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OpenText Universal Discovery and Universal CMDB vs ServiceNow 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

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
ServiceNow CMDB
Ranking in Configuration Management Databases
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Configuration Management Databases category, the mindshare of OpenText Universal Discovery and Universal CMDB is 13.8%, up from 13.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow CMDB is 31.1%, down from 41.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Configuration Management Databases Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
ServiceNow CMDB31.1%
OpenText Universal Discovery and Universal CMDB13.8%
Other55.099999999999994%
Configuration Management Databases
 

Featured Reviews

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.
EdwardScott - PeerSpot reviewer
It has helped us consolidate information, improving reporting and visibility
The setup was pretty straightforward on the development side, but I don't think the expectations of the user community are properly set. There is a gap between what the development side is doing, and what the user community expects. For example, my company has used ServiceNow for several years. When I joined, they weren't using it for much besides change management. That was easy to set up and configure. It was immature but fairly usable because no other processes had access to CMDB. It was easy, but their knowledge of what to do with CMDB was underdeveloped. We redeployed it in nine months, but we're still building. I wouldn't say that the deployment is complete because we haven't finished service mapping yet. We spent nine months fixing old problems and ensuring discovery is dependable. A team of about six people is working on the deployment, including architects, developers, subject matter experts, and process owners.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The auto-discovery feature is great."
"Precision, trustworthiness, reconciliation, and user-friendly presentation are the key features I value most."
"It scales easily with future expansion."
"It can discover various pieces from hardware, software, custom applications, and tie them together to create a map using ASM."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the discovery."
"It can discover almost everything and creates relationship among discovered CIs, along with creating topology modeling."
"The product is easy to set up."
"The product's most valuable feature is its ability to extract the details of organizational hardware and provide the latest setup updates."
"The most valuable feature of ServiceNow is the user interface because you can customize or configure it directly from the user interface by using the mouse. It is easy to use even for non-IT people. You can also directly plug your ServiceNow instance within your Microsoft Active Directory and then retrieve all your users and groups. So, you can use the users and groups to put automation inside the application. When you have new hires, you can automate the group security and group attribution. It is very good in terms of performance. Its performance is almost 100%. Once, it took less than two minutes to back up and run an instance. It has very good reliability."
"The most valuable feature of ServiceNow CMDB is that it provides transparency and tracking of CI usage across multiple process owners or service owners."
"CMDB provides a centralized repository for your assets and support representatives throughout the organization."
"I deal mostly with asset management, and ServiceNow helps me do my job more effectively."
"ServiceNow CMDB works great for large and small businesses."
"It integrates with so many different things. ServiceNow CMDB assisted us in streamlining multiple processes."
"It's not too difficult to configure with regard to the UI. My experience working with ServiceNow CMDB has been a very comfortable one."
 

Cons

"Making it simpler to set up and understand would be a big improvement."
"The page loading is very slow."
"Improve the GUI and documentation."
"The implementation could be simplified."
"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."
"There could be room for enhancing customization capabilities."
"We would like the solution to be made more easily scalable in future updates."
"ServiceNow CMDB may face performance issues if we try to make the solution too large by adding more CIs."
"There is some customization we need from the customer side."
"There are areas that could be improved, but that's a longer discussion. It all depends on what you are looking to do with it and then it becomes an issue of how do you configure the CMDB accordingly."
"I wish we didn't have to pay for additional modules. For example, the vulnerability module is at an additional cost so that we can pull the Qualys scans and actually have automated tickets involved. If that workflow can also be part of that, it would be nice."
"There are some gaps in the technologies that can be solved. Operational technology isn't quite 100% there yet, but I hear it is on the roadmap. I would also like it to be cheaper."
"Integration is complicated and requires advance scripting and customization to complete it. It would be good to have the ability to customize the UI."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Compared with other solutions, I would say that it's more expensive especially since we have an on-premise version and an older implementation."
"It is competitive."
"In comparison to the cost of other solutions, you get value for your money with ServiceNow CMDB. It could definitely be cheaper though."
"The product price falls on the higher side of the spectrum."
"It is really expensive. I don't know actually how much it costs, but in 2016, when a client decided to move from an old solution to ServiceNow and had to choose a supplier for ServiceNow, I had heard that it could cost $10 per hour, which is really expensive. I am not aware of any additional fees to the standard licensing fees. There is no standard ServiceNow solution. When a company wants to acquire ServiceNow, they already know which module they will choose. In a basic package, you would have Service Catalog, Incident Management, and Change Management. These modules are usually required in an IT company."
"I would like it to be cheaper. If you've got a large environment, it can get quite expensive quite quickly. You still get a return on investment, but everybody has a tight budget. In terms of licensing, everything is pretty much known upfront. Being SaaS-based, there are no real additional gotchas that we came across."
"The market sees ServiceNow as the Ferrari in terms of pricing. It's at the very top, and its cost is very, very high."
"The product is pricey."
"It is always fluctuating. It seems to change every six months. Every time they come out with a new iteration, it changes. It is pretty complicated, and they should improve it."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Wholesaler/Distributor
7%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Large Enterprise9
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise19
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What do you like most about ServiceNow CMDB?
The product's initial setup phase was simple.
What needs improvement with ServiceNow CMDB?
I don't currently see any problems with ServiceNow CMDB since everything works fine. If I click on some particular CIs at the moment, all the information related to that CI appears by default. Righ...
What is your primary use case for ServiceNow CMDB?
I use ServiceNow CMDB in my company to deal with areas like incidents, problems, and change management. I use ServiceNow CMDB in my company to deal with all the equipment inventories and our infras...
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

China Merchants Bank, NNIT, Alfa-Bank, Sprint
Wayfair, Siemens, Allianz, Experian, Vitas Healthcare
Find out what your peers are saying about OpenText Universal Discovery and Universal CMDB vs. ServiceNow CMDB and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
872,098 professionals have used our research since 2012.