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BMC Helix Client Management vs BigFix comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Net...
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
114
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (4th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (6th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (4th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
BigFix
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
100
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (10th), Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (25th), Patch Management (8th), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (11th)
BMC Helix Client Management
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Mobile Device Management (MDM) (10th), Endpoint Compliance (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
BigFix1.7%
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint6.8%
CrowdStrike Falcon5.9%
Other85.6%
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
Mobile Device Management (MDM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
BMC Helix Client Management5.0%
Jamf Pro12.3%
NinjaOne7.0%
Other75.7%
Mobile Device Management (MDM)
 

Featured Reviews

ABHISHEK_SINGH - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Process Expert at A.P. Moller - Maersk
Gained full visibility and streamlined threat detection through behavior-based insights and AI integration
Initially, we got to have a lot of false positives when we onboarded, but nowadays it's quite smooth. We have fine-tuned our security policies and allowed different levels of policies to get rid of those false positives. Currently, we are getting a fairly good amount of incidents that are not false positives or benign, but actionable items. The process is streamlined. In the initial days, the operations used to get involved in a lot of benign and other activities, but now the process is streamlined. We are leveraging the auto-detection and remediation plans. The operations teams are now more involved in other business roles as well, not just looking into the logs and fetching out what's happening there. They have fixed a lot of things. Initially, they didn't have IAC code drift detection, cloud posture management, or security posture management, but they have those now. They purchased different vendors and did a merger with that. They have now Prisma Cloud that gets integrated and now they are working with Cortex Cloud. Everything that was negative has now been addressed, and the product altogether looks to be in a very better and mature shape now. Currently, it's more or less detecting the workloads with AI-based best practices. Since most organizations are consuming AI agents and other things, we are looking forward to seeing what other feature enhancements Palo Alto can support in that.
InderjeetSingh4 - PeerSpot reviewer
Administrator at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
End-to-end automation has simplified patching and software deployment across thousands of servers
There is one feature in BigFix called the automation patch policy that requires enhancement. When an action is initiated through the patch policy, it appears on the console but arrives in chunks. When targeting hundreds of servers from the patch policy, the actions come in chunks such as ten out of six, ten out of nine, or ten out of fifteen. This fragmented approach creates a significant challenge for the patching team to monitor the action status. I would recommend that the development team provide a single action or one to two actions instead of multiple actions requiring individual monitoring. A broad status update could be provided to the client indicating the overall progress of the patch policy implementation rather than requiring monitoring of every individual action. This would reduce the bandwidth required by the team to track multiple actions on the console.
AA
Senior Account Executive at FDS
Efficient remote control capabilities; compliance features greatly reduced customers' licensing costs
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.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Being a cloud solution it is very flexible in serving internal and external connections and a broad range of devices."
"I can highlight that we have not faced any security incidents with Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, and even though our environment is quite dynamic, we have not faced any security incident with Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks until now."
"The most valuable feature of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is the low consumption of system resources. The solution uses a lot of AI and machine learning."
"The stability of the solution is very good. We have about 100 users on it right now, and we use it twice a week."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks should be a stable solution."
"It has a higher cost than other solutions, like CrowdStrike or Microsoft’s EDR tools, but it reduces the cost of our operations because it’s a new generation antivirus tool."
"The behavior-based detection feature is valuable."
"Monitoring is most valuable."
"All the vendor patches are synchronized automatically, which is something you don't find in other tools."
"The most valuable aspect of BigFix is its ability to patch desktops. While we have complete control over servers and can easily push patches to them, desktops pose a greater risk for leaks and vulnerabilities if patches are not installed in a timely manner. By using BigFix, we have significantly improved our ability to patch desktops, whether they are laptops, desktops, or other mobile devices used by end-users."
"The patch management and the BigFix Inventory have been the most valuable features."
"Using BigFix to report on our encryption stance has been extraordinarily impactful in terms of avoiding fines for HIPAA violations and in terms of lost and stolen devices."
"Patch Management for a variety of operating systems makes it valuable as we can rely on a single tool for obtaining patch compliance of the entire compute infrastructure."
"Being able to hit all of our endpoints is the most beneficial feature of this solution."
"The combination of CyFIR and BigFix has allowed one of our major customers, one of the top Fortune 50 financial firms in the world, to reduce their forensic investigator count by about 4 FTE with the combination of CyFIR and BigFix."
"Definitely, without any hesitation, I would recommend that you should implement and use it."
"One of our customers is a financial institution with more than 15,000 endpoints, and we use BMC Client Management to manage their regulatory compliance needs, manage the endpoints from a security perspective, and integrate it with service management as well."
"The most valuable features of the solution are its patching capabilities and the help it offers when it comes to use cases, like prompting for the reboot after a certain period of time."
"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."
"BMC Client Management is a stable solution and one of the best in the market. It allows me to manage all recipe endpoints, including iOS, Android, Linux, Unix, and Windows, all within the same solution."
"The inventory and patch management tools are very valuable."
"The most valuable features of the solution are patch management and software license management."
"It's a scalable solution. We have deployed it for customers using 3000 nodes to those using 300,000 nodes."
"BMC Client Management has helped us be able to patch our OS or any software to the latest version."
 

