BMC Helix ITSM Reviews

The ability to utilise CMDB information is the most valuable feature for us as it helps us to see interlinkages between CIs.

It has improved our issue resolution and change management process.

Desktop client should be an option for heavy users.

We had no issues during the deployment.

We've not experienced any stability issues.

We've had no problem scaling it to our needs.

I've not had to contact technical support.

The initial set-up was straightforward.

We performed the implementation in-house.

Have your business requirements confirmed prior to selecting a vendor.

The most valuable feature is the ability to have ITIL Out Of The Box (OOTB) functionality that can be readily customised to fit the specific needs of any given business organisation. This coupled with the open API that allows for integration with existing and legacy data sets means that you can rapidly implement ITSM in an organic fashion. Another valuable feature has to be the fast prototyping environment with allows an organisation to develop customisations in a reactive, agile manner.

The use of templates, both Incident and Change templates, has allowed for a more consistent approach to processing these types of tickets. Developing a standardised approach to these has also improved the associated reporting for post-Incident and post-Change reviews. Another important improvement has been with the implementation of the Service Request Module which has improved the end-user experience and is helping move towards a more "Self-Help" environment.

The two main areas for improvement are the User Interface and ad-hoc reporting. The User Interface still has the appearance of being clunky and not user friendly. This has changed with the release of Remedy/ITSM V9 and related products such as SmartIT and MyIT. Reporting has always been an issue with the Remedy/ITSM paradigm. It is not user friendly, too limited and clearly not intended for the End User. With Remedy/ITSM V9 comes the SmartReporting module. I look forward to using this in the future.

I have involved with Remedy since 1996. Starting with Version 3.2 of Action Request System and v1 of Helpdesk. This was long before ITSM came onto the scene.

Having been involved in migrations from version 3.2 up to and including v8.1.02 I can honestly say that very few of the migrations have induced deployment issues. The Remedy, and latterly BMC, engineers, have successfully maintained backwards compatibility throughout all their versions. As long as the platform and infrastructure requirements are planned and resourced correctly then the deployment process is relatively straightforward.

Stability is very much dependent on the architecture that has been implemented and also on the underlying infrastructure. For example, with the application server and mid-tier being deployed on a Windows Server environment, I had a client who was experiencing issues with some of the Java processes on a weekly, if not daily basis. Moving to a Linux based environment has almost eliminated these issues.

Scalability is very similar to stability in that as long as the underlying infrastructure is correctly sized and resourced then the product can deal with scalability issues.

Customer Service does vary. It all depends on your Account Manager. The good ones can be a real asset and and can provide that additional effort that makes for a good relationship between all the actors.

Technical support can vary according to your location and which team picks up your issue. Over the years the quality of technical support has varied. Providing you have an administrator/developer who can do some of the initial problem discovery and debugging then you will be able, in conjunction with technical support, to more easily track down the underlying issues.

My existing client used an older version of ITSM from the same supplier. In this case there was no switch from a different solution but the upgrade/migration still needed proper planning to implement correctly. The main reasons for upgrading were to ensure that a currently supported version of the product was being used and that the old infrastructure was replaced by a more performant

For the product itself the initial setup was relatively straightforward. The main complexity arose mainly in the project management aspect of the migration. This was due to the fact the coordination had to be done with both internal and external resources.

The project was undertaken with a vendor team for the installation and migration, internal teams for the architecture and security aspects, as well as the Remedy/ITSM administrators/Process Managers and, of course, the End Users.

As I wasn't involved at the beginning of this project I cannot give any information on the ROI. However, it is clear that ROI improves as and when the relationships between the different modules of ITSM are integrated. Related to this is the integration with other applications within the organisation such as ADDM/Discovery to enhance the CMDB. Once this information is available to, for example, the Incident, Change and Problem modules then the true value of ITSM to the organisation can be realised.

When it comes to pricing and licensing, you have to have a good relationship with your Account Manager. They are the best person to guide you through this important area. You need to analyse your requirements in terms of the ratio of floating/fixed licenses to ensure that you have the correct mix of these licences. Licence and maintenance costs may be relatively high but in terms of upgrades you tend to get a good ROI.

For this particular project no other options were chosen. A SaaS option was not suitable for this client and the requirements of being able to migrate/access the data from the existing environment did not allow for other solutions to be discussed.

This solution is a complex one which does allow for flexibility and customisations. Clients should therefore be aware that there is a need for in-house administrators/developers. This may be reduced if the SaaS option is selected.

