BMC Helix ITSM Reviews

I was responsible for three implementations with BMC. All of these implementations are related to ITSM, with the IT Service Management implementation, where we manage all the processes like incident management, request fulfillment, problem management, change management, and configuration management. All three projects were of the same scope, with only ITSM managing all these processes in each one.

The most important feature in the BMC is the users' and technical teams' front end. They are good for the front end, simple front end. For the first line of support and for the end users, it's a good front end. It's very simple to register, to follow the cases or incidents. 

It is a stable product if set up correctly.

The solution can scale. 

In the back office, for the expertise technicians, it's more complex to manage the layout. The back office for the expertise needs work. It's too specialized for technicians. Sorry, they need to simplify this background and back office more. For this level of support, it's very complex, and for the customers, it's an issue. The biggest issue for our customers is the back office for the specializations through the second and third lines of support.

The management of the solution, the maintenance of the solution is based on this back office, so it's very complex for the teams to manage the solution.

It's very difficult to implement.

Support could be better.

I'd like to see the globalization of the solution. The solution has varied models needed to make a simple implementation. BMC needs to look to a centralized solution, an all-in-one solution. To implement ITSM, I need to have a model for change management, I need to have a model for orchestration, I need to have a model for workflow design, and all suites of BMC have this problem. With ServiceNow, all are included in the ITSM solution. For example, however, for BMC, we need varied models to implement. 

The customers also need to maintain the solution after the implementation. It is very difficult for them to give that support.

I've used the solution for about five years. 

If the configuration was well performed, yes, it's a stable solution. However, this is the same problem for all the other solutions in the market. If we don't have a good implementation, we don't have a good illustration of the solution. That said, if we follow the best practice to implementation, it's very stable.

The solution scales well. 

Technical support can be improved. They are fast in response, yet they pass the buck to other people. It is not easy to follow the register of support. It's not the worst support in the world. However, it could be better.

Neutral

I also have knowledge of ServiceNow. 

It's very difficult to set up the product. It's one of the most difficult solutions in the market to implement. It's time-consuming. It will take more than two months compared to something like ServiceNow, which is faster and easier. 

The number of people you need for deployment and maintenance is minimal, maybe four or five people. We can separate that into one project management, one architect, and three developers or analysts to implement the solution.

I was a partner of BMC in my last job function. 

The best support is defending the requirements of the company. This is the same advice I would give in ServiceNow. It's very important for any solution to define the requirements very well. Based on that, it's easier to implement the solution. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. Compared with other solutions in the market, for example, Manage Engine, which has technical limitations, BMC is robust. We can do everything with BMC. We can do a lot with ServiceNow too. BMC does have complexity in the implementation, however. 

Most of our customers use ITSM for incident, problem, and change management, and BMC gives them a complete solution. 

It would be great if BMC could integrate some new solution — something like DevOps — and improve the smart reporting features. Plus, I would like to see the BMC add advanced DWP features and customization to the standard package.  Furthermore, BMC does not have any leverage for non-IT services, so it would be nice if BMC could integrate something like HR Change Management into ITSM itself.

Our company is a BMC partner, and we've been using and promoting BMC products to our end customers for the past 20 years. Also, we install and customize BMC products.

Version 20.02 was stable, but I don't think 20.08 is quite stable because we have identified many bugs and reported them to BMC. So currently, BMC is working on that.

I think most BMC products are scalable. I have somewhere close to 125 customers, and the number of users per client varies. Some only have a few hundred. Others have a medium-sized user base in the 3,000 range. At the highest end, our customers have upwards of 30,000. The only issue is the DWP catalogs or the DWP. We should be able to customize the DWP more. 

BMC's technical support team needs to improve. Right now, the problem over here is we are not getting the exact answers on time.  Their engineers are mainly based in the US or Israel, and we get comprehensive dedicated support. Some of the Indian customer service representatives are also outstanding. Unfortunately, in the past six months or seven months, I've been getting brand-new engineers. Either they're not entirely aware of most cases, or they don't know how to troubleshoot further. So for any product to be stable and work correctly, BMC must ensure that customer service is excellent. Even though if your product is a hundred percent, we'll have problems marketing it to our customers.

