BMC Helix ITSM Reviews

For me specifically the Asset Management & Incident Management modules.

Since 8.1 is compatible with the ADDM discovery tool, we automated discovery and mapping of assets (CIs) and their relationships migration to the CMDB. We also used them for building services for the operational dashboard.

Each of the modules in this version have room of improvement. We also have to perform customizations based on our company environment and business needs but it would be nice if these were available by default.

I've been using this version for March 2015, and I was using v6.3 for seven years.

We definitely encountered some issues with the deployment and integration with other tools we are using, but that is the same with the any new tool.

There have been no issues with the stability.

There have been no issues with the scalability.

7/10

7/10

I have been in this company for eight years, and it was already in place.

The initial setup wasn’t straightforward.

We hired Column consulting to work on the development and implementation of the upgrade.

It’s not an easy product to use for the customers.

With so many cool features available in BMC's own applications like ITSM, it's easy to overlook the platform features that enable them. ARS really shines when it's workflow directly supports critical business processes. And it's this workflow - how easily its translated from business process, how quickly it can be developed, and how fast it can be deployed and used - that I consider it's most valuable feature to the business. It has all of the other features you'd expect in a robust enterprise platform (architectural scalability, flexibility to adapt to Windows/Unix shops, tons of UI widgets, a variety of DB options, cloud offerings, etc.) but it's workflow engine is what makes it a great platform for pretty much any business need.

As a platform it provides a way to rapidly develop and deploy a number of small, but important applications. One example of this is how call center quality is evaluated and measured - we use Remedy to track, grade, and ultimately development improvements to the processes, ultimately benefiting the customer.

There are two areas where I think improvements could be made; web support of custom applications and upgrades. BMC provides a couple of modern web interfaces with SmartIT and MyIT, but these are limited to fronting their own (ITSM) applications. Having a modern web layer for custom applications running on the ARS platform would help a lot (indeed there are several very large technology companies who do this for themselves, but having a BMC solution would simplify the DevOps process and associated infrastructure). Upgrading to a new ARS version in a complex environment remains a challenge. It's not that any one part is hard (and BMC has the ability to offer a zero-down-time option), but it's often a manual, long, and time-consuming process. Managing multiple tasks and handling them as part of the installation would simplify things).

We've been using the Remedy Action Request System (ARS) platform by BMC Software, running 100% custom applications (not ITSM). The larger, primary system is running ARS v8.1 and we're in the process of upgrading to ARS v9.1. There's also a smaller system running an older version that's being phased out.

Personally, I've been developing business solutions with the ARS platform for over 20 years. The last couple of environments I've been working have some applications over 10 years old.

We had no issues deploying it.

There have been no issues with its stability.

BMC has done a good job of keeping ahead of enterprise growth and continues to offer new features that make administration, scaling, and performance tuning all easier to manage.

Fair/Good - In environments as complex as ours, the basic needs are pretty much taken care-of in-house. The issues we generally face are complex and deep within the technology, and these always take a bit of time to bring the vendor up to speed. (To be fair, BMC offers higher support tiers, providing a more bespoke support experience, but I haven't had the opportunity to experience this tier.)

The platform was in place prior to my arrival.

That's more of a question for leadership, but I think that it needs to be compared against custom platforms and evaluated from a total-cost of ownership perspective. There's hard evidence that, while licensing sounds expensive, having the development staff focus on core business process automation rather than low-level platform development/maintenance is a worthwhile trade-off and is a bigger benefit to the business (assuming you treat the AR System platform as such).

Pretty darn good, but nothing's perfect. Know your business, their processes, and how they use other tools - seriously. "Implementation" often is interpreted as focusing on just a software installation, like running setup.exe and watching the blue status bar make it's way to 100%. Frankly the software install is so well defined that it should be automated - and it typically only represents 20-30% of an overall deployment. 80% of an implementation should be spent analyzing, configuring, and testing the various configurations and integrations required by your unique business. Don't forget the training and knowledge transfer! Vendor teams can help (a lot) in guiding you through this, but they don't know your business like you and your customers.

Make sure you think about, and understand the differences between what BMC calls the brand, "Remedy", their application suite, " Remedy IT Service Management", and the platform, "AR System". Calling something "Remedy" without this understanding leads to a lot of confusion.

