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reviewer1776849 - PeerSpot reviewer
General Manager - Sales at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Reseller
Intelligent and proactive monitoring solution that's reliable and easy to scale
Pros and Cons
  • "Intelligent solution with a proactive monitoring feature and consolidated dashboard that's stable and easy to scale."
  • "This solution is lacking in application monitoring features. Technical support for this solution also needs improvement, particularly in product knowledge and response time."

What is our primary use case?

If you have a TrueSight umbrella, it is a capturing tool that used to be called BPPM (BMC ProactiveNet Performance Management), or Patrol, and it proactively monitors your IT infrastructure, e.g. the data center containing your server applications, or database, middleware, or network devices.

BMC TrueSight Operations Management is used for proactive monitoring where it has a connection with the email engine, so you can receive alerts. Through this solution, you can monitor your infrastructure, understand where the problem is coming from, and more easily understand your infrastructure. BMC TrueSight Operations Management is a firefighter that will help you when problems come.

What is most valuable?

There are many features that are most valuable in BMC TrueSight Operations Management.

First, its proactive monitoring feature is highly developed. BMC TrueSight Operations Management is an intelligent tool that's able to understand day-to-day operations and consistently gives alerts. The alerts are not automatic for some activities, e.g. some alerts are given monthly, while some are given more frequently.

The consolidated dashboard where you can enjoy a single pane of glass to look at the full infrastructure from the servers to the VMs, to the clouds, to the application, to the database, to the network devices, including having a topology, and having a tendency map of the topology of key offerings, is also a valuable feature of this solution.

What needs improvement?

There are still many things that can be improved in BMC TrueSight Operations Management.

They need to dig deeper into the layers of application monitoring. They're very strong in server and network monitoring, but they're still lacking on many of the sites, and there's still much work to be done on cloud monitoring.

These are the areas that need improvement for this solution.

We would be expecting additional features in the next release, as they always come up with good features and updates during version upgrades.

I'd like to see more features in the application side as they are lacking, when compared to AppDynamics or other competitors who have advantage over application monitoring features.

On the Cloud side, what I'd like to see on the next release is for this solution to be 100% on the Cloud, rather than it being a hybrid model.

These are the things we are looking forward to in the next release.

For how long have I used the solution?

Our company has been a partner of BMC for almost 18 years, and that's the amount of time we've been using solutions from BMC.

Buyer's Guide
BMC TrueSight Operations Management
January 2025
Learn what your peers think about BMC TrueSight Operations Management. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

This solution is 100% reliable. It's stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

BMC TrueSight Operations Management is easy to scale. It can easily take any load, and any of the tools out there. It's an enterprise level tool.

How are customer service and support?

We contacted BMC technical support several times. The L1 and L2 support team need improvement in terms of product knowledge, but most of the time, they're always available and always trying to help us out.

There were many cases where there was a lack of response, or a longer response time. If a product defect has been found, for example, the case has to be escalated to a senior or another department, e.g. R&D, which means we have to wait for a response from that senior or from the R&D department, and that usually takes time.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup for BMC TrueSight Operations Management is straightforward, but it's not that typical when deployed on-premises. It depends on the environment of the customer, the infrastructure, and how dependent it is. It also depends on the complexity of that environment, and what kind of tools they have in their network devices.

There can be a number of things that could make the setup straightforward or complex, e.g. If the environment is very clean and only have one or two volumes when they're using Cisco or SP, then it's easy to improve, but when the variants are too much, then it could take time.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

BMC TrueSight Operations Management is not on the cheaper side, but its pricing is on a case by case basis. Small, medium, and large-sized companies can afford it. Its licensing model is simple and based on the devices. You get the licenses based on the number of servers or network devices.

There are no hidden costs from BMC. They are very transparent with their customers. Everything's in front of the customer, including charges. They are really transparent. What we say and what BMC says, we make sure to deliver to the customer. Everything's very, very clear, including pricing and charges.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I evaluated AppDynamics.

What other advice do I have?

We are a partner of BMC Software, RiskNow, and Atlassian.

We have experience with all end-to-end BMC tools, starting from BMC Remedy ITSM for automations, to their operations management tool: BMC TrueSight Operations Management, which is used for monitoring, etc. We recommend these tools for our customers to use, except for application monitoring, as we didn't find a good tool for this on the BMC side, so we went with AppDynamics, then moved to Cisco. We are also looking into Dynatrace and exploring if our customers can use it.

