms of critical capabilities. For this reason, I don't see many areas for improvement.

BMC not only has ITSM solutions, but it also has solutions for asset management — they are really powerful. Discovery, for instance, is a very good solution. It complements ITSM because it's autodiscovery. It's very powerful in terms of discovering all assets connected to the network and the cloud. This capability not only shows all of your infrastructures and relationships in mass, but the connection with CMDB is very strong. It takes all of the information that has already been discovered and transfers it to CMDB. From an ITSM perspective, you can manage your CMDB and the construction of different services more efficiently because all of the information is updated and the relationships between assets are clear. 

When you have to use ITSM processes, you can assign incidents, requests, or changes for the right assets. For instance, in the case of a change in management, you can perform a very efficient impact analysis. This is another reason why Discovery is a very good complement to the ITSM solution. Of course, I am mentioning this as a complement to the ITSM environment, but all the solutions are related and work together very efficiently.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give BMC Helix ITSM a rating of eight.

The solution is for all IT management. It takes care of the day-to-day operations and customers' policies. The initial implementation was to start creating a knowledge base and capture information as it happened. Then by using that knowledge base analysis and see what trends are occurring within the systems.

The most valuable features I have found to be the activity logs. Additionally, the other features where you are able to continuously address issues and are able to annotate notes inside to convey them to the customer. The customer can read the notes and are able to know where you are in the procedures and process of fixing the problem for them. It has a good interactive piece for dialogue with customers where you do not have to interact with them personally but they can do it on their own just by going into that activity log. This is great for the customer to have the ability to find out how things are being progressively taken care of.

The reports need improvement, it is not a good functioning tool. No one in my organization seems to be able to use the reports properly. I think it is a dysfunction in the product because there has to be a more simplistic form for building those reports to allow the extrapolation of information for trend analysis and other operations. You want to be able to pull information from a variety of sources to see how you are providing support to the customer, this is what your performance base is. This is why those reports are a significant piece of the equation. You need to be able to produce those right now. People would rather create spreadsheets on their own and just thumb through all kinds of time-consuming tasks, why not use the actual databases that are there to produce that information.  

I have been using this solution for many years.

When updates come out I am very hesitant when they put out a patch or an update because it disrupts some operations or functionality that is important. It makes it harder for us to readjust the solution and have to start implementing things all over again because the patches are not properly vetted.

I have found the solution to be scalable. However, other competitors products such as ServiceNow are more robust and scalable. We have many people using the BMC solution in the organization, service managers, individual managers, problem manager, vendors, and individual tiers 0-3. The amount of people is needed as we service over 60 thousand people.

The tech support is not consistent. You might get a good person to help you out and actually knows what he is doing or you get somebody who is trying to figure out a solution on their own. You both are left trying to figure out a solution together because you get the feeling you do not have the expertise that you should have for the product. When you initially make the calls, you have to break down the issue to such a deep level of explanation when it should be simplistic for them to understand. This causes some difficulties for the customer. This type of inexperienced customer service devaluates the product, this needs to be improved.

The maintenance of the solution is overseen by a staff of approximately seven people.

I am not sure the exact price we pay for the solution but I know it is in the high seven-figure amount annually.

I was trying to get my organization to use ServiceNow because it is more cloud-based. I have seen several demos of ServiceNow and I like the features that it has. It is more intuitive, easier to implement, define roles and manage.

I would advise others to consider other options before choosing this solution such as ServiceNow. 

I rate BMC Helix ITSM a four out of ten.

We mainly use it for service requests and incident management. It is being used for all problem tickets and change requests. We are using the latest version. 

We find the incident management module the best. The reporting part is also useful. We use a feature called smart reporting, and it is very beneficial for us.

Its performance can be improved. Sometimes, there is a performance issue, and it is a little slow and difficult on the usage side. It would be beneficial for us if there is a lighter version of this solution. 

There is also a limitation on the number of columns and memory for extracting a report, and this functionality can be improved.

We would like to have better integration and UI in this solution. The user interface should be easy to navigate. Its integration with other tools, such as SharePoint or Jira, can also be improved, which would be beneficial for us.

In terms of new features, there should also be a mobile version. The desktop version is available, but the mobile version is not available, which is one of the challenges that our team has. For users who work on Remedy and who raise the ticket, it would also be very beneficial to have some chatbot features.

I have been using this solution for the past four years.

Its stability is good.

We have around 7,000 users.

Their support is sufficient and fine as of now. Our interaction is currently minimal. We generally use the community portal to contact the BMC team. We are also looking for other tools, and we are mostly connecting with the technical team.

We used a tool called HEAT. We were also using the VPN version of Remedy that had to be installed on a system. We were not using the web-based version of Remedy.

We migrated to this solution because it is available on the web, and it is easy to access. The previous one had to be installed on a system. If you wanted to raise a ticket and work on the ticket, the user had to raise a request for installation. There were a lot of other things that had to be taken care of before using the solution. That is the reason we moved to BMC Helix ITSM.

