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BMC Helix Discovery vs ServiceNow 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

BMC Helix Discovery
Ranking in IT Asset Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
ServiceNow
Ranking in IT Asset Management
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
216
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (1st), IT Service Management (ITSM) (1st), Rapid Application Development Software (2nd), No-Code Development Platforms (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the IT Asset Management category, the mindshare of BMC Helix Discovery is 9.0%, up from 8.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow is 24.3%, down from 26.8% 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…
Somnath Kand - PeerSpot reviewer
Custom integration and reporting lead to efficient ticket management
There is a need for bug or error tracking in ServiceNow. Although there are child incidents or tickets, tracking primary issues or bugs within enhancements is not present. The reporting features in the new portal could be more user-friendly. While it provides options to minimize chart and image sizes, actual implementation doesn't always reflect these changes.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that it is easy to install and deploy."
"It is a scalable solution."
"It is agentless, which means you don't have to install anything on all the different pieces of hardware that you are looking to discover."
"It provides comprehensive dependency mapping, which is essential for reducing the time spent and addressing problem-solving between data centers."
"The initial setup was quite easy."
"A valuable feature concerns the ability to integrate with different solutions."
"BMC provides great support. As managed service support, they are gold."
"The most valuable feature of BMC Helix Discovery is it operates well. It is well known and has gained recognition for its software."
"The solution has a user-friendly interface."
"Straightforward tool."
"I think the technical support is pretty good. They can be a little bit slow sometimes, but overall I think they're good."
"The most valuable feature is that this is a Cloud solution."
"Remote access is most valuable."
"ServiceNow provides quite good insights about what is happening in the organization."
"It provides internal clients with greater transparency about their projects and deliverables."
"You can scale the solution."
 

Cons

"BMC is agentless discovery, followed by hybrid discovery, which performs discovery across clouds, on-premises, and then dynamic service modeling."
"There is still room for improvement in terms of stability."
"There isn't much that could be improved. The solution is pretty thorough, very easy to implement, and very easy to operate."
"The solution should have different portals and logins for each customer so only that customer's assets show."
"I would like to see the ability to scan some of the newer cloud platforms. I know that BMC has them on the roadmap, and they are coming soon, but they can't come fast enough. Being able to scan more of GCloud, Alibaba Cloud, or whatever the public clouds that our customers are buying, we need to make sure that Discovery can find them as well."
"It would be nice to see more updates to the solution."
"A review of end of life data would be nice."
"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."
"Their user interface is old-fashioned and outdated, and it can be more friendly for the eye. They can improve the user experience."
"From an HR standpoint, if users can have a very integrated onboarding or offboarding process between ServiceNow and Workday, then it can give a very good employee experience."
"Licensing costs are very high."
"They need to be providing vendors and implementation partners with materials and guidance on implementation."
"It's missing monitoring capabilities."
"There is a need for bug or error tracking in ServiceNow."
"The user interface for accessing assistance sometimes disconnects."
"Very expensive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licenses are very complex and quite costly."
"We have a perpetual license for the solution."
"I rate the pricing an eight out of ten. All BMC products are expensive."
"It's not a cheap product. But the benefits it delivers is that it's a fair price."
"BMC is available for a reasonable price compared to ServiceNow — it's half the price."
"I've heard that the solution was expensive earlier but is now much cheaper than its competitors."
"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."
"$230 per user."
"Initially, the licensing model ServiceNow came up with was very good. But now, from a licensing perspective, they are changing their model day by day. It is becoming a bit expensive for customers."
"The solution is expensive."
"They could be more competitive with their licensing."
"While the option exists to pay for a monthly license, we are dealing with large enterprises and these typically involve multi-year licenses of ten or five years, at a minimum."
"There are licensing fees."
"I'm not aware of any additional costs. I'm pretty sure that the current client is paying just the licensing fee per user. I do know that they've got some support agreement with ServiceNow, but I don't think that is broken out or specific to Project Management. It is just inclusive."
"Some time ago it was expensive, but large companies have special contracts. It's enterprise prices, and we're talking about millions per year."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
17%
Energy/Utilities Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
27%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing 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...
Which solution is better for developing non-ITSM applications: OutSystems or Service Now?
The short answer is that OutSystems is far better for 2 main reasons. Firstly, with Service Now you are locked into that platform for good. The business model is to lock in and then keep pumping th...
Would you choose ServiceNow over Microsoft PowerApps?
Hi Netanya, I will choose ServiceNow because ServiceNow is a very good tool compared to Microsoft PowerApp. Because ServiceNow has a very strong module (Performance Analysis) reporting which will ...
What do you like most about ServiceNow?
The solution has a user-friendly interface.
 

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)
AAA, AstraZeneca, Becton, Dickinson and Company, Broadcom, Christus Health, Epicor, Equinix, GE Capital, Intuit, KPMG, Loyola Marymount University, OshKosh, Quantas, RedHat, Royal Bank of Scotland, Swiss Re, U.S. Department of Energy, Safeway, Yale University, and Zillow    
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC Helix Discovery vs. ServiceNow and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.