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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
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
IT Asset Management (9th), IP Address Management (IPAM) Tools (5th), Data Center Infrastructure Management (6th)
OpenText Universal Discover...
Ranking in Configuration Management Databases
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Configuration Management Databases category, the mindshare of Device42 is 17.6%, up from 16.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenText Universal Discovery and Universal CMDB is 12.9%, down from 13.9% 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

"The asset inventory is great because previously we had devices all over the place. We have been able to do multiscans to find devices that we didn't know about, which was great."
"The solution's automatic IT asset discovery and inventory functionality are top-notch. The thing I like is that it's open-source. If I need to change them — and they've given me links on GitHub to have them — I can go and change them to pull exactly what I want, as frequently as I want."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"Device42 has everything in one place and links it altogether. This helps when you need to figure out where things are going wrong, where things are happening, or how everything is linked together."
"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."
"The solution's agentless approach to asset discovery is very important for us because installing agents on physical or virtual devices is not easy in our company. We have to escalate these kinds of things to different levels of security. Not having to install agents makes it easy for us."
"The solution has some very good relational capabilities that show us how certain devices relate to each other and how some of our environment actually works together."
"The import/export for bulk operations is a valuable and good feature."
"It can discover various pieces from hardware, software, custom applications, and tie them together to create a map using ASM."
"Precision, trustworthiness, reconciliation, and user-friendly presentation are the key features I value most."
"It can discover almost everything and creates relationship among discovered CIs, along with creating topology modeling."
"The product is easy to set up."
"It scales easily with future expansion."
"The auto-discovery feature is great."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the discovery."
 

Cons

"The only thing which I have noticed so far that is not good is that we had an issue with some reporting from the tool, reporting we had to export. We couldn't do it in the way we wanted to, so we tried to reach out to their support but it took pretty long until we understood how we can manage the reports. We still haven't received a complete explanation of what we need to do and how to do it."
"The dependency mapping can be quite slow sometimes, if you've got a lot of things connecting to services. It can be very slow to build up the map."
"The architecture is a bit old-fashioned. Device42 is on one server, appliance, virtual machine, or guest. We are loading more into Device42 than it can hold. Overloading Device42 with REST API calls or tasks will directly impact every aspect because the server will be too busy to answer requests."
"I would like to see API management as an additional feature in the tool's future versions. It will give more API security."
"The solution’s automatic IT asset discovery and inventory functionality functions pretty well. There could be some improvement if there were some automated scripts to get it off the ground. I know it takes a bit of effort to get all of various managed devices into one place. We have to go and change how they are managed and make sure they are all linking up correctly so they can be tracked in Device42. Some type of automated script for each to get over that initial activation."
"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."
"It would be nice for the agent to have an installer versus a single file across multiple systems."
"The reporting could be better. The Insights+ component is an improvement, but they even admit it isn't the greatest. The documentation on their website could also be improved, but Device42 is constantly changing, so the documentation would have to change almost daily."
"Improve the GUI and documentation."
"The implementation could be simplified."
"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 page loading is very slow."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our licensing costs are on a yearly basis."
"It's in the top-three most expensive solutions in terms of cost, but it has all the features that are needed."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

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: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.