Share your experience using IBM Tivoli CMDB [EOL]

My main use case for Device42 is that we use it as a CMDB and affinity map to check out network topology or determine when we need to decom something in a life cycle. We use it for many different purposes.

A quick specific example of how we use Device42 for one of those purposes is that being able to deploy it at a customer site and do a mapping of the environment gives us an overview of how we would go about structuring the rest of the products that we would put in place. We use the topology map to build out, say, network segments or understand server affinity mapping architecture and build our disaster recovery plans around that.

In addition to my main use case, we use Device42 as a lifecycle manager as well, and I know many people do not use that, but it does have functionality to be able to pull data CMDB-wise.

The best features Device42 offers, in my opinion, are the network mapping and topology; I think that is the best functionality of the software.

What stands out for me about the network mapping and topology is the visualization, which is the biggest part of it. Being able to see the topology and affinity mapping out in front of you on the screen in the way that they create it is very handy.

Device42 has positively impacted my organization by definitely speeding up our discovery process when we are working with clients or new clients up front with the onboarding. To build out a proper DR recovery for people, it is a necessity to understand their environment, and Device42 helps us understand those environments much quicker compared to manual intervention or running other tools in a segment and several other applications to gather roughly the same type of mapping data.

Device42 saves a significant amount of time, with onboarding and discovery being reduced significantly, specifically around understanding how to build out a client's circuits and network topology. Typically, we have to match that on our side to do a proper disaster recovery environment for individuals, and we build out clean rooms and do the full setup at a hot site. Being able to match that identically with a mapping that we know to be the source of truth and to be accurate saves weeks and weeks of time within the discovery process.

I think Device42 can be improved by adding more features around the CMDB aspect and lifecycle management. I do not think many people use it for that functionality, but if they were to expand the subset of tools available with that and maybe dig a bit deeper with what you could do with the data mining from that, it would be beneficial. Making it expansible into other types of reporting that does not exist right now, or perhaps a complete reporting engine, and being able to visualize that data from the lifecycle pieces of it in a more consumeristic way would be valuable. We want to be able to go to that and just look at the reporting for CMDB to understand, at a fast pace, when lifecycles are coming up and help us identify and manage those into, say, the capacity planning process and all that. I think that data could be useful in many different functions if the mining aspect and reporting aspect were improved and extensive.

I have been using Device42 for five years.

Device42 is stable.

I feel Device42's scalability is easy; I do not have a problem with adding devices to it or any other aspect within that, or installing it in multiple places and using it. Everything works scale-wise. I feel it scales fine.

I have only used customer support a handful of times, but they have always been responsive, pleasant, and solved my problems. I have no complaints there.

I previously used Cloudscape for affinity mapping before switching to Device42. IBM bought them, and then it turned into another product, and so it just seemed to be a hassle continuing with that product, and that is when we started using Device42.

I have not seen a return on investment in terms of cutting employees and have not really tracked the monetary savings that we have. The time investment is the biggest piece that we have noticed as a whole, and it is significant. We are saving weeks and weeks of time during discovery processes, and that is repeatable. Onboarding a new customer, we save time. Every customer we onboard and we use Device42 as a mapping agent, we save time with. Eventually it extends into major time savings over the course of a year.

I evaluated Cloudscape before choosing Device42.

My advice to others looking into using Device42 is to definitely take into account the flexibility of being able to use it as a CMDB source or data source with lifecycle management. I feel many people miss that aspect of it or do not use it for that, but it can be quite flexible in that direction. I would rate this product an eight out of ten.

I primarily work with ITSM, HR, SPM, AI, Now Assist, CMDB, and CSDM modules, covering almost all of these areas.

I use the integration with ServiceNow CMDB with all the processes that we have implemented for the customer and with some other third-party solutions.

Now Assist is the most important feature in ServiceNow that I have found valuable.

I use its data normalization, which depends on the project.

I use the automation features, and the implementation depends on the project. Sometimes I help our customers implement more automation on the processes that they have.

Almost all customers have reduced their response time, which is the most important benefit. We have brought tasks that previously took more than 30 minutes or one hour of execution down to a few minutes. Working with the flow designer with new flows, new automation, and sub-flows, everything related to that increases more autonomy in the process.

I believe that related to the solutions in the Now Assist platform, we can put more autonomy on that. Some reconciliation can be automated. AI Assist is the current improvement now. I don't have anything to improve for the future at this moment, but I would like to use the features of AI to increase and integrate with other third parties in the customer if needed, and create some autonomy on that. However, this is something that is rolling now.

A few months ago, I was thinking about how we can integrate with new solutions of AI, like Claude and Gemini, and bring a unified integration. Now with Moveworks, which is a new solution for ServiceNow, the UI integration with that makes it difficult to put more improvements on that and see other future enhancements. Now it is the moment to work with Moveworks and see what the future holds. It is difficult now because we are rolling out that solution.

I have been working with ServiceNow CMDB for more than 10 years.

ServiceNow CMDB is very intuitive and user-friendly. ServiceNow is designed to help people, not to complicate their work. It is easy to work with ServiceNow CMDB.

It is very easy to integrate with ServiceNow CMDB. With the REST API and SOAP, everything is standard to use. It depends on the third party in these cases, and the other factor is with the module. It is very out-of-the-box, so there are no concerns about that.

I would rate their technical support as five out of five because I have experience with other platforms, including BMC and Vantage, among many others. Not in the last three years, but based on my experience from the beginning, ServiceNow has the best technical support.

I am not working with anything by BMC anymore.

I used to work with BMC about five years ago.

I help customers evaluate their CMDB health. We use the CMDB health to make that analysis, to see the relationships, what is missing with the processes they have, and any mis-ownership issues. So, we use ServiceNow CMDB health for that and create dashboards with reports related to it, but this depends on the business and the requirements from the customer.

Some metrics that I track with ServiceNow CMDB are related to changes, including what kind of changes we made in ServiceNow CMDB. The increase in ServiceNow CMDB by classes is the most common metric. But again, this depends on the customer's needs.

I believe the pricing is very competitive because we have huge value with ServiceNow compared with other solutions. The price is high, that is correct, but the value is the most important factor, and we can deliver that. The price is not a concern with ServiceNow.

Their marketing strategy is very strong. We have great support for that as partners. They help a lot, and we can communicate from ServiceNow to our customers through our partnership. That is amazing.

For TRH, we are a partner, a reseller, and a service partner. I believe it is just missing the build partnership with them.

The licensing model is normal now, but comparing it with other players on the market, I believe in some points it could be improved with a few adjustments, but it is easy to work with currently. The licensing model works for me.

I would rate my overall experience with ServiceNow CMDB as a five on five.