I like the automation abilities of Remedy, specifically the ability to have templates that also auto-create tasks to be resolved by different teams.

My current organization does not use Remedy, but my last company moved their knowledge base to Remedy and it was simple to navigate and search for articles.

While Remedy is an excellent ticketing system, the knowledge base module needs to be optimized for MITS companies to organize documentation for multiple client organizations.

We had no issues deploying it.

There have been no issues with its stability.

We were able to scale it for our needs without any issues.

I have no experience on implementing Remedy, but companies who offer RaaS (Remedy as a Service) are able to split the cost of running a ticketing system and aid you in developing it for your organization.

The main valuable feature is the flexibility of the product -- the ability of being able to make it do almost anything we need it to do to adjust to our business needs and to do it very quickly. The time to deliver a finish product is fast.

We have been able to provide several fairly complex and deeply integrated fully customized applications within the different systems throughout the company in an extremely quick delivery time which is impossible with other products.

It has improved the life cycle of the development making it a lot shorter to go from the concept phase (requirements gathering) to the deployment portion.

We also have been able to provide a lot more applications to the businesses within to service them better. Improve their processes by automating a lot of their sticky notes and spreadsheets and other paper trails that they were using prior to the application being created.

I have been developing on ARS platform since 1998, but on this version since 2013.

Like any product/new versions there are always issues. The main ones are the undocumented features that comes with the customized applications. We are not using the out of the box application (ITSM) therefore we are thinking "out of the box" and BMC did not document all of the changes made in their different upgrades. So each time you upgrade from one version to another, you always run into these issues. You need to always make sure you do thorough testing of all the functionality you have in your different applications especially if you are "outside of the box" type of business.

We did and still have stability issues that we are working on. The issues are all linked to the BIRT reporting tool which was the solution recommended at the time by BMC. But we are now totally disconnecting from this tool. We have identify this as being the 100% culprit and are using other methods for doing what is required within our web applications.

But beside the reporting issue no. This is a solid system. We do however have a weekly scheduled reboot of our servers (Windows farm) just to be safe. But that is just because they are Windows :-)

But in all honesty, we need to always keep an eye on the amount of Handles being generated by all the services from the BMC AR System. They do from time to time run out of control and will require you to restart the services. But that is not a regular occurrence.

None. I haven't seen any limitation at all on this product. It is as good as the hardware will allow it to be. you just need to ensure you have the proper hardware/architecture to support what you need.

The Customer service is the same as always. It hasn't changed much. They will always be there to help you find the product to help you grow in your business.

BMC needs to keep improving their support. It is still far from what it was back in the days of Remedy. It is very sad that you still are asked for you logs when the logs are already been provided and that you are asked the same questions when those are already answered in the tickets. It is as if they are reading from a script like drones. They need to learn to be more proactive and less robots. When the tickets being raised already have all the details of the issues, and all the diagnostics have been done by us please send the details to second level or 3rd if necessary instead of asking us to repeat the steps we already repeated. we don't have time to waste, especially when a server is down. That is why we do not use BMC support at the moment.

We have been on BMC AR System platform here since the mid 90s. We keep adding more applications, modifying/updating the old ones.

We have retired some too. It is an easy platform to grow and adapt

I was not at this client site when the implementation was done. But from experience, I would suggest that anyone embarking in this adventure does get at least the basic training

BMC ARS was implemented back in mid 1990's . I was not at this client site when the implementation was done.

BMC ARS was implemented back in mid 1990's . I was not at this client site when the implementation was done.

I keep a close eye on license usage and balance them. The cost of license is always an issue in every company and needs to be evaluate every Quarter/Year.

A report is provided with the recommendation to each business units on what needs to be done.

BMC ARS was implemented back in mid 1990's . I was not at this client site when the implementation was done.

This is based on the older version of the product as we are slowly moving all our thick client apps to the Web. This has been a pain stacking process due to amount of applications we needed to move and to the multiple of "old" code we had to drag along with us. The next move will be the upgrade to version 9 which will be another huge and exciting step. This is an amazing powerful product, but like any product that has so much multi possibilities, it has its "quirkiness" that you need to learn to work with.

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.