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BMC Atrium CMDB vs Device42 comparison

 

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

BMC Atrium CMDB
Ranking in Configuration Management Databases
5th
Average Rating
9.2
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Device42
Ranking in Configuration Management Databases
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
IT Asset Management (9th), IP Address Management (IPAM) Tools (5th), Data Center Infrastructure Management (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Configuration Management Databases category, the mindshare of BMC Atrium CMDB is 10.7%, down from 15.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Device42 is 17.3%, up from 16.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Configuration Management Databases
 

Featured Reviews

Yousef Bayari - PeerSpot reviewer
Serves as a repository for storing configuration items, encompassing both physical and logical entities
The main feature is the relational model database, where you define relationships between CIs. Being able to establish CI relationships and building a service model is a key aspect of CMDB. Additionally, the traditional features of asset management, such as tracking assets through attributes, location, and ownership (both organizational and individual), are also part of it. On top of these, the CI model, which handles relationships and service models, is pivotal.
AHMEDKASSAB - PeerSpot reviewer
Allows us to determine the exact placement of assets based on the building maps and the room details
In my experience, I believe that the key concern is the pricing strategy of the solution. Instead, other solutions are much more cost-effective. Previously, Device42 has altered the pricing model to include a subscription fee which I see as very costly. They should change their pricing strategy and license scheme, conduct market research and ensure that they provide the right product in the market at the right price.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The main feature is the relational model database, where you define relationships between CIs. Being able to establish CI relationships and building a service model is a key aspect of CMDB."
"The rules functionality makes it easier to classify data for different groups."
"The most valuable features of BMC Atrium CMDB are its ease to build new classes. For example, let's say there are types of CIs or efforts that do not exist in BMC Atrium CMDB. You can create your own and their relationship to existing classes."
"This solution makes it easy for us to access data, and seamlessly integrates with all ITSM as well as the monitoring parts."
"Atrium Integrator​ allows me to manage my data, with regular updates, etc. and integrate with multiple systems."
"It allows me to easily manage my data: Cleanse, load, and report on it."
"This solution has improved our tracking."
"Over the years, we have progressed to have close to a real-time up-to-date view into the assets in our environment."
"They've also just created some new interactive dashboards. CEOs can see and interact with the data rather than scrolling through endless Excel worksheets to find what they need."
"We use the automatic IT asset discovery for different things, like VMware discovery and SNMP discovery for network devices. It helps us to keep hardware information up to date in Device42, and the VMware discovery helps us to keep virtual device inventory up to date... We are sure to have 100 percent of our devices in Device42. Not more, not less."
"The solution's automatic IT asset discovery and inventory functionality are top-notch. The thing I like is that it's open-source. If I need to change them — and they've given me links on GitHub to have them — I can go and change them to pull exactly what I want, as frequently as I want."
"The IP address tracking [is valuable]... We have a lot of different devices and some of them have many IP addresses, so keeping track of which ones are assigned where is very critical for putting new devices on the network and giving them new addresses. All of our devices are statically assigned, so if we don't keep good records then we could accidentally assign a duplicate, which would cause problems on the network."
"The Insights+ component is useful for us because it does business application mapping and helps us visualize it. It saves us time because we don't have to hunt for data."
"It has agentless discovery; you don't need to put agents on your servers. You can open one or two ports to discover all your infrastructure."
"The auto-discovery is brilliant. You can have it scheduled to run on a regular basis, and the infrastructure is always getting updated within the platform. I would rate the asset discovery very highly. It's very comprehensive. It covers quite a lot of different methods for doing discovery and it supports a lot of different types of hardware as well."
"Previously, our company had a lot of issues keeping track of all the data centers and the inventory, as well as the purchase orders. All of these were managed by other tools. The good thing about Device42 is that it can be used for all this together. We don't need to spend time checking many other tools and files."
 