Installing and upgrading are relatively straightforward even if the customer is updating from a really low version, like 4.1 or 7.6. So a customer should be able to upgrade to 20.02 or 20.08, but would need to do it step by step. For example, you would have to upgrade to either 9.1 or 18.05 and then from 18.05 to 20.02. That entire process will take around six months to one year for the customer to come up to the scale or start utilizing the new version. So if I get a database and it's the proper version, BMC should be able to handle it. When I do a fresh installation, it should be competent enough to identify the entire workflows or whatever has been designed in the database and start the process. It should be a quick start rather than taking a year to come up with all the integrations and everything.

The license that we provide to our customers is yearly. We don't offer a monthly license because we only sign yearly contracts with our customers. So you would need to get the customer's side of the story to answer whether Helix ITSM's price is fair because ServiceNow is currently capturing the ITSM market. BMC is a little bit cheaper than ServiceNow, but BMC doesn't have the same capabilities in its entry-level product at the moment. The basic version does not have the DWP features that most of our customers are requesting. When we do demonstrations, BMC uses the premium version, but customers can't afford the license for the advanced version. So they're missing some of the features they want, especially the ability to change the banners. 

I would BMC Helix eight out of 10 because I have been working with BMC for almost 20 years now, and it's one of my favorites. BMC offers excellent customer solutions, and they're quick to address bugs or shortcomings in their product. I will definitely recommend the solution to other users.

We use it for the entire service management portfolio. We do instant problem changes and asset management, CMDB. We use it for the entire service management module.

The out-of-the-box features are great. You can look at those before you jump into customization or integrations.

Technical support has been fine. 

The dashboard can be better. 

The remote reporting can be improved.

I'd say that the tool itself can be lighter in weight. It's too heavy.

Technical support is not very fast.

For the discovery, which is top to bottom, I would have an option for scanning sideways.

The functionality could be better.

The stability has been good. There are no bugs or glitches, and it doesn't crash or freeze. I would rate it eight out of ten in terms of reliability.

The scalability is okay. I'd rate it seven out of ten since it is a bit heavy and gets heavier quite easily.

We might have around 100 people using the solution right now. That includes end-users and developers. 

We've used technical support in the past and find them to be okay. However, it depends on the type of agreement you've got with them.

We have a service provider who contacts BMC for us. That said, there had been some occasions where I was involved with the support along with the service provider. They are okay. However, they take a lot of time to find a resolution.

Neutral

I've worked with ServiceNow in the past and find it to be a much better product.

While I wasn't around when it was installed, my understanding is that it is pretty straightforward. 

The cost is pretty good. That might have been a deciding factor when choosing the product.

I can't speak to the exact cost of the solution. It's not part of my scope to look into licensing. 

I wasn't at the company at the time it was set up. I'm not sure if they evaluated other options. 

We're customers. 

I'm not sure which version of the solution we're on. However, it being on the cloud, it does update automatically.

I would definitely recommend ServiceNow over BMC. I have an experience in ServiceNow. It's much better. It is lightweight, and easy to use, the integrations are easy, the scalability is extremely easy, the dashboard is wonderful, and the discovery is the best. I would rate ServiceNow much higher than BMC.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. It is a strong tool and is a good application to do your ITSM. It's just that it's a bit complex to integrate with your other applications. It's a big elephant. It's too heavy. The dashboard is quite confusing. It's not that state of the art in today's world and at the user level, the customization is not so easy in BMC.

We have a different project in which we implement BMC Helix ITSM, including a built-in ERP solution that has different supply chain management, such as finance, and other projects. Each team assigns the tickets, and if any client is facing an issue in a particular model, they will create the ticket and it will go through this particular use case.

If it relates to supply the chain, it goes to a particular administrator or developers. In this use case, we use approximately 500 users in BMC Helix ITSM.

This solution provides complete incident management to our organization which has improved the organization. We have different projects and different models for handling incidents and resolving the client's issues. The solution has helped to manage all the tracking and has enabled us to manage. Additionally, it has helped us with cybersecurity incidents, it's very helpful to visualize and track the exact moment of a particular incident, which is crucial.

The most valuable features of BMC Helix ITSM are the collaboration, integrated with the help of another solution called Entity. We can do all the integration and receive an automatic ticket with the help of email. We are able to receive SMS alerts to clients and end users. Every step of the ticket is generated and we are able to resolve and close them. It's very helpful to have the ability to inform the user with detailed information.

I have been using BMC Helix ITSM for approximately seven years.

