BMC Helix ITSM Reviews

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.

• CMDB is very useful and it is used to manage client and non-client CI
• Freedom to use your ow way to integrate other systems with BMC Remedy
• Not too difficult to customize workflows

Using Service Request Management creates a Change Request and then sends, via a web service, a request to start a job on VMware to automatically create a server. When the job is finished and server is created it send back the name of the server back to remedy and automatically creates the CI in CMDB and create relationships. In this way we created an automatically way of requesting a server.

In 8.1.02 the Atrium core in the Midtier should be improved. It is using flex technology which is not so reliable. I think in v9 it was changed the technology.

I have been using this product for almost eight years.

There were no major issues with the deployment.

There have been no major issues with the stability.

There have been no issues with the scalability.

The first level is not so skilled . If you manage to go to second level they are good.

There was no previous solution in place.

It was a complex one, because our company was bought by another one and both companies had different versions of remedy installed which needed to be unified. The complexity was from the level of customizations each instance of Remedy needed.

We did it via a vendor. It would be good to create a knowledge in hour which knowledge should be transferred from the vendor side.

I'm not involved in this area.

The BMC Remedy products are reliable and cover all the ITIL processes. An advice would be to try to keep as low as possible the level of customizations.

In recent releases they introduced OOTB email tickets creation. In the older version we needed to write a lot of code for this.

CMDB & Asset management is very helpful in locating an asset. Also, the CI viewer helps in good impact analysis for a CR. Bmc SIM gives a good model too.

The SRM module is still pretty complex, this needs some improvement in AIF creation and configuration. Process designer needs some good video demos and documentation.

I have been working on this product for the last 10+ years.

During code deployment the Ar Server sometimes leaks a lot of memory which needs a regular restart.

Stability is as good as your defined architecture which is decided by load.

Horizontal scalability at AR server level and at mid tier level is very good.

Technical support has improved compared to six or seven years ago. Customers are happy.

The set-up is pretty easy.

Most of my implementations were done through an house team.

Get floating licenses if your user base is going to be big.

I evaluated ServiceNow as an alternative solution. Many customers wanted a new tool to evaluate because they have a very old version of Remedy and upgrading is complex because too much customization is needed. Also, ServiceNow has a very good SAAS/PAAS solution.

Keep a balance between your ITIL processes and the tool. Don't break the costly product just to incorporate your old legacy process. When implementing it, you should avoid customising it too much, having complex SRM AIF forms. You should also ensure you don't have a customised approval process and having too much data in the CMDB.