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BMC Helix ITSM vs OpenText Service Manager [EOL] 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 ITSM
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
78
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (4th), IT Service Management (ITSM) (4th)
OpenText Service Manager [EOL]
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

Fairoz Gadad - PeerSpot reviewer
Development team is quick to address bugs or shortcomings in their product
BMC's technical support team needs to improve. Right now, the problem over here is we are not getting the exact answers on time. Their engineers are mainly based in the US or Israel, and we get comprehensive dedicated support. Some of the Indian customer service representatives are also outstanding. Unfortunately, in the past six months or seven months, I've been getting brand-new engineers. Either they're not entirely aware of most cases, or they don't know how to troubleshoot further. So for any product to be stable and work correctly, BMC must ensure that customer service is excellent. Even though if your product is a hundred percent, we'll have problems marketing it to our customers.
MEKKAB Raouf - PeerSpot reviewer
Excellent pricing with great change management and service management capabilities
We started with version 9.3, and now we're on 9.6 with the full solution, including the CMS. They have lots of options. They propose a full solution for technology and IT service management. We are a telecom company. We are a leader in the market, and therefore, we need to have all details about our own environment and assets. So far, Micro Focus answers all our needs. I'd advise new users to go directly to the SMAX solution, the last, last version of Service Manager. If they are a technical company or information technology company with engineers and developers, they can use it on-premise. If they don't have such competence in the company, they can ask for the solution on the cloud. It is easily available on Microsoft, Amazon, or Google clouds. I'd rate the product nine out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"BMC Helix ITSM gives us email and SMS notifications, we can check the tickets, and give feedback. All the basic features that we need are available."
"We reduced many paper processes to electronic driven forms. It helps us a lot in tracking and managing."
"Reports have helped us to improve our IT processes. The main benefit is providing the right information to our decision makers."
"With service requests, we have been able to give visibility to the business users."
"The way you can customize this product to adapt to the process the customer is already using is what sets this apart from other ITSM products out there. This helps customers to adapt to the tool pretty quickly."
"It is suitable for the present circumstances, providing reliability and adhering to the necessary procedures. Having ITSM and proper knowledge is essential for our work to be acknowledged and effectively contribute to the team's efforts. Utilizing ITSM ensures that our work, especially in chat windows and events from application support, is duly acknowledged. This is crucial for handling high-level events (HLEs) and maintaining accurate records. The system facilitates easy tracking, enabling managers and higher-ups to gather data for appraisals and other purposes efficientl"
"This product has helped us to maintain our OLAs (Organisation level Agreements) and SLAs (Service Level Agreements) by tracking incidents, requests, problem records, and change requests, all in the form of tickets."
"Improved our organization with better customer experience and reporting abilities."
"Technical support is pretty good."
"The design has been revamped in terms of GUI. The current interface is quite easy to read."
"It's mostly so reliable and has a lot of functionality. We're using a lot of HPE tools and we can do a lot with it. So, its functionality is the most valuable feature."
"Micro Focus Service Manager is fine. It's a good solution for small accounts with minimal reporting. Micro Focus is a good option because you don't have to worry about the budget."
"Service Manager gives us a single system where everything is centralized in one base."
"Incident management is the most valuable because we're using it to manage tickets for an accounting system. With the reports that are available, it allows us to track and identify trends at the type and item level. It also helps us in managing the workload better than what we had in Remedy, which is what we were using before 2013."
"It's pretty well-structured in modules."
"It helps to register things, to see the changing parts, and to correlate incidents."
 

Cons

"Needs less infrastructure requirements."
"There are plugins to the solution that have come onto the market, so the solution should also be updated in terms of administration to increase efficiency."
"Maybe the upgrade process and the release between environments should to be more transparent for anyone to execute it."
"Regarding reporting, when sharing information with leadership, we utilize BI support and data or more analytical tools. These tools provide accurate and comprehensive reports, covering various aspects. Reports are either sent directly through email or automated using scripts. It would be beneficial to integrate similar capabilities into BMC for future use. Many applications we work with already have a centralized virtual automation tool, such as Control M, but manual effort is still required. Improvements in automation for accurate and efficient reporting in BMC would be valuable."
"The reports need improvement, it is not a good functioning tool."
"Maybe it could be more simplified and easier to change the reporting point of view, like from a different vendor to another."
"I would also love to see consistency across all consoles."
"Support could be better."
"There's a lot of manual work, which is error prone and time consuming, in how the code gets transported from one system to the other."
"The solution does not interface well with other products and is difficult to implement."
"It, still, has a bit of more of improvement possibilities in the codeless part. But, I can see that they are working on it, so that's quite good as well."
"Their end-user interface and technical support features could be improved."
"The user interface is very clunky. It's only now beginning to be a web-based interface, but for now it's still very clunky."
"I don't see anything lacking."
"It needs good integration with the configuration database, that's lacking at the moment, It's not that good."
"We aren't able to take emails that come in and turn them into tickets, especially when it comes to attachments. When an email has an attachment, like a screenshot, it is a very cumbersome process, and it does not work very well. I shouldn't have been paying technicians to cut and paste attachments from an email into the ticketing system. It should do that automatically. Other solutions are able to do that. This is something that needs to be improved. Test manager and knowledge management areas are probably amongst the worst parts of this solution. We try to use this solution for knowledge management, but it is not user-friendly. Therefore, it has limited ROI as you need to spend time to try and fully capitalize on the knowledge management system."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is not very expensive and not very cheap. It is somewhere in-between. Some of the features are more expensive. There are also additional costs. If you want to use most of the features, you need to pay more."
"Just make sure you really sit down and look at what you will be using per user, therefore you will not be surprised with a big bill. You do not want every user having every license, it really is not needed."
"The price of BMC Helix ITSM could improve their price."
"The cost is relatively high, especially for the BMC Controller application. However, the expense is justified by the standard and reliable features it offers. This product's reputation in the market is strong, providing assurance in terms of data and other considerations."
"BMC is a little bit cheaper than ServiceNow, but BMC doesn't have the same capabilities in its entry-level product at the moment. The basic version does not have the DWP features that most of our customers are requesting."
"The solution's pricing should come down."
"It is costly, but it is well worth it."
"If you are looking for some kind of professional services form the OEM then you would have to purchase that."
"I would say that identify your requirements and pay for the support to implement and test those requirements, and then hope that you did a good job because the cost of their service is fairly expensive."
"Micro Focus Service Manager is a little cheaper than other options. You have to pay a monthly subscription fee."
"The license is not cheap."
"I pay for Service Manager on a yearly basis, and the price is reasonable - I would rate it five out of ten."
"HP Service Manager has moderate pricing."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
25%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Government
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about BMC Helix ITSM?
If we consider major players like Ford or BMW, their core focus is manufacturing products like cars. To ensure smooth operations, any arising issues, be it security concerns or issues within depart...
What needs improvement with BMC Helix ITSM?
BMC Helix ITSM is difficult for us to customize, and most customizations require vendor support, which leads to extra costs. The interface should be more user-friendly, and the customization should...
What is your primary use case for BMC Helix ITSM?
We are currently using BMC Helix ITSM in our organization. We are in the process of implementing new modules like CMDB and discovery.
What needs improvement with Micro Focus Service Manager?
The product's technical support services need improvement.
What is your primary use case for Micro Focus Service Manager?
We use the product for infrastructure, profile, and incident management.
 

Also Known As

Remedy ITSM, Remedy, Helix Remedy
Micro Focus Service Manager, HPE ITSM, HPE Service Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Brookfield, HealthSouth Corporation, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, Mercator, SAP, Stanford University
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