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Device42 vs OpenText Universal Discovery and Universal CMDB 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

Device42
Ranking in Configuration Management Databases
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
IT Asset Management (8th), IP Address Management (IPAM) Tools (4th), Data Center Infrastructure Management (4th)
OpenText Universal Discover...
Ranking in Configuration Management Databases
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Configuration Management Databases category, the mindshare of Device42 is 18.4%, up from 15.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenText Universal Discovery and Universal CMDB is 13.5%, up from 13.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Configuration Management Databases
 

Featured Reviews

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.
RakeshKumar15 - PeerSpot reviewer
Secure with a quick setup and helpful support
Based on the latest version, there were multiple changes done. It had multiple fixes. However, it's based on the customer's requirements. They have modified and created, and released the changes according to those needs. The UI could be better. The page loading is very slow. The customer wants faster loading. Before releases, it would be nice to be able to upgrade to the new release and check it out in order to see the new functionality and what they have changed.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has agentless discovery; you don't need to put agents on your servers. You can open one or two ports to discover all your infrastructure."
"The most valuable part is the ease of use. There's no training involved. It's pretty simple and straightforward."
"The import/export for bulk operations is a valuable and good feature."
"The most valuable feature was the ability to look up the different assets and see the different attributes that each one has, as well as being able to compare them to other assets."
"A big plus for Device42 was the auto-discovery. With it, we have updated devices, updated systems, and up-to-date systems."
"I like the tool's agentless discovery feature. The tool configures the devices based on the documentation provided. I am also impressed with its auto-discovery feature. The tool also keeps on tracking and finds whatever is in the environment."
"The most helpful feature in Device42 was the import feature, where you can seamlessly import your information into the configuration database manager."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"It scales easily with future expansion."
"The product is easy to set up."
"Precision, trustworthiness, reconciliation, and user-friendly presentation are the key features I value most."
"The auto-discovery feature is great."
"It can discover various pieces from hardware, software, custom applications, and tie them together to create a map using ASM."
"It can discover almost everything and creates relationship among discovered CIs, along with creating topology modeling."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the discovery."
 

Cons

"The product must provide AI features."
"For the iPhone, the device diagram cannot be downloaded. You have to go to each device and download the device diagram for that device. E.g., suppose there are a 1000 or 2000 servers. You cannot go to each server or device to download a device diagram for each device. There should be a one-click solution for downloading all device diagrams."
"If they could make it so their remote connector could do as much as 10,000 devices, that would be better."
"When servers have two network adapters, automatically discovered will be only one network card because the other one is a backup. Device42 has some problems to find the other connection."
"In my experience I believe that the key concern is the pricing strategy of the solution. Instead other solutions such as lanweber are much more cost effective. Previously, Device42 operated on perpetualysis without any fees. But recently they have altered the pricing model to include a subscription fee which I see as a very costly affair. Therefore I would like to suggest that they evaluate their pricing strategy and licence scheme, conduct a market research and ensure that they provide the right product in the market at the right price."
"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."
"The resources table needs a few tweaks. We've raised a feature request for this. When you click on resources, it opens up the entire CMDB or the entire data stored in Device42. If that could be customizable, it would be good. We should be allowed to add our own columns to that by writing a script or something like that. There should be an option to add or limit whatever we want."
"Device42 is a main part of our processes. We need reliability, not only in terms of the data but with the solution itself. It's really difficult when we have 10 minutes of Device42 downtime because none of our teams can work for those 10 minutes, and it's more time lost if there is longer downtime. An improvement would be to have a cluster implementation of Device42 to have high-availability and ensure that we don't have downtime in case of failure."
"Improve the GUI and documentation."
"The page loading is very slow."
"Making it simpler to set up and understand would be a big improvement."
"When we work in an environment, the production environment continuously changes and at that time we should have knowledge about the new server (node). However, the auto-discovery part should automatically discover the new CI (node/servers) in an environment and inform the IT person."
"The implementation could be simplified."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"It's in the top-three most expensive solutions in terms of cost, but it has all the features that are needed."
"The problem with using other vendor, like BMC, is the pricing. The price is so horrible and nobody wants to pay this money."
"The product cost is low. It is quite cheap."
"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."
"We pay $100,000 per year."
"It is competitive."
"Compared with other solutions, I would say that it's more expensive especially since we have an on-premise version and an older implementation."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
28%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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.
What is your primary use case for Device42?
I use the solution for physical assets management, IT management, and application dependency mapping.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Universal CMDB?
OpenText's pricing is fine. It is not too expensive. I would rate it a six out of ten in terms of costliness.
What needs improvement with Universal CMDB?
Based on my experience and what I have heard from clients, there are two main areas where Universal CMDB could get better. First, the way it shows results to users could be more user-friendly. Seco...
What is your primary use case for Universal CMDB?
I use Universal Discovery and Universal CMDB for two main tasks: first, to discover what is happening in our IT system, like finding out what devices and software we have. Then, we use Universal CM...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Micro Focus Universal Discovery and Universal CMDB, Micro Focus Universal CMDB, UCMDB, HPE Universal CMDB
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Computershare, Concur, Doosan, Fitch Ratings Inc., Fujitsu, HomeAway, Jasper Wireless, Mercedes-Benz, Square, Twitch, UCSB, Zayo Group Inc.
China Merchants Bank, NNIT, Alfa-Bank, Sprint
Find out what your peers are saying about Device42 vs. OpenText Universal Discovery and Universal CMDB and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
832,138 professionals have used our research since 2012.