Share your experience using OPS/MVS Automation Intelligence

I have been using BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps for three years. This is part of my daily routing and business activities. Every day, cross-functional team collaborations require BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps. We have the Smart IT tool integrated with BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps. I use BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps daily along with the new Smart Reporting.

We use BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps for all major and minor incidents that occur every day. We manage billions of millions of customers daily. We have multiple applications for monitoring in place, including Datadog, Splunk, and AppDynamics, all integrated with BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps. As part of IT operations, my job is to handle problem management and ITIL-related tasks. When we observe any downtime in a specific T-Log or if any specific call is failing, the AI operations in Helix looks through all the computer data immediately and points out the exact reason why it might happen. It also refers to previously reported incidents and gives us the correct summary about the incident that is taking place. I have seen features that predict problems very early. The system in Helix Operations Management with AIOps watches how computers normally behave. If a server starts acting strangely, such as getting too hot or running out of memory, the AI warns the team before the system crashes. For us, when major systems break down, whether it is applications, sites, or commercial operations, every minute means cost savings. Instead of human engineers spending hours looking at different tools and arguing about what is broken, BMC AI acts as a digital detective. It immediately analyzes the data, tells exactly what is happening and what is broken, and can even fix it automatically. This combination of finding the problem instantly and fixing it without human delay is the best reason for me to use the software daily.

Imagine a payday where I observed thousands of people in my company trying to log in and check their bank accounts. We manage finance operations. The incident could be the app suddenly crashing or any specific service failing. It might be downloading statements, logging into the mobile application or web portal, or conducting transactions. We have a specific T-Log for all services. In situations where users cannot log in, the server is running out of resources, systems are slow, or the database is taking longer to respond, this is humanly not possible to manage manually. I have seen how Helix saves so much time by clearing the noise for us. Helix looks at all thousands of alerts and groups them together. It tells my team that they should not panic about two thousand separate alarms because this is just one single alarm. With root cause analysis, it acts as a detective. Helix looks at the maps of how systems connect and finds the true culprit. When it comes to fixing the problem, instead of waiting for a human to wake up and read an email, Helix triggers an automatic command which instantly provides more memory, restarts services, and does whatever the specific API needs to achieve service restoration.

The best feature could be the heat map. Instead of looking at a boring, confusing list of text and numbers, Helix gives me a visual heat map. It displays my entire system using color-coded tiles, with green for healthy, yellow for warning, and red for broken. It is very easy to acknowledge what is going wrong. The heat map is very useful. Another valuable feature could be anomaly detection. Traditional tools only alert after the server crashes. Helix monitors everything and keeps track of how my systems behave normally. If a database starts acting slightly weird or slower than usual, the AI detects the anomaly and warns before the service interrupts or breaks down. These features help me tremendously.

Imagine when my manager was sitting in the IT command center last Friday. The previous day, they had to watch fifty different screens with thousands of lines, sitting in a closed room and scrolling through multiple text displays and multiple dashboards and widgets. It was very stressful for them and impossible to read very quickly. Now with the heat map, my team and my manager look at everything instantly and see any issues with billing cycles, payment authorizations, and checkouts. They can see it instantly turn green or change from green to red or red to green. They click the exact square and it zooms into the specific cloud database that is struggling. It saves time. The team knows exactly where to look within five seconds of a problem happening, instead of guessing and checking every possible scenario. When it comes to anomaly detection, standard IT tools use strict rules. For example, we might set a rule to alert if server memory goes above ninety percent. But what if a server slowly runs out of memory over three weeks or what if it acts weirdly? With anomaly detection, the AI flags this tiny shutdown as an anomaly, which we can describe as unusual behavior, and sends a warning message to us. We know it is customizable.

Things that could be better include making the dashboard easier to customize. I have seen the screens and dashboard look good, but modifying them can feel like a difficult task. My team wants a simpler drag and drop experience so that they can customize their daily views without needing advanced technical skills. They also need to set up the cloud version. Shifting to a SaaS-based cloud operations solution could be an easier approach. There are fewer training guides on the operations, which was a little critical previously, but it has changed to some extent. Because the AI features are so advanced, learning and configuring the algorithms can be very tricky. It is complex for us. My team often wishes that BMC provided clear step-by-step documentation or standard operating procedures and simple video guides that can help any new joiner or beginner get started with the tool.

Because it is a complex system, it takes a long time for a regular IT worker or administrator to learn how to set up, configure, and use all its advanced features. The cost is also high. It is an expensive tool, which means it is usually too costly and heavy for small companies. The complexity could be improved. That could be the area of improvement for me.

