BMC TrueSight Operations Management Reviews

We use the solution for infrastructure monitoring.

It is a very stable product.

The solution could improve its price.

I have been using the solution for some time now.

I do not see any complaints about the tool’s stability.

The tool is scalable. A small team of two to five people manages the product in the organization. The number of users in operations depends upon the size of the environment. When we operate, we need a team to monitor and take action. It is a completely managed service.

I haven’t received any complaints from our customers regarding the technical support team.

The setup is okay. It is not complex. The time taken for deployment depends on the project and the size of the customer.

To deploy the solution, we need to install agents, install the software, ensure that the servers and the prerequisites are ready, and ensure that the setup related to integration to the endpoints and security is ready. The problem is not in the setup and installation of the product. Usually, the problem is related to the infrastructure and facilitating access to the product through security procedures. The administration of the solution is easy. A couple of people can manage it.

The pricing depends on the requirements of the customers and the additional functionalities they need. The product is suitable for enterprise customers, not for SMEs. The tool is very flexible with its pricing. I rate the pricing a six out of ten.

We require market standards to understand the improvements needed in the product. Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

Our company uses the solution to monitor assets and infrastructures for customers. We have 500 technicians who load asset details and monitor hardware or SMP-based devices. 

The out-of-the-box format allows us to integrate any components within the toolset console and provide an end-to-end solution for customers. 

The event management tool builds correlation logic and protection algorithms into a field of events that is valuable when a data center goes down. Some event management tools are built-in and some are customized to the environment. 

The dashboard and performance graphs should include a way to automatically schedule and export reports.

The licensing category has single endpoints and entities but should also include CMDB and other integrated components. It should be capable of providing which countries need more licenses and what endpoints they use to narrow down information for developers. 

BMC Helix is the SaaS solution but it is not yet mature so some features are missing. It is difficult to transition customers from TrueSight to Helix when the same customization is not available. For example, the solution provides control for building custom knowledge modules in the repository and bringing them to the server endpoints. However, Helix does not allow control over the repository and instead manages it within the solution. The customer should have complete control like they do in the solution because the SaaS format can cause data privacy issues.

I have been using the solution for eight years. 

Technical support is good and responsive. They provide advance notice of updates and actions. 

I rate technical support a ten out of ten. 

Positive

The ease of setup depends on the environment but is straightforward as long as prerequisites are in place. 

A simple environment is easy to setup. 

A complex environment with multiple data centers and touch points will have a complex architecture. It is important to make sure that service is available across the environment with a zero mean time error and that takes time. 

I rate setup an eight out of ten. 

We implement the solution for our customers and have certain guidelines that we follow. 

For example, a customer interested in mounting dashboards will not be given complete access because we control user-level access for them. We determine if the customer wants to view events in the console or if they want to see the performance of their hardware. We then provide a set of guidelines and documentation that includes those specific features. 

We give customers the level of access they desire rather than complete access to the entire solution. 

The solution is based on endpoints and knowledge models which can get costly. 

Pricing is a little bit high so I rate it a six out of ten. 

There are many options in this category, each with its own pros and cons. 

For example, ServiceNow might have some beneficial features but might be missing others that are available in the solution. 

For us, it isn't so much that the solution is better than others but rather that its features are the best fit for our needs. Use case is important and we feel the solution is better for operations management than other tools such as ServiceNow. 

I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

I am a certified TrueSight Operations Administrator where I monitor and implement BMC products. This solution is used to monitor various software infrastructures (i.e. servers, databases, hardware, etc.).

I like everything about this tool.

There are some small limitations with this tool in terms of reporting dashboards that fit all of the requirements of the individual customer.

I have been using this solution for the last ten years.

This is a stable solution.

This is a scalable solution.

There are some troubleshooting steps that we are able to resolve ourselves. In the event that we are unable to resolve it, we simply just raise a case with BMC support and that are always there to help if necessary.

This is a straightforward solution all around and there are three ways that you are able to install it: a silent installer, a command-line installer, plus Linux OS and Windows installers.

Depending on the project requirements, basic installation takes about five days for standalone setup. In the event that there is an HA setup that needs to be taken, an additional five or so days can be added to that time.

We have implemented this for a bank that has their entire infrastructure monitored by BMC and they have about five thousand users.

We use out in-house team to implement the solution for our clients. We have a team of three people for maintenance of the tool.

Annual licensing amount depends on the customers requirements. Support is an additional fee and there are options for three and five year support.

I recommend this solution to anyone looking for a standalone solution with high availability meaning that can be used depending on the customers requirements.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

ITSM is used for incident tracking. We have deployed it for one of our customers that is in the telecom domain. Service providers are using this tool to log tickets related to the product they are using from the main organization. They log tickets in case they're facing some issue with the services they're using or providing to their customers. 