BMC Helix ITSM is a stable solution.

The scalability of BMC Helix ITSM is based on the license. If you need to scale you can purchase licenses.

We have approximately 500 users of this solution. We do not have plans to increase the usage of the solution in the future.

I rate the support from BMC Helix ITSM a five out of five.

Positive

I did not use other similar solutions to BMC Helix ITSM.

The initial setup of BMC Helix ITSM is complex because it has different integrations with other tools. Additionally, it needs to be integrated with the active directory and have different databases. The environment will dictate how difficult the process is.

We did receive an ROI using the solution. It is a requirement for any organization for handling incidents, without it, it is not possible to do it in an automated or systematic way.

We evaluated Snow before choosing BMC Helix ITSM.

For the maintenance of the solution, we require one system administrator because sometimes it creates issues on the server level. One system administrator does not need to be dedicated, but then have other tasks such as the creation of groups and user for the applications, such as the ARM server.

This is a good tool and I would recommend it to others.

I rate BMC Helix ITSM a nine out of ten.

The main use case for Helix ITSM is managing break/fix tickets and all other issues with the product. It tracks customer issues using an incident model. 

We have problem management for recurring issues and do a deep dive if we need some change to fix the root cause. We can also identify if a change caused the issue with a holistic analysis. 

BMC Smart IT is somewhat rigid, but they have a powerful backend that supports our complex need for extension versus customization. Between extension and customization, you can achieve complex business processes. That's one of the main advantages of BMC.

There's some confusion with the BMC roadmap. The BMC Remedy Mid Tier architecture didn't have a good-looking frontend, but you could build any functionality, so it had a lot of flexibility. The frontend of BMC Smart IT is relatively limited in its ability to change, hide, and show fields and those kinds of things that pop up.

With Helix, they're trying to build things and add a little more capabilities, but they still have a  long way to go. It's not a complete solution. For example, they are phasing out Smart Reporting because it doesn't fit well in an ITSM solution.

It needs a more organic workflow, so every field you create is labeled throughout the stack. BMC has a few products that they try to bundle together. Generally, that solution works. BMC should take a step back and think about the overall solution—not only ITSM but also CTI Integration along with chat. They have all that, but it's not an end-to-end holistic solution with the added reporting analytics.

I have been working with BMC for nearly 15 years.

BMC is more stable than the average product. I'm not certain, but I've heard Salesforce has some performance issues with similar infrastructure. BMC has a robust backend, so we've never had issues. It's a highly stable environment, so I don't need to invest a lot of time dealing with support.

The pricing depends on the contract.  If you ask three different people, you get very three different answers, but I don't deal with it. The people in charge of procurement handle that. 

We're currently trying out Salesforce Service Cloud, and in a few months, I should be able to compare Helix and Salesforce better. Salesforce is a little more open than Helix ITSM. For example, you can integrate HR Case Management with ITSM. One kind of application can talk to another application. That's the biggest advantage of Salesforce. The Service Cloud and Sales Cloud can talk to each other. 

BMC should think about the future and redesign the whole solution. More companies are moving to low and no-code solutions, but BMC still requires a great deal of development skill to use. Businesses don't have time for that.

I rate BMC Helix six out of 10. BMC is changing, but they're still behind in 2022. 

I used this solution as part of my previous role where I was a solution architect designing comprehensive solutions for customers in the APAC region, including India. The customers predominantly have challenges with respect to the ITSM area.

The primary use cases could be particular incident problems and change management modules. There are of course requirements on your cellphone catalog front. Along with other BMC products, it could be discovery or it could be your monitoring solution.

Every fourth or fifth client I have worked with has had the BMC solution.

It's a cloud solution and deployed on-prem.

The most valuable features are the simplicity and the in-duty features. Most of the time people don't use the tool because they either find it clumsy or very difficult to understand. The biggest challenge is that I don't know where I need to raise the request. BMC addresses all these solutions, so that is something I like.

The second thing is the scalability, which isn't a problem at all. You go and buy any product in the market and of course to a certain limit they can work, but the scalability that BMC offers is really great. 

Thirdly, it provides tons of integration options. We haven't faced any issues with integration.

It's expensive, particularly in the emerging market where you see a lot of customers that have a budget crunch over issues. They like the products a lot, but when it comes to the costing part of it, sometimes they say it's not in their budget.