We're always recommending the latest version of BMC TrueSight Operations Management to our customers, and we keep on upgrading if a new version is available.

Most of our customers have this solution deployed on-premises. If it was deployed on cloud, then we wouldn't have to take care of the upgrade, because it will be done automatically. Though cloud deployment is picking up, most of our customers are still deploying on-premises.

Apart from being a reseller of this solution, we also perform 100% implementation and other processes for our customers. We do end-to-end customer management.

After deployment, BMC TrueSight Operations Management only requires normal maintenance, or it can be taken cared of under managed services. Maintenance of this solution is hassle-free. It's just normal updating, e.g. patching.

This solution works well for any company size: small, medium, or large. It can take the load off any enterprise, no matter the size. It can be onboarded for a very big conglomerate without any challenge.

My advice to others looking into implementing BMC TrueSight Operations Management is to first find a partner for this solution. Once the implementation is done successfully, they can start using it. This is a beautiful solution and it works 100%, but it will still depend on how you're using it and how you're taking care of it. You need to take care of it so you can use it for a long time.

I'm rating BMC TrueSight Operations Management a ten out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Reseller
PeerSpot user
Prajakta Solanke - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior System Administrator at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
It improves VM load and has good documentation with easy-to-follow steps on how to set it up, but it has room for improvement in terms of scalability and stability
Pros and Cons
  • "What I like best about BMC TrueSight Operations Management is that it allows you to do granular monitoring and improves VM load."
  • "The stability of BMC TrueSight Operations Management needs improvement. My organization's infrastructure is vast and implemented based on BMC recommendations, but the solution needs to be optimized for large-capacity infrastructure."

What is our primary use case?

My organization primarily uses BMC TrueSight Operations Management for standalone VMs, database structures, database monitoring, VM file system and storage space, and application logs. However, the most important use case for the solution is the server log.

How has it helped my organization?

We get a lot of benefits from BMC TrueSight Operations Management as a bank, as we have nearly forty thousand servers that serve the bank. To manage those large servers, we need updated file systems, whether in terms of storage or what drives have been added or removed. Still, we also have to consider the DB, particularly instance monitoring and even the small parts of the DB, so we use BMC TrueSight Operations Management because the solution gives us a very granular level of monitoring and improves the load based on the VMs.

For example, there are one hundred VM files, and if only one has an issue, we find it easier to monitor, alert, and pinpoint which data to focus on through BMC TrueSight Operations Management.

What is most valuable?

What I like best about BMC TrueSight Operations Management is that it allows you to do granular monitoring and improves VM load.

What needs improvement?

The stability of BMC TrueSight Operations Management needs improvement. At the moment, that area is pathetic. My organization's infrastructure is vast and implemented based on BMC recommendations, but the solution needs to be optimized for large-capacity infrastructure.

Though BMC has released some USPs on how and what to monitor, what and what not to alert, and has good specifications, my organization hasn't been happy with BMC TrueSight Operations Management stability. BMC has not been making improvisations on the stability that have made me happy as a customer.

I want better reporting capability in the next release of the solution.

BMC TrueSight Operations Management, in terms of UI, could be more user-friendly, so this is another improvement I want to see in its next release. I have used other tools which were convenient to use compared to BMC TrueSight Operations Management.

I found other solutions, such as AppDynamics and SolarWinds DPA, better than BMC TrueSight Operations Management regarding cases and features.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used BMC TrueSight Operations Management for eight years and still use it.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

BMC TrueSight Operations Management has not been stable. It behaves the same way, whether there's load or none, so it could be better from a stability perspective.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability of BMC TrueSight Operations Management needs improvement. It's a four out of ten for me. I'm not happy about the scalability of the solution.

BMC TrueSight Operations Management is the best tool for monitoring one hundred fifty servers, but more than that number, or the more you scale, the less stable it becomes.

How are customer service and support?

I used to work for BMC, and I now work for a bank. I know the ins and outs of BMC, for example, how support works and provides solutions to its customers. When I was in BMC, the support team didn't take me seriously whenever I raised concerns, and it's the same now that I'm working for another organization. BMC has a process to follow, and you have to follow it, but sometimes, the process becomes pathetic when you're in a tight situation. Before the BMC support team provides you with a solution to your issue, it takes a lot of time, and more often than not, you've already resolved your issue.

