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BMC Helix Discovery vs IBM Maximo comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

BMC Helix Discovery
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
IT Asset Management (2nd)
IBM Maximo
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) (1st), Billing Software (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

BMC Helix Discovery and IBM Maximo aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. BMC Helix Discovery is designed for IT Asset Management and holds a mindshare of 8.9%, up 8.1% compared to last year.
IBM Maximo, on the other hand, focuses on Enterprise Asset Management (EAM), holds 27.7% mindshare, up 25.8% since last year.
IT Asset Management
Enterprise Asset Management (EAM)
 

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…
Jose Pedro Muñoz - PeerSpot reviewer
A very strong and powerful tool in the market preferred by a variety of industries
I rate the technical support a seven out of ten. Three levels of support in IBM. The first one is a fixed level, while levels two and three are very good. Here, level one is not very good, as it takes time to go from level one to level two and from level two to level three. So, level one is of low capacity.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I've used other discovery tools, but I found BMC Helix Discovery to be more UI-friendly, and that's the most valuable feature of the solution."
"It is a scalable solution."
"The most valuable feature is Windows proxy. We now need to install an additional link proxy server in Windows. The proxy is available as an outpost in the Elastic store. That is the advanced feature is added. There are many other features which can be used once we discover them. One time I was scanning the servers and all, going to data from additional based on the additional features, including advanced data like score upper display data successfully discover servers. There are many things good things that can be implemented using it while we haven’t installed those yet."
"The data models are the most useful aspect of the solution."
"It immediately understands which component it is, and it provides the exact API details with all the components."
"BMC Helix Discovery is very intuitive."
"Weekly reports to management really make our life simple."
"It provides comprehensive dependency mapping, which is essential for reducing the time spent and addressing problem-solving between data centers."
"The most valuable features are the ability to create work orders and preventative maintenance."
"The Preventive Maintenance feature, especially in its inspection routines and KPI abilities, is valuable."
"The most valuable features of IBM Maximo are the overall power and interface, and there are a lot of different modules that we use that are helpful. Additionally, it's an integrated solution and it has a lot of capabilities."
"IBM Maximo is a very strong and powerful tool in the market…Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The incident management feature is good because it allows you to keep track of and classify issues."
"The ability to configure and integrate it with other solutions for ERP."
"We were able to scale perfectly.​"
"It can be particularly useful for power line operations, enabling linemen in the field to gather information and send it across the country as well as different parts of the world."
 

Cons

"The solution's scalability is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are needed."
"The solution should have different portals and logins for each customer so only that customer's assets show."
"BMC is agentless discovery, followed by hybrid discovery, which performs discovery across clouds, on-premises, and then dynamic service modeling."
"What would make BMC Helix Discovery better is if it had more client-side discovery features, for example, printers and desktops. Right now, it's focused more on data center discovery, so if it had additional features focused on the client-side discovery, that would be great. In the next release of BMC Helix Discovery, I'd like more client-side discovery features such as desktop discovery, printer discovery, and other IP-based client-side discovery features. The solution can discover desktops and printers, but there's still room for improvement on the client side."
"There isn't much that could be improved. The solution is pretty thorough, very easy to implement, and very easy to operate."
"A review of end of life data would be nice."
"It would be nice to see more updates to the solution."
"There is still room for improvement in terms of stability."
"The initial setup was complex, because it is a complex product."
"Initial setup is a longer process because Maximo is bigger and has more processes."
"Revision management of file attachments."
"I feel that the interface is a little too complicated with a large number of fields to enter."
"The latest version is slow due to the power it requires."
"​Maximo is a big system, so the initial setup is complex."
"Areas for improvement include: an enhanced Service Catalog on Mobile; Agent intelligence; better dashboards for KPIs."
"It's not user-friendly. It could use shortcuts for frequently requested services."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution offers yearly licenses."
"Operating cost is actually high compared to other products, actually. It's a little expensive only, but it's very good than other products."
"You need a license to use BMC Helix Discovery. The license is paid yearly, though I have no idea how much it costs."
"The price was fair compared to competitors. BMC is very affordable. There are optional consulting services to assist with implementation."
"BMC is available for a reasonable price compared to ServiceNow — it's half the price."
"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."
"The licenses are very complex and quite costly."
"It's not a cheap product. But the benefits it delivers is that it's a fair price."
"$USD700 per agent user."
"Explore the possibility of using DB2. You will avoid the cost of SQL Server or Oracle licenses."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is low and ten is high, I rate the pricing a nine. The price is very high."
"The price of IBM Maximo could reduce, it is expensive."
"IBM has changed the licensing policy. As I understand now, they are going from a complex way of licensing to a more simple way of licensing."
"IBM Maximo offers a licensing application, and you have to comply with the license."
"I do not know about the price of the solution. However, this has been an expensive project overall."
"​Explore internal processes in order to evaluate the correct number of users in each Maximo module, then evaluate the different offers of pricing and licensing.​"
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
17%
Energy/Utilities Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
37%
Energy/Utilities Company
8%
Government
8%
Computer Software 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 do you like most about IBM Maximo?
It can be particularly useful for power line operations, enabling linemen in the field to gather information and send it across the country as well as different parts of the world.
What needs improvement with IBM Maximo?
Though I liked it a lot, I think it was lagging a lot. It was very slow due to the lagging issues. So that was kind of frustrating, considering how slow it was while functioning. The aforementioned...
What is your primary use case for IBM Maximo?
It can be particularly useful for power line operations, enabling linemen in the field to gather information and send it across the country as well as different parts of the world. With IBM Maximo,...
 

Also Known As

Discovery, ADDM, Atrium Discovery & Dependency Mapping
Maximo
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Windstream Communications, News UK, Mercator Group, Wageningen University and Research Centre (WUR)
Royal Boskalis Westminster N.V., DTE Energy, Swedish Match, Projetech, Fingrid, East Coast
Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow, BMC, Qualys and others in IT Asset Management. Updated: January 2025.
832,138 professionals have used our research since 2012.