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BMC Helix Discovery vs Device42 comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

BMC Helix Discovery
Ranking in IT Asset Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Device42
Ranking in IT Asset Management
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management Databases (2nd), IP Address Management (IPAM) Tools (3rd), Data Center Infrastructure Management (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the IT Asset Management category, the mindshare of BMC Helix Discovery is 8.7%, up from 8.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Device42 is 5.8%, down from 6.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Asset Management
 

Featured Reviews

Shirish Kamalapurkar - PeerSpot reviewer
Very stable, fast, and powerful with valuable inventory management features
Our company uses the solution as an inventory tool for customers. The solution discovers your infrastructure and lets you know what servers and network devices are on it. It gives you details about applications, hardware, and software such as how they are connected and the dependencies between…
Krishna Gopal Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Good reporting and discovery capabilities, and helpful for understanding device dependencies and asset management
Its price needs to be improved. It is more expensive than some of the other tools out there. Their support is good, but their knowledge base should be better. There should be a common area where we can search and find solutions for our queries or issues. We don't always need to raise a ticket with the Device42 support team. Currently, if you want to ping devices, you need to log into Appliance Manager. This feature should be available on the Device42 side. You should be able to use the ping utility without logging into Appliance Manager. The features that are there in Appliance Manager should also be available on the main Device42 server so that you have more control on one screen. You don't need to switch to another portal, but it is not something critical.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Weekly reports to management really make our life simple."
"The solution's most valuable feature is service modeling."
"The solution is definitely useful."
"The most valuable feature is the automated service mapping."
"The solution is very stable and powerful."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its application dependency mapping."
"It is a stable solution. The stability is okay."
"It immediately understands which component it is, and it provides the exact API details with all the components."
"The asset inventory is great because previously we had devices all over the place. We have been able to do multiscans to find devices that we didn't know about, which was great."
"The auto-discovery is brilliant. You can have it scheduled to run on a regular basis, and the infrastructure is always getting updated within the platform. I would rate the asset discovery very highly. It's very comprehensive. It covers quite a lot of different methods for doing discovery and it supports a lot of different types of hardware as well."
"A big plus for Device42 was the auto-discovery. With it, we have updated devices, updated systems, and up-to-date systems."
"The topology layout is the most valuable feature."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"The most valuable part is the ease of use. There's no training involved. It's pretty simple and straightforward."
"The REST API abilities enables us to run scripts that pull information from our servers about software, storage, etc. Anything we need is pushed through REST API to the Device42 server and reflected in the report it generates."
"The reporting part is valuable. You have classic reports, and you can also do advanced reporting. They also have the DOQL feature for queries. You can write SQL queries to get your data and create custom reports."
 