I'm rating support for BMC TrueSight Operations Management as five out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup for BMC TrueSight Operations Management was easy, as long as you have an excellent team to do it. The most crucial part is that BMC provided good documents with easy-to-follow steps for setting up BMC TrueSight Operations Management. It's easy when you follow the documents and processes thoroughly because that makes your job easy.

I was not part of the team that deployed the solution, but I do have deployment experience. You have to check your infrastructure availability, particularly how much infrastructure you need, how many servers, and which infrastructure you want to monitor. Next, you must decide whether it'll be a small, medium, or large infrastructure. BMC will also recommend the VMs, OS, RAM, CPU, etc., and then you have to select. When everything's ready, the BMC side provides all you need to install, and then you can deploy one after the other. You must follow the steps but also pick out components you want to use according to your requirements, as BMC TrueSight Operations Management is similar to an umbrella with multiple components. Yet, you won't need to use all parts. Once you've finalized the components, you can get the VM sorted out and do the installation, and that's it. It'll be pretty easy to follow from there.

What was our ROI?

I don't know if there's ROI from BMC TrueSight Operations Management because I'm not involved in calculating the ROI.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I'm unaware of how much BMC TrueSight Operations Management costs because I'm not involved in that area.

What other advice do I have?

I'm using BMC TrueSight Operations Management version 11.3, but my organization is upgrading it to the latest version.

The number of people needed to deploy BMC TrueSight Operations Management depends on the infrastructure size. In some cases, if it's a startup or small-scale company, generally, everyone works together, which means, from each sector, you would need at least one person, plus the person who would be managing the solution and the person who would be providing the database. The deployment would require not more than three or four people. If the BMC TrueSight Operations Management administrator is good enough, one person can install it, with another person as a backup, while another person communicates requirements.

BMC TrueSight Operations Management requires maintenance because you must update your VMs with patches, but it's not as frequent. Once in a while, whenever BMC releases a patch or hotfix, you must take care of it.

More than thirty-five people use BMC TrueSight Operations Management in my organization.

If you want to purchase the solution for your organization, and it satisfies all your requirements regarding what and how to monitor, etc., then please go ahead. If you want to do VM monitoring, BMC TrueSight Operations Management is a good solution because it provides excellent granular monitoring compared to other solutions in the market. It's also pretty easy for monitoring and alerting.

Customization is also good in BMC TrueSight Operations Management, and you can customize it according to your requirement.

If you're looking for a cloud monitoring solution, on the other hand, then BMC TrueSight Operations Management is not for you. If you need a scalable solution because you have an extensive infrastructure, then you better call BMC and ask BMC to prove that the solution is scalable and stable enough for your infrastructure.

My rating for BMC TrueSight Operations Management is six out of ten, on average.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
BMC TrueSight Operations Management
January 2025
Learn what your peers think about BMC TrueSight Operations Management. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.
ServiceDdffe - PeerSpot reviewer
Service Delivery Manager at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Knowledge Modules are what make the implementation across our varied infrastructure, but RBAC controls need some work
Pros and Cons
  • "From an administrative standpoint, what stands out in TrueSight is the ability to implement quickly. When they have a requirement to monitor something, we're able to turn that on quickly in their environment. We're able to set up new apps within a day."
  • "We were somewhat limited in TrueSight due to some of the RBAC controls not quite being what we wanted as far as delegating out administrative privileges for implementation. But because we were able to turn requests around pretty well, that burden wasn't too heavy."

What is our primary use case?

We use it for business service and infrastructure monitoring. We use the full gamut of utilities from them and monitoring in the platform.

How has it helped my organization?

We don't use APM. We used to. We line-item nixed that for various reasons a few years ago. We also don't use the ITDA, their next-gen log monitoring tool. So we're truly just within the TSOM interface, as well as doing synthetics. That being said, the Knowledge Modules that BMC brings to the market are what make the implementation across our varied infrastructure and applications. It's critical to have those Knowledge Modules. If we had to write things ourselves, or to use a more generic monitoring environment, and then build additional scripts on top of that to monitor the Kubernetes of the world, or the WebLogics of the world, or the Oracles and SQLs of the world - if we had to write scripts ourselves to bring back particular monitoring components and performance metrics and so on - that would be a heavy burden that would keep us from implementing. We don't often run into something that we haven't been able to monitor. It's just a matter of getting people to the table to tell us what they need.