Cons

"BMC Atrium CMDB could improve if they had a cloud version and made the interface better."
"I am just waiting for the new release with the new enhanced UI."
"Recently, improvements have been more focused on the interface side."
"We would like the service modelling functionality of this solution to be improved."
"There could be a provision in the back end to ensure unique collections and avoid duplicate services."
"Looking for a more streamlined interface; one that matches the other parts of the BMC Remedy product line."
"The dependency mapping can be quite slow sometimes, if you've got a lot of things connecting to services. It can be very slow to build up the map."
"Since I was focused on deploying connectors and getting all the servers to be scanned, one of the biggest pains was when a job would fail, then the output (logging) was poor. For example, "Why did it fail?" In these cases, you get a generic error. It doesn't point you in the right direction and tell you why you got the error, which is really annoying. There have been times I asked, "Is there somewhere I can see a better log as to why is this failing?" That would be a really nice improvement."
"The solution’s automatic IT asset discovery and inventory functionality functions pretty well. There could be some improvement if there were some automated scripts to get it off the ground. I know it takes a bit of effort to get all of various managed devices into one place. We have to go and change how they are managed and make sure they are all linking up correctly so they can be tracked in Device42. Some type of automated script for each to get over that initial activation."
"My biggest problem with the product is the upgrades. First, we have to do them manually and second, not this last time but the time before that, we actually had to build a new VM to deploy the solution again. We had to back it up and then restore it to the new version. That was inconvenient."
"A con for Device42 is that Kubernetes integration is lacking. You pay for 10,000 spot licenses and if you're spinning up a Kubernetes cluster, or four or five or six Kubernetes clusters like we do, you're going to have 5,000 or 6,000 nodes in each of those, doing different types of business things."
"In my experience I believe that the key concern is the pricing strategy of the solution. Instead other solutions such as lanweber are much more cost effective. Previously, Device42 operated on perpetualysis without any fees. But recently they have altered the pricing model to include a subscription fee which I see as a very costly affair. Therefore I would like to suggest that they evaluate their pricing strategy and licence scheme, conduct a market research and ensure that they provide the right product in the market at the right price."
"If they could make it so their remote connector could do as much as 10,000 devices, that would be better."
"Mapping items wasn't as intuitive as importing in Device42, so this is an area for improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"CMDB is more expensive than one of its competitors."
"I am not involved in its pricing, but I have seen their plans during a discussion with the customer. For 500 servers, they were asking 50,000 USD. The cost of BMC Discovery was less than half. For the same thing, they were charging only 10,000 USD. Its pricing needs to be improved. As compared to other discovery tools, such as BMC Discovery and ServiceNow Discovery, its price is a little bit higher."
"On a yearly basis, our licensing is $10,000. However, our license is now nearly full with devices. We need the next bigger license with 5,000 devices, which will cost us $19,000. We pay for a set of licenses, a maximum number of devices, and a maximum number of IP addresses. We have the smallest amount of features, which is enough for us at this time."
"Functionality-wise, Device42 is on par with industry standards, but price-wise, the solution is expensive. I'm rating the pricing for the solution as eight out of ten."
"The problem with using other vendor, like BMC, is the pricing. The price is so horrible and nobody wants to pay this money."
"The product cost is low. It is quite cheap."
"Our licensing costs are on a yearly basis."
"It's in the top-three most expensive solutions in terms of cost, but it has all the features that are needed."
"We pay $100,000 per year."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
12%
Educational Organization
8%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about BMC Atrium CMDB?
The main feature is the relational model database, where you define relationships between CIs. Being able to establish CI relationships and building a service model is a key aspect of CMDB.
What needs improvement with BMC Atrium CMDB?
Recently, improvements have been more focused on the interface side. The core code itself is stable. For instance, there's been a transition from using Flash on the interface to more modern externa...
What is your primary use case for BMC Atrium CMDB?
The Atrium CMDB is where you would store all your configuration items, whether they're physical or logical. For example, server PCs, routers, switches, and other network devices, as well as the sof...
What needs improvement with Device42?
The product must provide AI features. It would be very useful if I could create datasets or queries from an AI interface.
What is your primary use case for Device42?
I use the solution for physical assets management, IT management, and application dependency mapping.
 

Also Known As

Atrium CMDB
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Brookfield
Computershare, Concur, Doosan, Fitch Ratings Inc., Fujitsu, HomeAway, Jasper Wireless, Mercedes-Benz, Square, Twitch, UCSB, Zayo Group Inc.
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC Atrium CMDB vs. Device42 and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,129 professionals have used our research since 2012.