The initial setup was simple. It took around six months to one year.

We took the help of a vendor. For maintenance, we have a separate Remedy team. The maintenance of the cloud part is taken care by the vendor team.

It is not very expensive and not very cheap. It is somewhere in-between. Some of the features are more expensive. 

There are also additional costs. If you want to use most of the features, you need to pay more.

I would recommend this solution because it includes all the best practices of ITIL and ITSM used across the industry. It is a good product.

I would rate BMC Helix ITSM an eight out of ten.

The solution supports our supporting processes. My responsibilities include reporting on the services we offer to end-users, primarily through channels like email. I focus on coordinating arrangements for the services we provide.

The valuable feature for me is that it's a tool that allows me to track processes right from the initial user request. It helps in updating the solution throughout the workflow. I use it to gather information about the people involved, track time, and more.

Working with numerous processes can be complex, and the processes are not always transparent in the solution. At times, users may not be aware of the meaning behind various processes when receiving certain information. The most frequently requested change for the solution is integrating the latest technology to facilitate interactive resolution.

I have been using the solution for the past 20 years.

The solution is stable. I have several servers working together in a cluster.

The solution is scalable.

We haven't needed customer support extensively. However, we did encounter some delays, waiting for several hours to receive a satisfactory answer. Fortunately, there have been no issues with the technical components.

I have worked with SentinelOne and ServiceNow.

The solution is best-suited for medium-sized companies. I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

We use Helix to manage incidents and requests. 

The user experience could be better. 

I have used Helix for one year.

Helix is stable.

Helix is scalable.

Setting up Helix is complex, and it takes about a day to deploy. 

It's a help desk software. It is an ITSM system. We are an MSP. We use it in-house and then we use it for a bunch of our other customers.

It's a stable, reliable product.

The solution can scale and expand well.

It's one of the top solutions on the market for ITSM capabilities. 

We used to use it and we don't want to use it anymore. We're actually now replacing it.

The interface isn't that great. Also, it just doesn't integrate with as many systems as ServiceNow.

The initial setup is complex. 

I've been using the solution for 11 years or so. 

The stability is very, very good. I'd rate it four out of five in terms of reliability. It doesn't crash or lag on us. There aren't bugs or glitches. 

It is highly scalable. We have lots of users. We've never had a problem expanding it. It's not a problem.

Their support is not really good yet. Due to our scale, when we work with their support, it's not very good.

Neutral

We are actually on the way to phasing this solution out. We are replacing it with ServiceNow. ServiceNow integrates with more solutions. 

The initial setup is pretty complex. 

We had the competency to handle the setup in-house. 

The cost is high and going up. Part of the reason why we're changing products is that the pricing actually went up recently by a lot.

We're an MSP. We resell it for BMC amongst other things.

This solution is a SaaS, a Software as a Service, solution. 

It's probably the second-best solution out there. It's just that, as an MSP, we just need to work with a bunch of other toolsets. When that happens, then you run into more support issues and run into more integration issues. That said, I would still say it's the second-best ITSM solution out there.

I'd rate the solution five out of ten. 

We are mostly involved in service assurance for telecommunications; service assurance and network provisioning for telecommunications. We use BMC Helix ITSM in these areas.

Most of our use cases involving BMC Helix ITSM are for change management and trouble ticketing. If you look at telecommunications companies, everything revolves around incident problems and change.

The most valuable feature for our customers using BMC Helix ITSM is change management.

BMC Helix ITSM encourages the use of APIs as much as possible. They're looking to use machine learning in the future, and all the time moving towards a zero-touch type environment.

I have customers that always would like to adapt and personalize BMC Helix ITSM more.

I have been using BMC Helix ITSM since it came out. 

BMC Helix ITSM is stable.

Having the solution on the cloud brings increased scalability. The scalability of BMC Helix ITSM is good.

The deployment of BMC Helix ITSM is difficult. If you deploy it in a single-use enterprise it's probably fairly simple. A lot of the deployments of the solution we are doing are at a global level where there is a lot of consolidation. BMC Helix ITSM requires individuals that are doing the process to have a deep understanding of the solution.

A lot of people are moving from legacy on-premise systems to SaaS cloud versions. The most difficult element of doing this is data migration. This process could improve. There are good processes in place for migration, but it's having the level of understanding about what data do you need to migrate that can be difficult.

We use an Agile approach to the implementation of BMC Helix ITSM. We could have a delivery phase that requires six or seven people as part of the delivery in the Agile scrum-type approach. Your next iteration could be two or three people or more. Then you have your consultants on top of that and your architects. However, it is depending on what is required for that sprint. 

What we tend to do is use an initial waterfall approach to create the base, or the minimum viable solution, up and running. Then we move to an Agile sprint approach for iterations and for meeting customer requirements. We figure out what the business requirements are and what are the priorities, et cetera. There can be a lot of teams involved, such as testing and redelivery teams.

I would advise others before implementing this solution to be clear on what they are trying to achieve.

I rate BMC Helix ITSM a nine out of ten.