When it comes to incident management, we get most of our data from TrueSight, log data, because we don't use the ITDA interface. It would be an effective interface, but for logging we go to our SIEMs, since we're already pumping data to another system there. But TrueSight definitely gives us a view into the health of our business services, which is our primary goal for implementing monitoring.

We try very hard not to use event management. What I mean by that is that we do not have a typical NOC. We don't have ten people staring at screens and then escalating as necessary. Along those same lines, we don't spam our incident management environment with events from TrueSight. With a lot of customers I've met over the years, that's essentially the old school way of doing things. Instead, we create events that are truly actionable. If we don't have an actionable event, we don't create it. We use their baseline technology to ensure that we're only sending items that are either about to have a problem or have passed the threshold of having a problem. If you're talking about typical event management, where you create an event and it gets forwarded to some other system, there's a notification about it somewhere else - the whole ITSM cycle - we don't use it for that. We use it for creating smart events that create alerts directly to the teams responsible. As I described before, we have many distributed teams rather than a centralized NOC.

In terms of TrueSight helping to maintain the availability of our infrastructure, it's an interesting question because of our distributed systems. We have 8,000 hosts across about 40 different teams, and we have 600 different applications that we run. For those critical tier-one apps, teams are highly involved in their day-to-day operations and watching them very closely. Having those two things - the actionable alerts and the ability to see what the health of their system is at any given time, and to be able to check it against what normal looks like for those applications - gives the teams that use it in such a manner the information they need to be confident that their availability is as it needs to be, or better. As far as a hybrid environment goes, we have our own hosting environment because we are the cloud to our clients. So we're not necessarily in that situation. We don't use assets other than what's in our hosting environment.

If, in the past, one of our biggest problems was just plain old infrastructure incidents, basic availability incidents where a server or an application, an interface or an endpoint, may not have been available and no one noticed it until some downstream, business end-result brought it to our attention, we've essentially eliminated 90 percent or more of those. It has been at least three years since we've done any numbers. But at the time, we might have had ten to 15 Sev-One incidents a month. When we last measured it, we were down to one. That was within a couple of years of implementing an enterprise monitoring strategy.

As for root cause, when a team is engaged in monitoring to its full extent, we're usually able to get to root cause pretty darn quick. For example, if a team has many servers that could potentially be impacting an application or a business service, tracking something down across those multiple servers and multiple owners could be really tedious and time-consuming. It would be on the order of hours, or at least many minutes, depending on the scope of the issue. With well-implemented monitoring, for our Sev-One apps, they're able to get to the solution almost immediately. If we have monitoring set up properly, the actionable event will tell them precisely where a critical component has failed and they can resolve it. Where it's a different type of incident that we might not have a particular monitor for, they're able to use the performance data, availability data, and other related alerts to get to their issue much faster than they used to. Having a good monitoring implementation has made a world of difference to our operations teams. It's so much so, that if you think back five years, which is an eternity in the IT world, when there was a Sev-One incident back then, someone would walk around tapping people on the shoulder all over the floor. That was very time-consuming. But now they're able to collaborate quickly and say, "It looks like this is the problem right here," in a well-monitored environment, and get right to the root cause.

It's helped our mean time to remediation, and I'm being conservative here, by about 70 to 80 percent. That's an absolutely huge impact.

What is most valuable?

We have many operational teams, and for any given team their requirements are different. One team is more reliant on infrastructure monitoring, because they are processing-heavy. Another team might be more reliant on endpoint monitoring where we're ensuring that the third-party endpoints they rely on are up and available. Another team may have fairly immature applications, so that they would rely heavily on log monitoring to catch all the errors that may come up. From a consumer-function standpoint, there isn't any feature that stands out. They're all important because all of our consumers are important. 

From an administrative standpoint, what stands out in TrueSight is the ability to implement quickly. When they have a requirement to monitor something, we're able to turn that on quickly in their environment. We're able to set up new apps within a day. Most of the work in monitoring is working with the teams, evangelizing, educating, and making sure that they're bringing their smart requests to the table so that they get visibility into their business service. If the implementation wasn't as easy as it is, it would hinder and probably decrease the adoption of monitoring. But because we can turn requests around pretty quickly and adjust things as teams need adjustment for their different release schedules, administratively, we're able to respond and keep pace with the business and the technology that they're implementing. That is a critical function for us.

For how long have I used the solution?