Apart from that, we have implemented the end-to-end change management life cycle and the knowledge management module as a self-service tool. Basically in all ITSM modules, we are delivering solutions to the customer.

I'm currently working with product version 21.3. It's deployed on-prem.

Helix Innovation Studio is a very good feature. It allows us to develop our own enterprise applications and make them available for the customers.

The UI for the end users could be improved and more flexible than it is now. If it becomes more flexible, it will be the best interface among all ITSM centers.

I have been using this solution for about 12 and a half years.

It's very stable.

It's highly scalable.

Technical support is very good.

It's straightforward. For complexity, I would rate it 1 out of 5.

I would rate this solution 10 out of 10.

My customers use it to monitor their enterprise and define their services. With a lot of the AIOps features and things like Service Impact Manager, my customers are able to reduce their mean time to repair (MTTR). MTTR is very important for companies who are reliant on their critical IT applications.

Sometimes, a lot of customers, if they're not using the products, don't know that they have an IT issue unless a customer contacts them, and says “I've got a problem.” With TSOM, they are able to be more proactive. The IT department gets alerted more quickly, and sometimes, they can resolve issues before the customer even knows that there is an issue.

This solution helps our customers to reveal underlying infrastructure issues that affect app performance. It has good monitoring all the way from storage up to the servers. Now, all the things I'm seeing in the cloud are very good, as well.

A lot of the integrations with all the other BMC products are fantastic, because it has a great discovery tool which can model applications and integrate those into TSOM. Then TSOM, once an alert is detected, can automatically create tickets in the ITSM system, which is Helix.

Its event management capabilities are very open and flexible. I haven't seen a use case scenario with a customer that we couldn't actually solve the problem for, so it's really good. There are some interesting things that happen in an enterprise network (things that people don't normally expect), and the event management product is very flexible. You can solve problems as far as your imagination can go with it.

I would like to see a little more out-of-the-box event correlation and expanded AIOps type capabilities. Where you can train your artificial intelligence operations to be able to memorize an issue once you encounter one scenario, so if you encounter that same problem, you can get to the root cause very quickly.

It is very stable.

It's very scalable. It is horizontally scalable. Right now, I'm hearing good things from the product team that they want to do some things as far as vertical scalability, as well.

I really don't have interactions with support myself directly. Some people who work for my company, they do that. 

The technical support does a good job. I used to be a BMC consultant back until 2013, and in those times, the support was very good.

It does help reduce IT operations costs. A lot of times, people are doing things manually. They might have a network operating center where they just monitor screens all the time, so you can reduce labor costs. From a scale perspective, if they have thousands and thousands of servers in their data centers, you can determine which ones are more critical over the other ones and focus on the critical pieces, not the pieces which don't matter.

I have customers who use other products. Sometimes, they ask me to evaluate other products that they're considering.

I am working with one large company right now who is looking at the ServiceNow Event Management product, and it's a little immature right now. Therefore, I told them about that. There are also other products that feed into the ServiceNow product set which are very expensive and very difficult to implement. This is one place where I have made the recommendation of BMC, specifically over ServiceNow.

Understand your use cases. Take a look at the use case to product fit. I don't really recommend many other products. We are sort of committed to the BMC product set because it's good. We have a lot of experience with it, and came from a company who was acquired by BMC Software. The product manager for that company, April Hickel, she's done very well. She is the product manager for TSOM now. I know her, her innovative capabilities, and her whole team. I've been working with them for a long time, so I know not only that the product is good, but the roadmap is good, and the people behind it are very good.

If you have a good imagination you can solve anything, but you need the right tool to be able to apply that to.

We use BMC TrueSight Operations Management in a Microsoft-based environment which we feel is best for performance monitoring and management. In our company, most of the workload is on Microsoft but the new version of the solution can monitor the workload of Linux too. My multi-fact servers are readily available and best practices are being suggested. I do not have to work and create everything from scratch because most of the features are there. Most of the alerts are available and very active but there are times I have to modify the extra alerts.

The most valuable features are the rich reports, high performance, and the look and feel of the WebEx webpage are very good.

I have been using BMC TrueSight Operations Management for approximately five years.

The solution is stable. We have not needed to speak to the vendor regarding any issues, it has been operating very well.

The solution is scalable.

We have more than 200 users in my organization using this solution and there are approximately three staff members that log into the solution for management and to check the resources. We had plans to increase usage of the solution but because of financial issues, we are not able to at this time.

