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BMC Helix Discovery vs Device42 comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.5
BMC Helix Discovery delivers 314% ROI through automation, operational efficiencies, and significant cost savings despite its higher cost.
Sentiment score
6.8
Device42 provides efficient asset management, enhancing time and cost savings despite challenges in quantifying ROI precisely.
You should expect at least one year and a half for ROI.
Presales Manager at HCLSoftware
BMC Helix Discovery has delivered a very good return, and we cannot stop using it at this moment.
System Administrator at Porto Editora
The TCO calculations based on five years and three years have yielded a remarkable ROI compared to on-premise workload, validating the business case submission to the customer.
Associate Vice President at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
I can confidently say at least 30% is the savings which we have seen.
Sr PreSales Cloud Architect at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
This efficiency with time and resources was perfect.
Senior Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.0
BMC Helix Discovery support is praised for professionalism but criticized for slow response times, with mixed user ratings from 2-10.
Sentiment score
8.1
Device42's customer service is praised for responsiveness and efficiency, though complex issues sometimes experience slower resolution.
When opening a severity one ticket, they respond within four to six hours, which is commendable.
Systems Integration Specialist Advisor at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Sometimes it is quite responsive, particularly when you go higher up in the organization.
Presales Manager at HCLSoftware
The response has been satisfactory, though improvements could be made in response time and overall competence.
System Administrator at Porto Editora
Customer support for Device42 is fantastic.
Associate Vice President at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Our internal teams have also leveraged the platform which is available for the customers and the partners to onboard them, have a bit of training on the tool and then ask any specific questions to either the TAM or the customer support team.
Sr PreSales Cloud Architect at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
When it comes to resolving technical issues, the support team is responsive and always available to help.
Cloud Presales Engineer at Activedge Technologies Ltd.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.1
BMC Helix Discovery provides scalable, flexible solutions for diverse environments, supporting easy integration and expansion for medium to enterprise use.
Sentiment score
7.0
Device42 efficiently scales vertically and horizontally, accommodating growth with ease, adaptability, and integrated Masscan for discovery speed.
It is very much scalable and allows you to design your discovery solution without facing any challenge.
Associate Vice President at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Device42's scalability works well for me; if I want to add more resources, such as a Remote Collector for a new site, I can easily connect it to the main appliance.
Senior Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The scalability is good and with the increase in the size of the environment, it has definitely grown and changed over the last couple of years.
Sr PreSales Cloud Architect at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.2
BMC Helix Discovery is stable, highly rated, with robust Linux architecture, resolving issues promptly, and performs well in complex environments.
Sentiment score
7.9
Device42 is reliable with stable performance, regular updates, and efficient support, despite occasional maintenance and minor bugs.
In the past four to six years, I cannot recall encountering any bugs.
Systems Integration Specialist Advisor at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Device42 is stable and has been reliable for my organization.
Associate Vice President at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Device42 has been pretty stable.
Sr PreSales Cloud Architect at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
 

Room For Improvement

BMC Helix Discovery requires enhancements in cloud handling, customization, usability, scalability, integrations, and competitive pricing for improved user experience.
Device42 needs improved workflows, mobile experience, integration, scalability, and enhanced features like dashboards, discovery, and AI for users.
I would like to see a lower price and better technical support.
System Administrator at Porto Editora
It uses a Berkeley database, and the query language is not easy to master for performing complex queries.
Systems Integration Specialist Advisor at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees
I foresee areas of improvement for the agent-less solution, which could be very useful for those organizations that might not allow configuring an agent in their source machines for workload discovery.
Associate Vice President at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
From an ITSM and ticketing perspective, I would say if there were integrations available, that would have really been better because a lot of times what we end up seeing or leveraging is ServiceNow because they have that native or out of the box capability, and even Freshservice has that capability out of the box.
Sr PreSales Cloud Architect at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
If automatic updates were available for the solution instead of having customers go through the process of downloading and uploading update packages themselves, it would be beneficial.
Cloud Presales Engineer at Activedge Technologies Ltd.
 