They go and they compromise, instead of compromising on the budget front. Sometimes they go with an open source or a cheaper tool. They have scalability issues, and they don't get quality support.

Sometimes on the pricing front, we lose some deals, particularly in the emerging market.

I have been using this solution for 10 years.

It's stable.

The scalability is very good.

Whenever we are stuck or whenever we need support, the technical support is very much appreciated. They have helped me a lot in these areas.

Implementation is easy and simple most of the time. The knowledge base is pretty good. The community pages are very good.

The amount of time it takes to deploy depends on the use cases. Typically, we take around two to three months for implementation, which covers at least six to seven processes of implementation, any incident problem, change, or configuration.

It's a yearly subscription but there are a couple of customers who go for the monthly subscription.

I would rate this solution 8 out of 10.

I would recommend this solution for those who want to start using it.

We are mostly involved in service assurance for telecommunications; service assurance and network provisioning for telecommunications. We use BMC Helix ITSM in these areas.

Most of our use cases involving BMC Helix ITSM are for change management and trouble ticketing. If you look at telecommunications companies, everything revolves around incident problems and change.

The most valuable feature for our customers using BMC Helix ITSM is change management.

BMC Helix ITSM encourages the use of APIs as much as possible. They're looking to use machine learning in the future, and all the time moving towards a zero-touch type environment.

I have customers that always would like to adapt and personalize BMC Helix ITSM more.

I have been using BMC Helix ITSM since it came out. 

BMC Helix ITSM is stable.

Having the solution on the cloud brings increased scalability. The scalability of BMC Helix ITSM is good.

The deployment of BMC Helix ITSM is difficult. If you deploy it in a single-use enterprise it's probably fairly simple. A lot of the deployments of the solution we are doing are at a global level where there is a lot of consolidation. BMC Helix ITSM requires individuals that are doing the process to have a deep understanding of the solution.

A lot of people are moving from legacy on-premise systems to SaaS cloud versions. The most difficult element of doing this is data migration. This process could improve. There are good processes in place for migration, but it's having the level of understanding about what data do you need to migrate that can be difficult.

We use an Agile approach to the implementation of BMC Helix ITSM. We could have a delivery phase that requires six or seven people as part of the delivery in the Agile scrum-type approach. Your next iteration could be two or three people or more. Then you have your consultants on top of that and your architects. However, it is depending on what is required for that sprint. 

What we tend to do is use an initial waterfall approach to create the base, or the minimum viable solution, up and running. Then we move to an Agile sprint approach for iterations and for meeting customer requirements. We figure out what the business requirements are and what are the priorities, et cetera. There can be a lot of teams involved, such as testing and redelivery teams.

I would advise others before implementing this solution to be clear on what they are trying to achieve.

I rate BMC Helix ITSM a nine out of ten.

We use BMC Helix ITSM only for managing internal tickets. I only use it for checking my tickets because I'm just an end-user. I phone the service desk or I use their self-service interface to log my tickets. I have access to the interface, which I use to receive feedback on my tickets. If there's any work that I do for internal support, I use the same interface. The interface is what I use to receive information into the system and let the service desk know how far I am. There's very little that I do on that side of things. It's less than 5 percent of the work I do on BMC Helix ITSM, and 95 percent of the work I do is with CA Service Desk.

BMC Helix ITSM gives us email and SMS notifications, we can check the tickets, and give feedback. All the basic features that we need are available.

As people progress in the life cycle of the ticket, you need to know what's happening, and the notifications BMC Helix ITSM provides are helping us a lot to know exactly what's happening.

The notifications that the solution is providing are very helpful, they should keep improving them for the future.

I have been using BMC Helix ITSM for approximately two years.

BMC Helix ITSM is stable, it has high availability.

I am not sure how scalable the solution is but it has always been working well.

I have not contacted the support from BMC Helix ITSM.

I used to work for another company in 2004 and they were using a solution called Remedy, but the interface was a lot different. There are a lot of similarities to BMC Helix ITSM. The company has been using Remedy for approximately 10 years.

There are licenses to use this solution.

I would recommend this solution to others. From what I've read BMC Helix ITSM has a lot of features and far more than the CA Service Desk. I haven't been part of the team to experience the other solutions but from what I've read, it's very rich in its features.

I rate BMC Helix ITSM a nine out of ten.