We have been in contact with technical support to align our objectives and to determine their effectiveness and for information regarding updates. We have been satisfied with the support and we have not needed them for any issues, only information.

The solution gives clear instructions of what systems are required. You are able to simply plug data as a virtual machine in your environment and they have the option of going to the cloud. In the cloud version, you can easily enable the subscription and start working, deploying, and integrate with your environment.

On the client side, I do not have to configure or update anything on the software. It discovers what is running on the client-side system and it automatically does everything.

We used a vendor to do the implementation because of our company policy and to make sure it was done correctly.

The solution only requires updates for the maintenance of the solution.

The price of BMC TrueSight Operations Management is very high. If there was more flexibility with the sizing of the licensing it would be helpful, especially during the pandemic. We have wanted to expend but the licensing cost is too high.

I rate BMC TrueSight Operations Management a ten out of ten.

We do work as independent consultants, but mainly the focus is on a crisp and reliable base layer for Service Level and Business Service Management with a working CMDB. In order to map the data and events correctly, you have to have a solid foundation.

The Event Management is outstanding; still is the most interesting part of the product.

The sizing (which is difficult), the maintenance of it and the upgrade paths. This is a difficult area which is not easy to cover, as every client has a different approach of implementing the product.

Stability is mainly a sizing issue. The product needs to be correctly sized and architectured. For this, you need skill and experience. If you follow this advice, you will have no issues. If you implement without a plan or architecture, you will be lost.

This is related to stability. You need to know what you have, then all will go well.

Customer Service:

People buy from people. If your account rep is a good one, all goes well. You cannot answer that easily. I have seen light and shadow, as one could say.

Technical Support:

Support has room for improvement. Very often, you find yourself answering the very same questions over and over again. I would give it a 6-7.

Some of the clients I have came from other solutions; mainly because they were outdated they switched, or because they were discontinued. The same applies in the other direction, especially if the clients had the wrong account rep.

Initial setup seems to be easy. The deeper you go, the more you need to know about the product, especially about its agents. Some functions are under-represented, especially the Agent Consoles, which are a little too basic compared to the old versions. So you still use a mix of versions which leads to no savings in hardware at all. HA setups are complex (best to use VMotion). Ports are not that well documented. Again, experience is the point. If you know the products under the hood for a long time, you will do good; otherwise, you might run into problems. This is the same for lots of products in the area. If you know what you do, all goes well.

We normally do these kinds of implementations; I am a consultant, not a real end-user, as the clients no longer have the expertise on board (no matter which product they use).

Monitoring is like an insurance. If you have it, you feel safe. If you do not have it and run into an accident, you wished you had it.

Use conservative figures. In terms of hardware, monitored servers and also effort. The product is not cheap. But as with other products, you get what you pay for.

Before choosing this product, we evaluated other options, and we still do. Mainly, it ends in a mixture of tools, and using open source-based tools reporting up into it, like Zabbix, OP5, Nagios XI or something like that.

Estimate enough time for the implementation. Never trust anyone who tells you that you will be finished in three months. Calculate at least one year for all tasks.

We use the solution to monitor a vast infrastructure, including operating systems, maintenance, Windows, services, processes, applications, and databases. Therefore, we have integrations with monitoring products such as Microsoft, Cisco, and SaaS solutions for management.

The solution provides visibility to our infrastructure, how it is, the resources we are monitoring, and quick updates when it has any problems. We have integrated it with ServiceNow to open instances.

The important feature is device management.

The dashboards are not good. We have a limited dashboard, and if we want better dashboards, we need to use other solutions like Grafana because the TrueSight dashboards are not good.

TrueSight could add any new resources because everything is changing to BMC Helix and will be discontinued. 

Some points didn't evolve. We are still using the node architecture, a node type of agent, and a decent cell, which was created many years ago.

I have been using BMC TrueSight Operations Management since 2009. We are using V11.3.05 of the solution.

The solution is a very stable solution. After you get everything done, take some time to get the recording done.

I rate the solution’s stability a nine out of ten.

Scalability depends on the number of servers dedicated to the solution and infrastructure management service; you install it from any integration server.

I rate the solution’s scalability a seven out of ten.

The initial setup is not that easy. It can depend on the environment you are deploying. It could be tough to do. It took a few months to get everything ready.

It takes many servers. One server has a central console that will present the data for all the components.

I rate the initial setup a five or six out of ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy.

Deployment was done in-house.

The product is expensive, depending on the types of monitoring you have. You need to acquire more licenses.

I rate the product’s pricing an eight out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive.

We like the features that are presented to us, such as remediation and remote actions. It is possible to customize the agents and consult the graphs from the devices

I advise you to find someone with experience before entering the space.

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