We've been using TrueSight Operations Management for almost six years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Stability is one of those areas of identifying challenges with TrueSight, areas that I'm not entitled to share at this point.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We've been able to implement all the hosts that we care to implement on a couple of servers, with minimal maintenance. We don't use their high-availability solution. We don't really require it because the underlying infrastructure is relatively robust. We haven't had any problems with the scalability. Had we been a couple of times larger, there would've been more to implement server-wise. 

The other thing about our implementation is that we send a lot more performance data to our implementation of TrueSight than the typical BMC environment might. We send everything server-side for analysis rather than keeping everything agent-side or emphasizing agent-side, as I've seen a lot of other clients do. I think the tide is turning. I think more people are doing what we're doing where we just push all the data for potential analysis. But we've been able to accomplish what we need without too much infrastructure.

How are customer service and technical support?

They had an advisory board. We, as a group, and even I specifically, had been asked by them what they needed to continue doing. One of those was continuing to build out Knowledge Modules in various technologies. Some of the ones BMC has made available, we've implemented, and some of the ones BMC has made available don't impact us and we haven't implemented. But I've been in discussions where they say, "What do we need to do," and Knowledge Modules is one of those areas where they've made a commitment to continue adding to them, and we appreciate that.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

When we first started, we did not have a monitoring program at anything resembling an enterprise-type level. We were at about 4,000 hosts and we were really not monitoring anything except for a few services. At that, it was bare-bones monitoring. We monitored, maybe, half of our environment at bare-bones.

We went on this journey six-plus years ago to have an enterprise monitoring solution that focuses on business services. One of the reasons we did that is because of the number of incidents that we had that really should never have happened. Now that we're a number of years in, and we've implemented monitoring and brought teams around in the direction of business service rather than just an executable's use of a CPU, we have much fewer incidents.

As a general trend, we're much more capable of seeing what's out there and monitoring what our issues are and taking care of it before the business incident occurs. I don't have any particularly recent examples where our monitoring was able to resolve an incident after it happened. Of course, I don't get notified when people say, "Oh, look, I resolved this," because it's part of their daily operations to find an issue and resolve it. So it's not necessarily a newsflash anymore for us.

It doesn't happen quite as frequently as it used to, but they continue to build Knowledge Modules, every time there are new products on the market. They need to create Knowledge Modules for the implementation to be enhanced. That's one of the key features of the Operations Management. That's definitely something that helps us take advantage of everything BMC has. They're not sitting on their laurels. They're building things out.

How was the initial setup?

The complexity of our environment demanded the complexity of the implementation. More than half of the effort that we had in implementing monitoring was based on the way we did our program. We were basically starting at zero and bringing teams up to speed, evangelizing, educating, getting people onboard.

The implementation of TrueSight itself was just a software implementation. It had its bumps and bruises. None of us were versed in BMC software. There were some learning curves as would typically be expected for any application of this scope, magnitude, and impact.

We had an overall strategy of doing proofs of concept for various, widespread technologies. We took that success and did a wide-to-narrow type of advertisement. We told everybody what was going on and then we brought more specific people into the room and said, "These are good targets for you to implement." During and after that evangelizing and advertising, we started implementing tier-one applications as an onboarding effort. We did that in a deep-dive fashion where we would sit down and interview these teams and really come to understand what makes their business service tick. A lot of our evangelization effort was actually in changing the focus of operations teams to think from a business service perspective. That paid off in dividends later when people were more interested in monitoring the actual functions of their applications rather than just the infrastructure of their application. We've been able to change mindsets over the course of a number of years. The first two or three years we were doing implementations. That was when we did most of that work.

From there, we worked as much as possible to allow folks to implement their own where possible, rather than centralizing it, so that people could keep up with their own demands. We were somewhat limited in TrueSight due to some of the RBAC controls not quite being what we wanted as far as delegating out administrative privileges for implementation. But because we were able to turn requests around pretty well, that burden wasn't too heavy.

From tier-one apps, we kept going and kept educating, bringing people to the table. When new applications come to our company, we still reach out and educate new teams, bring them to the table and use the onboarding process we built and solidified over the course of the first couple of years.

During the first three years, we had two-and-a-half FTEs for implementation. That was for the full program, not just the TrueSight component. It included all those interviewees, all those educational components, all the training, etc. The full program. The actual pressing of the buttons was about half of that. Once you stand it up and start connecting things, it's a matter of administratively using the tool to execute.