Cons

"The support from BMC Helix Discovery can improve, it takes a long time before we receive any feedback. It can take days to months sometimes."
"The product falls short compared to storage discovery mechanisms offered by Tenable or ServiceNow ITOM. In the market, there are various applications available that provide different sets of features. Its drawback is that it doesn't give the database configuration customers need out of the box. Additionally, the classification of storage virtualization is relatively lacking. Therefore, there is room for improvement, particularly in the database areas."
"BMC Helix Discovery is a bit tough to use and administer."
"The improvement I want to see is a reduction in duplicate records."
"The CMDB could be improved. Getting data from the CMDB is the greatest challenge."
"There are certain limitations in the mapping feature of the solution."
"An area that can be improved is the IoT."
"Management of its own application infrastructure and integrations with other BMC tools."
"The product must provide AI features."
"Configuring rPDUs in the data center for Device42 required us to add multiple discovery jobs. The rPDUs were referred to the ISPDUs and daisy-chained. They would automatically assign a unique SMP port, but Device42 didn't allow SMP ranges, so we had to create a discovery job for each rPDU individually. We submitted a feature request to mitigate that."
"Since I was focused on deploying connectors and getting all the servers to be scanned, one of the biggest pains was when a job would fail, then the output (logging) was poor. For example, "Why did it fail?" In these cases, you get a generic error. It doesn't point you in the right direction and tell you why you got the error, which is really annoying. There have been times I asked, "Is there somewhere I can see a better log as to why is this failing?" That would be a really nice improvement."
"It was hard to know which assets I'd already looked at because if I looked up another asset with a similar name, they would still pop up. I would have to make sure I was looking at the right asset. The search function should be improved."
"I would like to see API management as an additional feature in the tool's future versions. It will give more API security."
"The solution’s automatic IT asset discovery and inventory functionality functions pretty well. There could be some improvement if there were some automated scripts to get it off the ground. I know it takes a bit of effort to get all of various managed devices into one place. We have to go and change how they are managed and make sure they are all linking up correctly so they can be tracked in Device42. Some type of automated script for each to get over that initial activation."
"The architecture is a bit old-fashioned. Device42 is on one server, appliance, virtual machine, or guest. We are loading more into Device42 than it can hold. Overloading Device42 with REST API calls or tasks will directly impact every aspect because the server will be too busy to answer requests."
"It would be nice for the agent to have an installer versus a single file across multiple systems."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Operating cost is actually high compared to other products, actually. It's a little expensive only, but it's very good than other products."
"The licensing fee is very low."
"We are on a three-year agreement with BMC Helix Discovery to use the solution. There are not any additional fees other than the standard license."
"I've heard that the solution was expensive earlier but is now much cheaper than its competitors."
"I rate the pricing an eight out of ten. All BMC products are expensive."
"We have a perpetual license for the solution."
"You need a license to use BMC Helix Discovery. The license is paid yearly, though I have no idea how much it costs."
"It's not a cheap product. But the benefits it delivers is that it's a fair price."
"The problem with using other vendor, like BMC, is the pricing. The price is so horrible and nobody wants to pay this money."
"It's in the top-three most expensive solutions in terms of cost, but it has all the features that are needed."
"We pay $100,000 per year."
"On a yearly basis, our licensing is $10,000. However, our license is now nearly full with devices. We need the next bigger license with 5,000 devices, which will cost us $19,000. We pay for a set of licenses, a maximum number of devices, and a maximum number of IP addresses. We have the smallest amount of features, which is enough for us at this time."
"Our licensing costs are on a yearly basis."
"I am not involved in its pricing, but I have seen their plans during a discussion with the customer. For 500 servers, they were asking 50,000 USD. The cost of BMC Discovery was less than half. For the same thing, they were charging only 10,000 USD. Its pricing needs to be improved. As compared to other discovery tools, such as BMC Discovery and ServiceNow Discovery, its price is a little bit higher."
"Functionality-wise, Device42 is on par with industry standards, but price-wise, the solution is expensive. I'm rating the pricing for the solution as eight out of ten."
"The product cost is low. It is quite cheap."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
17%
Energy/Utilities Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about BMC Helix Discovery?
I like the artificial intelligence and machine learning that it uses in the solution. Because once the solution discovers all the assets, all the infrastructure, and all the dependencies between se...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BMC Helix Discovery?
I would rate the pricing around four out of ten. It is quite expensive.
What needs improvement with BMC Helix Discovery?
The improvement I want to see is a reduction in duplicate records. In comparison with SCCM, SCCM does not have any duplicate records, which is a significant advantage. Discovery should adopt a simi...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Device42?
Based on the use case for Device42, I found the solution a bit expensive. However, when you look at the support and the industry standards, Device42 was on par with the industry. Device42 is a litt...
What needs improvement with Device42?
The product must provide AI features. It would be very useful if I could create datasets or queries from an AI interface.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Discovery, ADDM, Atrium Discovery & Dependency Mapping
No data available
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Windstream Communications, News UK, Mercator Group, Wageningen University and Research Centre (WUR)
Computershare, Concur, Doosan, Fitch Ratings Inc., Fujitsu, HomeAway, Jasper Wireless, Mercedes-Benz, Square, Twitch, UCSB, Zayo Group Inc.
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC Helix Discovery vs. Device42 and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.