I have been working in my current field for three years.

BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps is very stable and reliable. I have shared metrics previously.

It handles very well. On Friday night, even when multiple customers visit our website, the systems handle it very well. I have not seen any major downtime while working with BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps. We have multiple sales during a year, including Black Friday, Easter Monday, and different mobile phone launches. To date, I have not seen any downtime working with BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps. When our operations work at full capacity, BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps works for us very well.

The customer support for BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps is good. The first response in an emergency, if a major incident happens, carries very strict SLAs for critical problems. Support engineers usually respond within thirty minutes to help us fix the issues. They have deep technical knowledge. The front-line technical support workers are very knowledgeable and understand the complex AI features very well. They can quickly help us figure out why the algorithm or a server map is not working right. They have a strong dedicated partnership.

I am not aware about this one because my manager is responsible for pricing, setup costs, and licensing. The higher team and the admin are more responsible for this. I am just an employee using BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps, but I am not aware about the pricing, setup cost, and licensing.

We have seen a huge return on investment when we shifted to this tool. My company spotted a return on investment up to three hundred percent over three years. For every single dollar my company pays for BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps, we get a return. When it comes to saving employee time and cost, it has increased IT worker productivity by twenty percent and completely automated up to twenty-five percent of support tickets. In a traditional eight-hour work day, the AI takes over repetitive everyday troubleshooting tasks. This instantly gives IT workers back nearly two hours every single day. Instead of resetting several systems manually, they can spend time building new software features for the company. We have safely freed up over fifty percent of employees from basic help desk duties.

We have seen pretty good growth in our targeted EBITDA. We have achieved one hundred twenty-five percent of the goal which we set at one hundred percent. The outcome for us is an eighty percent reduction in the manual effort spent on managing different kinds of incidents, which is now automated with AIOps, saving eighty percent reduction in manual efforts. With fixing issues very quickly, which cuts down the MTTR rates for us, we have seen fifteen percent to fifty percent faster MTTR within just six months of using BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps. For example, banking applications used to crash multiple times and it used to take two hours to fix. Now with BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps, it helps us find the root cause and get it back online in less than an hour. It also silences the noise. Helix uses machine learning to achieve a fifty percent reduction in event noise. Instead of my manager receiving thousands of stressful email alerts on a morning shift, the AI cleans up the mess and groups them into just one or two actual situations. It definitely saves time, saves productivity, and eliminates frustrations. With BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps, we have seen eighty percent less manual efforts spent on managing different kinds of incidents and problem management. We have seen fifty percent faster recovery time within the first six months of shifting to BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps. We have also seen increased system reliability because the AI caught issues very early, as we discussed with the anomaly detection. By catching anomalies early and grouping them together, the software prevents any major outage in my organization. For companies such as ours, avoiding just a single hour of major system shutdown can save hundreds of thousands of dollars in loss of business and penalties.

Moving to BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps changed more than just the technology for us. It completely transformed how our team works together. In a traditional setup, different kinds of IT teams used to operate in a triaging pattern. When systems break, everyone blames each other. The software developer blames the network team and the network team blames the database team. This used to happen very frequently. Now instead of arguing over who is at fault, everyone looks at the exact same data in one place and fixes the issue together immediately. This provides a single source of truth for us. The visual heat map and the service map provide a single shared screen that everyone can see. Shifting to BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps was one of the great moves we made. It has changed how we used to do the work before because it eliminated up to eighty percent of manual work and false alarms for us. The team finally gets their time back instead of working on high-stress isolations. Our team can collaborate on building new automated features that help the business grow. Previously, in a traditional way, it was too difficult for us, but now it is very stress-free. In spare time, we can have fun together, share lunch timing together, and enjoy activities together. This creates a healthy environment for us as well. I would rate this review an eight out of ten.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps contains many excellent features within the AIOps bundle. The best features for me are the AI capabilities, specifically the Insight Finder, the Log Analyzer, and the Change Advisor, which combine artificial intelligence with platform data to analyze all information and simplify processes for IT managers and support staff. The monitoring panel provided for the Network Operations Center works seamlessly with the solution and displays all relevant information for incidents or system outcomes. The artificial intelligence operates independently and provides all necessary information for making informed decisions to resolve problems faster and more effectively. Additionally, integration with the automation component allows you to automate solutions and achieve self-healing features within the platform, making AIOps in monitoring and service monitoring the best product on the market in my opinion.

