Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

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
5th
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 March 2025, in the Configuration Management Databases category, the mindshare of OpenText Universal Discovery and Universal CMDB is 12.7%, down from 13.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow CMDB is 41.6%, down from 44.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
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 product is easy to set up."
"The auto-discovery feature is great."
"It scales easily with future expansion."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the discovery."
"Precision, trustworthiness, reconciliation, and user-friendly presentation are the key features I value most."
"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 CMDB for us is fed by our discovery tools, and it lets us be able to track the changes that we make to any incidents or escalation points that we have associated with a CI."
"It's not too difficult to configure with regard to the UI. My experience working with ServiceNow CMDB has been a very comfortable one."
"It has helped in tracking hardware and software and reducing overall costs."
"ServiceNow CMDB works great for large and small businesses."
"One of the most valuable aspects of ServiceNow CMDB is its user-friendly interface and high degree of customization at the user level."
"We chose ServiceNow because it has more functionalities. It takes at least one week to be trained on ServiceNow, and it is easy to learn."
"The initial setup isn't too complicated."
"Portfolio management is very useful for us."
 

Cons

"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."
"Making it simpler to set up and understand would be a big improvement."
"The implementation could be simplified."
"Improve the GUI and documentation."
"The page loading is very slow."
"If you have multiple tools that are going to ingest data into the CMDB, you need to be careful of what rules we write to ensure that they fall in place."
"There is some customization we need from the customer side."
"The tool is not user-friendly. It has a lot of features and you can get lost in it."
"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."
"An area for improvement in ServiceNow is the reporting because there are reporting features that would be better when done within the platform, rather than having to buy the performance analytics model. There is so much difference between the dashboarding that you can do from the platform versus what's on the performance analytics model. Some of the features currently available within performance analytics would be good to have within the platform because sometimes, customers will say that the tool is okay, but it's not enough, so you'll need to go with the performance analytics model, and that's costly."
"There could be room for enhancing customization capabilities."
"You need to perform additional planning because their recommendation is not to add columns to the core tables."
"The discovery process and service mapping could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The market sees ServiceNow as the Ferrari in terms of pricing. It's at the very top, and its cost is very, very high."
"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."
"The product is pricey."
"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."
"In comparison to the cost of other solutions, you get value for your money with ServiceNow CMDB. It could definitely be cheaper though."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Configuration Management Databases solutions are best for your needs.
842,651 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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: March 2025.
842,651 professionals have used our research since 2012.