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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
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 (8th), IP Address Management (IPAM) Tools (5th), Data Center Infrastructure Management (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Configuration Management Databases category, the mindshare of BMC Helix CMDB is 9.3%, down from 12.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Device42 is 21.9%, up from 18.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Configuration Management Databases Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Device4221.9%
BMC Helix CMDB9.3%
Other68.8%
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

"It allows me to easily manage my data: Cleanse, load, and report on it."
"This solution makes it easy for us to access data, and seamlessly integrates with all ITSM as well as the monitoring parts."
"Over the years, we have progressed to have close to a real-time up-to-date view into the assets in our environment."
"The rules functionality makes it easier to classify data for different groups."
"This solution has improved our tracking."
"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."
"Atrium Integrator​ allows me to manage my data, with regular updates, etc. and integrate with multiple systems."
"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."
"The way the solution’s automatic IT asset discovery and inventory functionality works is you set up a discovery job, then you can schedule it to run. I schedule all of the runs daily at different times so nothing is interfering with anything else. It's nice to know that you can set up the scan, schedule it, and sit back. You can check them every day and make sure everything ran, making sure nothing had errors, then you're good to go. Anything new is going to automatically be discovered, which is nice. It takes some of the stress off because you don't have to know, "If this team opened new servers, we need make sure now it will automatically pick them up." It is one less thing to worry about. It gathers a lot of data points."
"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 pricing is reasonable."
"The solution's agentless approach to asset discovery is very important for us because installing agents on physical or virtual devices is not easy in our company. We have to escalate these kinds of things to different levels of security. Not having to install agents makes it easy for us."
"I like the tool's agentless discovery feature. The tool configures the devices based on the documentation provided. I am also impressed with its auto-discovery feature. The tool also keeps on tracking and finds whatever is in the environment."
"The most helpful feature in Device42 was the import feature, where you can seamlessly import your information into the configuration database manager."
"The import/export for bulk operations is a valuable and good feature."
 

Cons

"Recently, improvements have been more focused on the interface side."
"I am just waiting for the new release with the new enhanced UI."
"Looking for a more streamlined interface; one that matches the other parts of the BMC Remedy product line."
"BMC Atrium CMDB could improve if they had a cloud version and made the interface better."
"There could be a provision in the back end to ensure unique collections and avoid duplicate services."
"We would like the service modelling functionality of this solution to be improved."
"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."
"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. If there were a way that I could just bulk-remove everything from there, that would definitely save some time."
"I would like to see API management as an additional feature in the tool's future versions. It will give more API security."
"The only thing which I have noticed so far that is not good is that we had an issue with some reporting from the tool, reporting we had to export. We couldn't do it in the way we wanted to, so we tried to reach out to their support but it took pretty long until we understood how we can manage the reports. We still haven't received a complete explanation of what we need to do and how to do it."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"It would be nice for the agent to have an installer versus a single file across multiple systems."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
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 Business7
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise13
 

Questions from the Community

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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.
 

Comparisons

 

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: September 2025.
869,566 professionals have used our research since 2012.