Flexibility in development and the capacity of being used by so many different kind of businesses are the most valuable features for us.

It enhances the implementation of process between teams in a central way, and if that is not possible it makes the integration with other applications easily.

There is a lack of features to help the support team in supporting this application. Anything that help to understand the workflow would be very appreciated. Having a "big picture" of a solution is a great way to solve any issue. Something that allows the "navigation" in the workflow (step-by-step), would be fantastic.

We've used Remedy for 17 years and five years for ITSM.

There were no issues with the deployment

It has a problem with the memory management. It's the biggest problem from my point of view.

It has a problem with the memory management. It's the biggest problem from my point of view.

3/10 - customer service is very painful. It takes a lot of time to pass the issue to the technical support and until that happens, the issue jumps between the people in support, that ask us always the some things.

The technical service is OK.

I have always worked with this product, but the company where I work, has a lot of others products similar to this one, and along the years are converting for this one. So, for me, this is evidence of the quality of the product.

For the needs that my company have the structure is complex, and so the setup is a little complex to, but if you only need one server, the setup is straightforward.

In the many years I have experienced both situations. My advice is to have a vendor team so they can validate everything in the setup.

Very dificult to talk about ROI in financial terms. Taking into account that the main concern is to choose the best delivery for a service, we are very happy with this product, and the feeling is that it pays for it self.

The final product has an installation with many modules, so choose carefully according to what your needs are. If you have something simple and if you know how to develop, the price of getting this product will decrease a lot.

It has seamless integration with third-party products.

Improved IT service desk and change management functions within the organization.

On the Administration activity to be more user friendly in terms of capturing logs also more features to be included in development activity.

It's been 11 years now.

We had some issues but we have overcome all those.

We had some issues but we have overcome all those.

We had some issues but we have overcome all those.

It's very good.

It's very good.

I've never used any other solution in my career.

The implementation. was easy.

We did it in-house.

The most valuable feature is the flexibility, which allows us to customize it per our customers' requirements.

• Email Notification that are triggered as and when there is an update on assigned ticket, unassigned ticket, pending, and resolved.
• Multiple mailbox configurations helped people from different organizations to communicate/create incidents.

As of now, the new release of version 9 is in place which is resolving the issues reported related to Reporting, Change Management, Approval Console, Dashboards.

I've used it for almost 9 years now.

We've had no issues with deployment.

We've had no issues with stability.

We've had no issues with scalability.

Customer service is a 9 out of 10.

Technical support is a 9 our of 10.

The system on our end is home-grown, which is used for consulting mostly to online and remote clients.

I think that the ROI is perfect with the pricing/licensing concept.

You can implement it with customizations per your requirements as it's a flexible product.

BMC products have been built over the years to make them highly stable and scalable, inline with the ITIL best practice.

The best part about these products is that it can be easily twisted and tweaked without compromising any of the underlining fundamental components, adding immense value to customers, vendors and partners.

BMC Software provides ETL tools that support seamless integration and data load activities, reducing the timelines to deliver.

ETL tools have helped automating the foundation data, CI and SLM data load process significantly reducing daily manual task.

SRM helped fast track On-boarding of Employees and fulfilment of user request.
BMC Remedy on-demand framework is highly scalable to support on boarding of more than 400 Customers at a time.

BMC Remedy applications like IM, PM, CM, AM are extremely robust and are fundamental to provide support for IT infrastructure.

Did come across few hiccups around some product documentation not available or not very useful or not enough support available or may be a utility not working as desired, however, these were not show stoppers and we managed to work our way around these. I will recommend good fall back in terms of very well documented products and utilities, and strong technical support.

At times, some consoles, forms are loaded with too much information and for the user it can get confusing, suggest take "Less is more" approach and make them intuitive and easy to use.

I have been implementing, customizing and integrating BMC products for the past 10 years.

Deployment issues have been encountered like compatibility issues of ITSM and SLM. Similarly issues of installing Analytics with BO on Red hat Linux platform.

BMC products are quite stable.

BMC products are quite scalable.

Customer service and technical support is exceptionally good in some cases and will certainly need improvements in some areas of concern. For ex. When we were trying to resolve issues regarding installation of BO on Red Hat, support from third party Vendor was very poor, and Customer was really concerned about the progress of installation.

None other than BMC remedy.

Initial setup is quite straightforward. You follow all the steps recommended and voila, you system is ready for use.

We had an in-house team for implementation.