Machine learning algorithms in BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps help my customers significantly with IT decision-making by providing a substantial amount of information quickly and in an understandable format. Once the AI learns about your infrastructure, it delivers extensive information that is easy to access. The platform is driven by agentic AI, supplying numerous agents that provide extensive assistance. For instance, in the DWP, end users and managers can engage an AI agent, the employee navigator, for approvals or to address problems in critical services without completing forms. This chat-based interaction creates a different experience for the end user. Similarly, a Network Operations Center operator working with service monitoring can query an AI agent about logs, gaining insights and answers about incidents, which transforms them into specialists who resolve incidents more rapidly.

The analytics feature in BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps helps identify issues and root causes, making the process of treating an incident much faster. Without AIOps in your infrastructure, it typically takes approximately two hours to understand an outcome of a critical system, but with AIOps, you can accomplish this in minutes without gathering all the specialists. The artificial intelligence performs all the analysis for you, generating a report with detailed information on solving it and who solves it, allowing you to aggregate automations to act independently. This is a significant differentiator from the competition that Helix offers. Although I primarily work with BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps because of AIOps, ITSM is common for everyone. BMC Helix ITSM contains substantial artificial intelligence, and its integration with AIOps is excellent, but AIOps stands alone without competition. ServiceNow's AIOps is not as good as BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps, and other competitors do not approach ServiceNow, making AIOps unparalleled in the market. Therefore, I am focusing on promoting and exploring this module within enterprises.

If you have AIOps, the downtime is considerably less than if you do not have it. Without AIOps, downtime for incidents will negatively impact your business, but with AIOps, you can reduce the downtime, and the way the platform operates allows you to prevent incidents. After installation, once AIOps learns about the infrastructure over approximately one year, it will prevent incidents from occurring by identifying anomalies that avert impact to your business. This is a strong selling point for BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps when presenting it to clients.

BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps provides a unified view across hybrid environments seamlessly. It does not matter whether you have an on-premises data center or are using cloud or multi-cloud environments. Once all infrastructure is discovered, whether on-premises or in a cloud, it becomes an IC within the platform. From that IC, you can create dynamic and service models. With these service models integrated into the monitoring module, the AI handles the rest, gathering information and learning about the services you have, facilitating incident response. The AI can even identify whether a change causes an incident. The unified view aligns with the ServiceOps concept that Helix and ServiceNow are developing, integrating operations with IT services in your enterprise for mutual benefits.

The technical support for BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps is excellent if your platform is in production, but if you are conducting a proof of concept on a client site and encounter issues in the platform that are not in production, you will have a difficult time gathering help. I have experienced this firsthand in a couple of proofs of concept using discovery. It is not easy and takes longer to receive assistance, primarily because the support team prioritizes production environments. This means that problems in a demonstration environment do not receive the same immediate attention, making it acceptable but highlighting a challenging aspect of the support you would receive.

I have been dealing with the product for approximately three years since I began working with it in 2023.

Many of my customers consider its pricing in Brazil to be high, which could be a challenge. However, when assessed against the benefits and positive outcomes it yields, particularly when applied to critical business systems, an ROI can validate the investment in the platform. The difficult part lies in convincing them of its value, as typically, while customers appreciate the features, the discussion around pricing proves challenging. In Brazil's current economic climate, exacerbated by the government situation, selling such solutions has become increasingly difficult.

I am dealing with BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps, specifically the AIOps component.

I do not see any disadvantages regarding BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps; it is a great platform. The only disadvantage comes from not having AIOps. Once you utilize it, it surpasses any alternative in the market. There is a learning curve for your team or the need to hire an integrator for setups, which is not as straightforward as advertised, yet this challenge is comparable to the competition. Implementing AIOps is still considerably easier than ITSM. A project in a significant corporation might take around three months to go live, and by the second month, you could already showcase its capabilities and business benefits. Therefore, I find AIOps, in comparison to competitors, stands well ahead in the market, especially with its integration into ITSM. ITSM benefits from AIOps, and clients are acquiring AIOps to enhance their existing ITSM solutions, making it a highly satisfactory investment.

In Brazil, customers have the alternative to purchase BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps either directly from BMC, via the AWS Marketplace, or through third-party resellers. In the public sector, selling involves political influences and a slower process, making it challenging. In the private sector, price sensitivity hampers sales efforts, as they generally prefer inexpensive solutions. Most of my deals with larger private sector companies see them buying licenses directly from BMC, and I typically handle only the service part, which does not offer substantial financial compensation to resellers. This model complicates project feasibility, as private sector clients often bypass resellers, opting instead to purchase directly from BMC while relying on us for implementation and support.

I would rate this review a nine out of ten.