What about the implementation team?

Typically, our company builds knowledge for implementing infrastructure/operations activities like this from the ground up. We did not use a third-party. BMC was instrumental in our success in that they made resources available to us, implementation-wise as well as development- and support-wise.

What was our ROI?

The solution hasn't helped reduce costs in a measurable fashion. That's a measure that we wouldn't undertake. There might be soft costs benefits, such as 

  • impact on the quality of life for operations folks
  • our ability to show our clients that the services we provide to them are healthy
  • giving the business teams, our relationship teams, the ability to speak intelligently, rather than just colloquially, about how our systems are running.

Life at our company as an operations person is nicer now because you have confidence that what you're doing makes a difference, that the business service that you're working on is healthy. The business is happier when we're able to talk to them intelligently and say, "I can actually show you that we've been up and successful." 

It has helped in our ability to work on smarter things rather than silly incidents. If we eliminate incidents, then we're doing better work. We're able to do the good work of business rather than the sad work of recovery. That's not only quality of life but it's also the ability to get things done. So I know that, at some level, we're doing more with less because of our monitoring. But we don't have any hard numbers from a monitoring perspective.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We're end-of-lifeing it now. Overall, the licensing costs of BMC are a challenge for us in that they're hard costs, whereas open-source monitoring has soft costs, where it's harder to line-item. It's harder to see the cost of implementation for other things. So that change of direction is taking place. It doesn't mean the cost isn't there; it's just soft dollars rather than hard dollars.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We looked at Microsoft SCCM. And, because we had a partnership with CA, we looked at their tools. There were a couple of other minor players we looked at which just didn't have the scope of what we needed to do, because of the breadth of technologies that we use. In the bakeoff, we came down to BMC and Microsoft.

It was a long time ago, so I don't know that it's fair to judge at this point, but from a monitoring perspective, the whole Microsoft suite really wasn't there. There was a lot of scripting. It was easy to identify that the administrative burden was going to be high in that implementation. Conversely, with the BMC stuff, out-of-the-box, administratively, you click and implement. That is one of our components of success, our ability to implement quickly. 

On the soft side, BMC as a partner was much more interested in our success than the Microsoft folks were at the time. It's very hard to quantify unless you're there sitting in front of them at the table and working with them, consuming their knowledge. It really is a great partnership.

What other advice do I have?

BMC is at a critical point in redefining TSOM, how it's built. Anybody looking at BMC now needs to jump on the new version of TSOM and skip the current versions. I would wait until their new environment is ready. It will be containerized. Anyone implementing BMC can get used to the environment in a PoC but they shouldn't implement until their new stuff is out. I expect it to be that much different.

Make sure that you have stakeholder buy-in and that they are able to provide the resources with the correct knowledge to implement in a smart fashion. Everybody's definition of "smart" is going to be slightly different. We really hone in on the business service side to make sure that our business functions are healthy and that we're able to understand what's normal and what is out of normal. We work with the teams, even from the point that they're in development of projects, to make sure we're ahead of what's going on rather than reactive. But that means the buy-in of multiple teams: development, operations, support. That amount of effort requires stakeholders with decision-making capabilities to say that it's a priority for them.

We knew up front - and we've been able to validate our assumption - that monitoring doesn't do any good unless you are analyzing your business service for what are the critical components to observe. That's an educational effort and an implementation project. It's that upfront effort that will make your monitoring successful. Where we've been able to engage teams and teams have remained engaged, we've been the most successful in that. We took that to heart upfront, we made that part of our route to success, and we put the effort in. Our monitoring's been successful because of that. If we didn't do that, and we didn't constantly engage teams to make sure that they were aware of capabilities including the ability to give us feedback, and that we can implement quickly, we wouldn't be here. We wouldn't have advanced as far as we have. Most of that advancement was in the first two or three years, and we've just been riding that wave of success since then.

Keep in mind that most companies don't go from nothing to an enterprise monitoring solution; they go from one monitoring solution to another. But if there's anyone in the boat that we were in, where they are the size we were with no monitoring solution, they'll be in the pain that we were in. Implementing a good monitoring program, not just the tool, but a program around it, can make a world of difference to the operations teams, and subsequently to the business as well.