For any project to be successful, everything should be meticulously planned and executed. Communication and collaboration with all the stakeholders is essential. Requirements and scope should be well defined and documented. Solution design should be optimal. One needs a great team with appropriate skill set for implementation. Check points should be well defined and system should be thoroughly tested before handing it over to the Customer. Post deployment support and documentation are important for smooth transition.

• Configuration Management – to track hardware, software, users
• Change Management – manage and maintain the company schedule of activities and resources

This product aided in the management of hardware, software, resources, and implementation schedules. Additionally, it opened the communication barriers for resources and management to communicate one on one or in a group tracking and utilizing the facts

The company has used it for 11 years, and I have used it as an implementer & manager for four and a half years. I have also used is personally as an end-user for a further seven years.

When I was a part of the support and upgrade team, it took 120 constant hours to upgrade. 

The data was slow and the BMC support was lacking. 

After the five day upgrade we then had days of data clean up.

We were using a very old product called PMSD, and excel spreadsheets. It was not robust nor did it provide the endless types of functionality that Remedy offered.

The initial setup for all involved was “discovery” as no one had the experience of the tool.

Our internal team performed the hardware configuration and setup, software process and procedures, documentation and training. Our teams were technically strong and had good technical knowledge. They knew the company and this is what made our implementation successful.

I cannot comment as I was not monitoring the ROI. 

I do know that managing the configuration items aided in the upcoming annual contracts for hardware, software products and other configuration items, the data was extremely helpful.

We evaluated several tools – I cannot remember them as it’s been a while. We had a PRB team and performed site visits and demos.

It’s a great product, I would highly recommend it. My strong advice is to take your time to plan, understand your company, and design your processes with your team members to understand all aspects. You also need to schedule your time and implementation. Finally, understand that it’s teamwork, and without that no-one will be successful.

The ease of installation and configuration is valuable. It's quick to build prototypes and full-fledged, database-based applications.

Product consultants who assist and maintain the product for customers.

It needs to be web based. The product also needs a client native (non web) version re-introduced.

I've been using the AR System for 20 years.

I've had no issues deploying it.

There have been no issues with the stability.

There have been no issues with the scalability.

It's excellent.

It's excellent.

There was no previous solution in place.

The initial setup is partially complex, but reading the install manual ahead of time is recommended to offset the complexity.

We are a consulting firm that assist our customer based in this area.

Its integration and development capacity. Its ease of use and implementation, assuming you have hired the right kind of resources for that.

It’s a perfect tool to track any kind of event or service. Developing workflow within this application is quick (again with the right resources) and for the most part I have experienced trouble free runs with this product in live environments.

As a developer and a architect, there is very little I might feel a need for to do what I need to do for 99% of the cases. I may wish however for this product to mature a little more on the web front-end which I believe it has on version 9 which I am yet to be exposed to. Also, I would wish for it to remove a limitation I came across with in the past (2 versions ago) on web services on some constructs that the Remedy Web service engine does not handle all too well without modifying the WSDL itself.

Over 17 years ever since it was Remedy Corporation right though its acquisition by Peregrine and then BMC Software.

We had no issues with the deployment.

We have had no issues with the stability.

We have had no issues with the scalability.

Customer Service could use some improvement – while they are technically very good, some of the agents have poorer communication skills than others.

I have seen other solutions like ServiceNow which is cheaper than Remedy, but I did not feel that it had the same robust capabilities as the BMC Remedy product.

It's straightforward for someone who knows what he or she is doing.

I have implemented this product at multiple sites.

Remedy has third-party vendor products, some of them even free that can help you manage licensing costs through usage monitoring.

It might cost a few more bucks than its competitors like ServiceNow, but it certainly has a better technological edge over ServiceNow. I have heard of some shops that moved from Remedy to ServiceNow to take advantage of ServiceNow's smaller TCO, but then had several issues and problems with being able to successfully implement and use ServiceNow exactly how they would have wished to use it. Remedy has a motto of your business your way which is very fitting since that is exactly what it gives you.

The reporting feature is valuable as we can generate any reports as per our needs provided the search functionality is known. Never worked on the customization or configuration part of the tool as it is limited to the admin role.

Email option was available in the newer version that helped with track and trace. Most of the time it helped a lot during contract renewals.

There are certain functions, such as status, which changes based on the email and last action taken by individual. Anyone can easily manipulate this functionality.

I've used it for five years.

There have been no issues with deploying it.

It freezes sometimes.

There have been no issues scaling it.

8/10

I have used HP Quality Center but I feel tracking and tracing is easier in this tool.

Simple but the installation file is too big.

So far this is the best tool that I have used. The user interface is not difficult to understand.