What is our primary use case?
The company I work with, which is based in the UAE with branches in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, provides software for the EMEA market with entities that usually have more than 2,000 employees. At the beginning, some decades ago, we established ourselves by gaining knowledge and experience with ITSM service-desk solutions, starting with SDE Services, then FootPrints, then BMC Remedy, and now BMC Helix. Currently, we are a partner of BMC as well as a platinum partner of Ivanti (though not in the same field as BMC, which is otherwise a competitor in terms of ITSM and client management), both of which are Gartner leaders when it comes to ITSM software. We are also a partner of Genesis, which is call center software, and additionally provide several services in the field of security and a few other areas.
When it comes to our customers' use of BMC Client Management, there are multiple areas in which it can be used, such as compliance, inventory, remote control, patch management, and software deployment. As part of my work, I deal with most of these areas, but my main focus is in software compliance.
In client management, software compliance enables people such as CEOs and IT managers to see exactly which applications are used in the organization. This is important because these people need to know that there is a license associated with every piece of software that their employees use, and that the licenses are correct.
One example of a major use case for BMC Client Management in the area of compliance involved a large construction company in Saudi Arabia that had over 2,000 employees who made heavy use of AutoCAD. The license for AutoCAD is relatively high, especially when you consider that it is subscription-based and one has to pay renewal fees each year. In this company's case, the total amount for the annual subscription fees for their 2,000+ employees was over a million dollars.
One day, AutoCAD sent the quotation over to the new CFO, and the CFO requested a report from the IT department detailing which employees were heavy users of the software, and which employees barely used it, if at all. At this point, we jumped in to help support this initiative and deployed BMC Client Management on each endpoint. Through this, we obtained the full software usage details for AutoCAD, including which employees used it and when it was last used on any given endpoint.
Looking at the report, the CFO discovered that he could safely remove about 600 licenses which had not been used at all for more than six months, and only renew the licenses for the active users. Thus, he was able to cut over $300,000 from the total payment he was going to make for these licenses.
What is most valuable?
One feature I like, that was especially valuable during the pandemic, is remote control. Remote control grants administrators and support personnel access to the laptops and PCs of employees (who might be working from home) in order to fix any issues that come up as and when they come up, even without having to wait for a support request.
There are other solutions that attempt to solve this kind of problem, such as ScreenViewer, but they're not as efficient as BMC's Client Management's remote control feature. The client management software gives an admin the power to go through the endpoint and do whatever it takes to resolve the issue, whether it's upgrading the endpoint's software or deploying a new patch to the system.
Another advantage of remote control is that it allows administrators to keep an eye on whether the employee's machine is compliant with the latest security policies, and keeping up to date with the latest versions of security software. With BMC Client Management, all the information needed to manage these aspects are in the admin's hands, either by exporting a report or simply looking at a dashboard.
More generally, when we're talking about the SaaS version of BMC Client Management (BMC Helix), this version is designed like a German-made machine; that is, it works flawlessly, has no issues in terms of features, and everyone is very happy to use it.
What needs improvement?
The on-premises version of BMC Client Management has powerful remote control functionality and decent compliance features, but these features both rely on the discovery tool in order to gain a complete set of insights about the endpoint's environment. Now, BMC's discovery solution depends on having an agent installed in each endpoint and sometimes the agent doesn't work properly, making it difficult to get an accurate understanding of the environment (including special topologies) even with BMC's discovery tool.
This can be a pain when it comes to the area of compliance, since you might not have full access to everything running in the organization, including important infrastructural components such as servers and databases. For example, some endpoints may have gotten their software updates from servers not visible to the discovery tool, and this can further impact operations when it comes to patch management. Compare this scenario with the way Red Hat handles patch management: their software is always updated from the main patch providers, so you will always know what is running on the endpoints in this kind of environment. Although their endpoint management has its pros and cons, this is where BMC Client Management is at a bit of a disadvantage and I believe they need to improve on this area.
Another area BMC could look into improving is the mobile device side of client management. It has lots of support for Microsoft products in terms of client management, but lacks comprehensive mobile device management support, such as for Android devices.
For how long have I used the solution?
My company has been working with the on-premises version of BMC Client Management since it was first acquired by BMC almost a decade ago. Personally, this is about my fourth year working with it.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
For stability, I would rate BMC Client Management a ten out of ten. Once the administrators gain sufficient knowledge of it, it's very easy to use and there are no major issues encountered. On the odd occasion, admins may come across policy or configuration issues, but in terms of the stability of the solution itself, we've heard of no problems.
Each time there's a new version, we will usually upgrade our existing customers' implementation or use it as the preferred version for new implementations. However, we also tend to use the most recent previous version instead of the absolute latest version for a while so that we can be sure that there aren't any major issues or bugs with the new version. Once the latest version has been proven to be stable, we know that we can safely install it.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
In terms of overall scalability and capacity of BMC Client Management, I would rate it a seven or eight out of ten.
How are customer service and support?
Typically, the only time we refer to BMC's technical support is when we need a new patch or some kind of update from them directly. Otherwise, when customers need help with the solution, the support request will be escalated to our company because we have a highly experienced team consisting of senior professionals who have been working on BMC Client Management from day one.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
My company is partnered with both BMC and Ivanti, which are both Gartner leaders in the field of ITSM. Between the two, my preference would be BMC, without a doubt.
How was the initial setup?
The setup isn't complex, and we usually deploy the solution as a series of patches. That is, there will be one main server and we will deploy patches from this server at a certain limited pace (e.g. 100 patches now, 100 patches a bit later) rather than sending out all 1000 patches at once.
We space it out like this to give a reasonable amount of time for the patches to be taken up by the employees in an interactive manner, and at times when employees are not actively at work on their laptops or PCs (either before work or after).
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
BMC Client Management is a very affordable solution. There is one main server license which I believe is around $1,000 per year, and then there is the license for the actual solution. With the solution license, you can opt for a suite license where you get access to all the features and benefits, or alternatively you can buy any of the five main components of the suite license individually. For example, if a customer only needs remote control, they are able to purchase this separately.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Other endpoint management solutions that I have considered include SCM and Ivanti ISeC, but I have also evaluated several mobile device management solutions as well. The good thing about BMC Client Management in comparison is that it supports both normal endpoint configuration management and mobile device management (though, as it seems, not fully; I believe BMC only supports iOS).
What other advice do I have?
Although BMC has stopped innovating on the on-premises version of BMC Client Management, there is constant innovation and new features being added to the SaaS version. Overall, the SaaS version is way more advanced than the on-premises version at this point.
I would rate BMC Client Management a ten out of ten.
*Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner
