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BMC Helix 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 Helix CMDB
Ranking in Configuration Management Databases
6th
Average Rating
9.2
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Device42
Ranking in Configuration Management Databases
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
33
Ranking in other categories
IT Asset Management (6th), IP Address Management (IPAM) Tools (3rd), Data Center Infrastructure Management (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Configuration Management Databases category, the mindshare of BMC Helix CMDB is 8.8%, down from 9.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Device42 is 26.5%, up from 20.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Configuration Management Databases Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Device4226.5%
BMC Helix CMDB8.8%
Other64.7%
Configuration Management Databases
 

Featured Reviews

Yousef Bayari - PeerSpot reviewer
ITSM Consultant at Smart IT Service
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.
Manmohan Rao - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Vice President at Hitachi Systems India Private Limited
Granular discovery has ensured confident workload migration and optimized cloud move group planning
Device42 offers the best features for workload assessment, particularly useful for cloud-to-cloud workload or on-premise data center workload, especially when planning for workload migration to the public cloud. For application and infrastructure discovery, Device42 has enabled me to know the number of machines running in the on-premise environment and has managed to capture complete utilization metrics or trends of their utilization. This has benefited me in right-sizing systems for my public cloud total cost of ownership (TCO) planning, providing me granularity to right-size these systems while planning a migration to the public cloud. Device42 has positively impacted my organization by providing granularity toward application discovery compared to other assessment tools, which is a differentiator since none of the other tools provide such granularity, leading to better decision-making for my migration to the public cloud. Device42 has improved my migration projects by providing granularity around system dependencies that gave me confidence knowing which systems communicate with each other parked in a particular move group. My move group planning became so robust that I am not leaving any system behind in the on-premise data center from my planning, which saves a lot of time and effort, leading to cost optimization—a value addition.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"Over the years, we have progressed to have close to a real-time up-to-date view into the assets in our environment."
"This solution has improved our tracking."
"It allows me to easily manage my data: Cleanse, load, and report on it."
"Atrium CMDB is a great solution for having all your networks mapped into it."
"Device42 is a fantastic tool for workload discovery, and I believe everyone should start using it if they have plans to do so; it is a top-notch tool in the market."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"The most helpful feature in Device42 was the import feature, where you can seamlessly import your information into the configuration database manager."
"The most valuable feature was the ability to look up the different assets and see the different attributes that each one has, as well as being able to compare them to other assets."
"Previously, our company had a lot of issues keeping track of all the data centers and the inventory, as well as the purchase orders, and the good thing about Device42 is that it can be used for all this together so we don't need to spend time checking many other tools and files."
"Device42 has positively impacted my organization by helping us lead successful migration and transformation projects, and I have successfully completed cloud movement implementation from standard data center deployments to the cloud."
"Device42 positively impacts my organization because we build the as-is as soon as possible, avoiding the delays we would face with the network or security teams, and I captured more than 100 traffic entries in just two weeks, which was great."
"A big plus for Device42 was the auto-discovery. With it, we have updated devices, updated systems, and up-to-date systems."
 

Cons

"There could be a provision in the back end to ensure unique collections and avoid duplicate services."
"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."
"We would like the service modelling functionality of this solution to be improved."
"Looking for a more streamlined interface; one that matches the other parts of the BMC Remedy product line."
"Looking for a more streamlined interface; one that matches the other parts of the BMC Remedy product line."
"Recently, improvements have been more focused on the interface side."
"We would like a more efficient impact analysis feature to be developed for this product; at present it takes a lot of time to identify the risk and its impact."
"When servers have two network adapters, automatically discovered will be only one network card because the other one is a backup. Device42 has some problems to find the other connection."
"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."
"It gets a bit confusing sometimes when you're trying to map things to a certain spot when you are trying to configure it."
"From a documentation and reporting standpoint, at present, it is useful, but I feel that it can be improved because it currently feels incomplete in certain areas."
"If I want to delete an asset from a cabinet it does take a while. And if I'm doing it in bulk — say, for example, if we have one cabinet that has 20 servers in — if I want to remove all 20 servers, I have to do them individually, which is a bit time-consuming."
"Currently, if you want to ping devices, you need to log into Appliance Manager. This feature should be available on the Device42 side. You should be able to use the ping utility without logging into Appliance Manager. The features that are there in Appliance Manager should also be available on the main Device42 server so that you have more control on one screen. You don't need to switch to another portal, but it is not something critical."
"The resources table needs a few tweaks. We've raised a feature request for this. When you click on resources, it opens up the entire CMDB or the entire data stored in Device42. If that could be customizable, it would be good. We should be allowed to add our own columns to that by writing a script or something like that. There should be an option to add or limit whatever we want."
"Configuring rPDUs in the data center for Device42 required us to add multiple discovery jobs. The rPDUs were referred to the ISPDUs and daisy-chained. They would automatically assign a unique SMP port, but Device42 didn't allow SMP ranges, so we had to create a discovery job for each rPDU individually. We submitted a feature request to mitigate that."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"CMDB is more expensive than one of its competitors."
"It's in the top-three most expensive solutions in terms of cost, but it has all the features that are needed."
"The problem with using other vendor, like BMC, is the pricing. The price is so horrible and nobody wants to pay this money."
"Our licensing costs are on a yearly basis."
"The product cost is low. It is quite cheap."
"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."
"We pay $100,000 per year."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise20
 

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Device42?
The pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Device42 are relatively cost-effective and affordable. I do not know if a small organization would be able to afford it, but I presume it would also be co...
What needs improvement with Device42?
Device42 can be improved by adding more reporting features and architectural diagrams. If visual representations for application dependencies could be incorporated, that would be helpful.
 

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 Helix CMDB vs. Device42 and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.