Cons

"If Palo Alto reduces the pricing slightly for their products, it would make them more scalable in markets such as India and globally for cybersecurity."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is not only pricey; it is extremely expensive."
"A better pricing plan would make this product more competitive."
"Impact on system performance is horrible, adding a lot of delays for users."
"Although I would say this product is highly-rated, it could probably do more because nothing does everything that you want."
"The price could be a little lower."
"The solution should add unwanted malicious hash values to a block list so that whenever the action is triggered, it will automatically prevent the malicious content."
"Managing the product should be easier."
"We would like to see more of the extended reporting feature."
"Improvements can be made when it comes to in-place and OS upgrades."
"The self-service application seems to need some work to replace the client UI."
"The product should become cloud-based. Also, the peer nesting ability of the product is a little backward."
"BigFix can improve the way machines report back to the console."
"The new EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response) feature, Detect, is new and still needs a few updates."
"There is one feature in BigFix called the automation patch policy that requires enhancement."
"I would eventually like to see a SaaS offering, a cloud-hosted BigFix instance where we only have to put a relay in our environment."
"BMC Client Management supports only iOS devices. It would be good if they would support Android as well."
"It would be good if BMC Client Management can perform vulnerability assessment scanning at the endpoint on its own and mitigate that. Then, we wouldn't have to rely on a third party VA tool. I would like to see this application move to being a web-based one."
"In BMC Client Management, I would like to see more features for executing commands remotely. For example, with SAP, there isn't the capability to execute all the commands available in the console. The latest version includes more endpoints, but they do not cover everything the operations team needs. Additionally, I think improving the hierarchy for managing endpoints is crucial. Extending the endpoint capabilities would be highly beneficial."
"The solution needs to add whitelisting because many customers request it."
"The solution does not offer the functionality of remote access to users."
"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."
"BMC Client Management could improve in the area of integration."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's the most expensive solution, but features-wise, it's quite strong. It's very good for protection, so the results are very good in the case of protection. I would rate it a two out of ten in terms of pricing."
"It's about $55 per license on a yearly basis."
"Its pricing is kind of in line with its competitors and everybody else out there."
"Traps pays for itself within the first 16 months of a three-year subscription. This is attributed to OPEX savings, as security teams spent less time trying to identify and isolate malware for analysis as a result of a reduction in malware incidents, false positives, and breach avoidance."
"It is present, but when compared to other competitive products, I would say it is not less expensive; however, when all of the other added values are considered, the price is reasonable."
"We pay about $50,000 USD per year for a bundle that includes Cortex XDR."
"Our customers have expressed that the price is high."
"The price of the solution is high for the license and in general."
"The license is subscription-based."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is expensive and ten is cheap, I rate the solution's pricing one out of ten."
"The product is less costly when compared to other solutions, and this is a good solid solution for what we have paid."
"The price is very fair."
"When purchasing, buying with other IBM tools provided us with a very good discount in pricing."
"The price of the solution is high. There are not any additional fees from the standard license."
"We have a subscription-based contract with BigFix."
"There's not much big cost. We only have to pay the agents' cost for the server, and for the systems."
"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."
"The solution is low cost."
"To use BMC Client Management they charge annually per node."
"BMC Client Management is a high-priced solution, but given its performance and capabilities, I think it offers great value. I don't have the exact number for the yearly licensing costs. I believe there is an additional cost of around two hundred dollars."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
Construction Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Retailer
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise53
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise68
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
 

Questions from the Community

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. Sentinel One
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. SentinelOne SentinelOne offers very detailed specifics with regard to risks or attacks. ...
Comparing CrowdStrike Falcon to Cortex XDR (Palo Alto)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. CrowdStrike Falcon Both Cortex XDR and Crowd Strike Falcon offer cloud-based solutions th...
How is Cortex XDR compared with Microsoft Defender?
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a cloud-delivered endpoint security solution. The tool reduces the attack surface,...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BigFix?
The pricing is pretty good and now follows a subscription model similar to other major software solutions, making it ...
What needs improvement with BigFix?
I have concerns about BigFix's pricing, which I find to be slightly on the higher side. While it may not be the most ...
What is your primary use case for BigFix?
I have been working at Tech Data for the last 12 plus years.
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Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
Tivoli Endpoint Manager
BMC Helix Client Management, Helix Client Management, BMC Fromdistance Mobile Device Management
 

Interactive Demo

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
US Foods, Penn State, St Vincent's Health US Foods, Sabadell Bank, SunTrust, Australia Sydney, Stemac, Capgemini, WNS Global Services, Jebsen & Jessen, CenterBeam, Strauss, Christian Hospital Centre, Brit Insurance, Career Education Corporation
Charter Manufacturing
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, CrowdStrike, SentinelOne and others in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP). Updated: June 2026.
904,836 professionals have used our research since 2012.