Setup Cost

BMC Helix Discovery pricing is mixed, with reports of lower costs than competitors but concerns over high setup and licensing.
Device42's pricing varies widely, offering affordability for some, yet seen as costly by others, especially for large-scale use.
The price is about twelve per license per year, and the support is included.
System Administrator at Porto Editora
The setup cost is on the expensive side.
Presales Manager at HCLSoftware
Compared to other competitors, it does not cost much, and I would recommend it from a cost perspective.
Associate Vice President at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
For example, I felt the BMC Discovery pricing was quite high.
Sr PreSales Cloud Architect at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
 

Valuable Features

BMC Helix Discovery offers intuitive, agentless application modeling with strong security, AI insights, and scalability for efficient IT operations.
Device42 offers comprehensive IT asset management with agentless discovery, simplifying asset inventory, network visualization, and hybrid cloud migration planning.
This is very useful for compliance as it helps in audits by providing a comprehensive view of all assets and software.
System Administrator at Porto Editora
BMC Helix Discovery provides a lot of information that can be obtained from discovery, including the relationship between the CIs and how many CIs are orphans.
Presales Manager at HCLSoftware
The best aspect of BMC Helix Discovery is its flexibility. You can perform scanning at any time, and it provides substantial data for extraction.
Systems Integration Specialist Advisor at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Device42 has positively impacted my organization by providing granularity toward application discovery compared to other assessment tools, which is a differentiator since none of the other tools provide such granularity, leading to better decision-making for my migration to the public cloud.
Associate Vice President at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
We have leveraged that to discover IT assets such as physical servers, VMs, network devices, containers, storage devices, the applications, cloud resources and their relationships or their dependencies with each other and to the outside.
Sr PreSales Cloud Architect at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
Device42 has positively impacted our organization by helping us become one of the best companies for asset management and inventory for the enterprise businesses we work with.
Cloud Presales Engineer at Activedge Technologies Ltd.
 

Categories and Ranking

BMC Helix Discovery
Ranking in IT Asset Management
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Device42
Ranking in IT Asset Management
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management Databases (2nd), IP Address Management (IPAM) Tools (3rd), Data Center Infrastructure Management (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the IT Asset Management category, the mindshare of BMC Helix Discovery is 4.9%, down from 8.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Device42 is 4.2%, down from 6.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Asset Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
BMC Helix Discovery4.9%
Device424.2%
Other90.9%
IT Asset Management
 

Featured Reviews

JP
Presales Manager at HCLSoftware
Comprehensive discovery has populated our CMDB and provides deep insight into asset relationships
The applicability depends on the customer environment. Usually it is straightforward to apply the policies. BMC Helix Discovery is seamless and has many plugins available. It is a good feature that they offer. I have heard about it, but I am not currently using it, though I know that they have that feature available. BMC Helix Discovery provides a lot of information that can be obtained from discovery, including the relationship between the CIs and how many CIs are orphans. The analytics capabilities are strong.
reviewer2783919 - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Vice President at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Granular discovery has ensured confident workload migration and optimized cloud move group planning
Device42 offers the best features for workload assessment, particularly useful for cloud-to-cloud workload or on-premise data center workload, especially when planning for workload migration to the public cloud. For application and infrastructure discovery, Device42 has enabled me to know the number of machines running in the on-premise environment and has managed to capture complete utilization metrics or trends of their utilization. This has benefited me in right-sizing systems for my public cloud total cost of ownership (TCO) planning, providing me granularity to right-size these systems while planning a migration to the public cloud. Device42 has positively impacted my organization by providing granularity toward application discovery compared to other assessment tools, which is a differentiator since none of the other tools provide such granularity, leading to better decision-making for my migration to the public cloud. Device42 has improved my migration projects by providing granularity around system dependencies that gave me confidence knowing which systems communicate with each other parked in a particular move group. My move group planning became so robust that I am not leaving any system behind in the on-premise data center from my planning, which saves a lot of time and effort, leading to cost optimization—a value addition.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise17
 

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?
That's always a million dollar question regarding whether the solution is affordable or quite expensive; if you talk to the vendor, the pricing's great, but end users are always looking for a bette...
What needs improvement with BMC Helix Discovery?
Technical support from BMC is generally good. Resolutiion time is what's bothering me, as it's not always easy to get to the correct person or the right technical level needed to resolve the issue.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Device42?
I felt the pricing was a little bit mid-range as compared to the other tools which are out there in the market. For example, I felt the BMC Discovery pricing was quite high. So I think the pricing ...
What needs improvement with Device42?
Device42 can improve in the area of updates. If automatic updates were available for the solution instead of having customers go through the process of downloading and uploading update packages the...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

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

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: January 2026.
881,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.