For those teams that are utilizing TrueSight, they don't rely on other monitoring environments. Some of those teams rely on those actionable alerts almost exclusively, and don't really use TrueSight's single pane of glass. We do have some teams that consume TrueSight and use it on a daily basis to ensure that they don't have any events, whether or not they've risen to the level of action. They'll also proactively look at some components, either business function components or infrastructure components, to ensure that they're working as designed and within the parameters of normal.

I don't think the functionality of Operations Management helps to support our business innovation. Our business runs forward and headlong into innovation, regardless of whether or not IT can keep up. We were never an impediment, other than cost. The way we run our overall IT environment is very open and flexible. Monitoring is a way for us to give business the confidence that what we're implementing is healthy, but it doesn't impact their interest in being able to implement what's new. They've always been able to do that and continue to be able to do that.

In terms of machine-learning, I mentioned above the baselining which, depending on how it's implemented, might be called machine-learning, but in TrueSight they just have a straight calculation-type of activity. We have other monitoring solutions that we're implementing as well, and that topic may be more applicable to them, but not in the TrueSight world. The TrueSight world is a straight application implementation. It's nothing exciting on that end.

I have to give our BMC partners a lot of credit for where they're planning to take TrueSight based on their roadmap, although it is speculative. I don't think the areas for improvement from us would be any different than anything they've already heard.

If someone were to implement the full suite of BMC products, you'd have to give it a nine out of ten. TSOM by itself, I have to give it a seven out of ten.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Ayobanji Iluyomade - PeerSpot reviewer
Team Lead, Configuration Management & Service Portfolio at MTN
Real User
Top 5
The solution is stable and can be used for monitoring and managing events, but it does not provide application or service monitoring features
Pros and Cons
  • "It works irrespective of the operating system we’re running."
  • "The product must provide application or service monitoring features."

What is our primary use case?

The solution is used for event management and monitoring. We were also able to use it for infrastructure-level monitoring.

What is most valuable?

We can translate events into readable language. We use the product because it is a neutral system. It works irrespective of the operating system we’re running. If a new version of virtual monitoring comes up, BMC will support it in about six months.

What needs improvement?

I couldn’t use the tool for anything beyond IT-level management. The product must provide application or service monitoring features.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution for about three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The tool is relatively stable for what we use it for.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Around 100 people, including seven administrators, use the product in our organization.

How are customer service and support?

The admin team reaches out to the support team.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was not difficult.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The tool is moderately expensive.

What other advice do I have?

We are moving from basic monitoring to AIOps, where we can do things like self-healing. We also want to create dashboards for IT and business users to show the status of their services. We have done a couple of demos. I recommend the solution to others. Overall, I rate the product a seven out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Chairman-Mgmt Board/CEO at ZKB
Real User
Top 20
Has good stability, but reporting and monitoring features need improvement
Pros and Cons
  • "It is a scalable solution."
  • "The solution's support service could be better."

What is our primary use case?

We use the solution for operations monitoring purposes.

What is most valuable?

The solution's event management feature works best for us. It catches all the events from other monitoring products. Further, it produces incidents and notifies the DevOps team of the analytics.

What needs improvement?

The solution's reporting, monitoring, and configuration features need improvement. Presently, it is challenging to produce insightful monitoring data.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using the solution for more than ten years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is a stable solution.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is a scalable solution. We have 20-50 solution users in our organization.

How are customer service and support?

There are times when the solution's support service could be better.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We used SAP Solution Manager and Microsoft SCOM earlier. Later, we switched to BMC for its approach to consolidating relevant information.

How was the initial setup?

The solution's initial setup is straightforward. Although, its infrastructure is quite complicated as it has many components to maintain.

What about the implementation team?

We require two or three executives to deploy and maintain the solution.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We purchase a yearly license for the solution. It is not very expensive.

What other advice do I have?

I rate the solution as a six.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
reviewer2332233 - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution Design Monitoring & Performance Solutions at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 5
A highly stable and flexible solution that can be customized based on customer requirements
Pros and Cons
  • "The tool is flexible enough to be customized based on customer requirements."
  • "The product must provide more AI capabilities."

What is our primary use case?

The solution monitors our customer’s infrastructure.

What is most valuable?

The solution has major features that enable users to use the tool more effectively. The tool is flexible enough to be customized based on customer requirements.

What needs improvement?

The product must provide more AI capabilities. AI is already available but must play a deeper role in the solution.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution for the last 15 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The product has been in the market for more than 20 to 30 years, which tells us about the stability of the product and the enhancement that the vendor has done to ensure that the product is on top.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The product’s scalability depends on the person working on it. The administrators can make any required changes. Since I am experienced and certified, I do the maintenance myself.

How was the initial setup?

The time taken for deployment depends on the deployment size and the environment. The installation process and configurations vary depending on the customers' environment. The initial components must be installed based on the customer's requirements and server availability.

What was our ROI?

Any customer who has multiple servers will not be able to monitor them manually. The tool helps to know the unknown. Instead of having a person, we use the tool to monitor the server for errors.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The cost depends on the usage.

What other advice do I have?

I will recommend the solution to others. People who want to buy the solution must ensure that they use all the features. They must spend time with the tool before deciding to buy it. Overall, I rate the product a ten out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
reviewer2216304 - PeerSpot reviewer
AVP IT at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 20
Though the tool's APM needs improvement, it offers valuable features like alert and event management
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable features of the solution are alert management, alert generation, and event management."
  • "Application performance management (APM) is an area with certain shortcomings in the solution that needs improvement. I"

What is our primary use case?

The use cases of the solution do not meet the expectations of the industry standards compared to other solutions in the market, like Dynatrace or IBM Instana. BMC TrueSight Operations Management needs to be updated.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features of the solution are alert management, alert generation, and event management.

What needs improvement?

Application performance management (APM) is an area with certain shortcomings in the solution that needs improvement. If I were to describe what is wrong with the solution, I would have to state that in an end-to-end monitoring solution, including system monitoring, application availability, URL availability and monitoring, and transaction performance.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using BMC TrueSight Operations Management for four and a half years. My company has a partnership with BMC.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a six out of ten.

Our company has faced many incidents related to the solution's stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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

I use the solution on a daily basis.

How are customer service and support?

I have an in-house technical support team in my company, and because of this, I never had to go to BMC for support. I feel that BMC's technical support, so I rate it an eight out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Dynatrace, IBM Instana, and AppDynamics are the solutions I have used previously. The aforementioned monitoring solutions have grown over the years in the market and have been capturing areas like application performance and transactional performance, which I feel is something BMC TrueSight should aim for at the earliest to reach a high level of maturity.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup of BMC TrueSight Operations Management was easy and manageable.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

The solution's deployment was carried out phase-wise in our company, because of which the deployment was done within a month.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

In our company, we are exploring options from BMC and ServiceNow while planning to upgrade from BMC Remedy to BMC Helix.

What other advice do I have?

In my project, the company had to replace BMC TrueSight Operations Management with Dynatrace because we were not getting the desired output from BMC.

If you have a low budget or some other budget constraints, then you can go with BMC TrueSight Operations Management. If you need performance enhancements and other additional features or capabilities, BMC TrueSight Operations Management will not help. BMC TrueSight Operations Management is good for monitoring infra servers, but today's need of the hour is an overall monitoring stack.

I rate the overall product a five out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: partner
PeerSpot user
Elsayed Aboelnaga - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at Uranium For IT Solutions
Real User
Top 5
An easy to setup tool useful to monitor applications and servers
Pros and Cons
  • "The initial setup of BMC TrueSight Operations Management was easy."
  • "In our company, we faced some issues with the solution’s application endpoint, IP, and the physical location of the transactions."

What is our primary use case?

In my company, we use BMC TrueSight Operations Management to monitor applications and servers' availability and performance. We also use the solution to monitor transactions or applications and for its infrastructure management service.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable parts of the solution are its end-user monitoring feature and how it allows monitoring applications and transactions.

What needs improvement?

In our company, we faced some issues with the solution’s application endpoint, IP, and the physical location of the transactions. The aforementioned area can be considered for improvement in the solution.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using BMC TrueSight Operations Management for a year. My company has a partnership with BMC.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Stability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten. In our company, we have been using the system for a year and two months now, and there has been no problem with its stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We use the solution to monitor our company's main servers, the availability of 15 applications, and the performance of the servers.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup of BMC TrueSight Operations Management was easy.

In the visibility manager of the application, there are some certification issues when it comes to the installation phase.

The solution is deployed on-premises.

The solution's deployment process can take around a year and two months, to be precise.

What other advice do I have?

BMC TrueSight Operations Management is a good solution.

I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free BMC TrueSight Operations Management Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: January 2025
Buyer's Guide
Download our free BMC TrueSight Operations Management Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.