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BMC Helix Discovery vs Device42 comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

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 Discovery
Ranking in IT Asset Management
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Device42
Ranking in IT Asset Management
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management Databases (4th), IP Address Management (IPAM) Tools (5th), Data Center Infrastructure Management (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the IT Asset Management category, the mindshare of BMC Helix Discovery is 6.5%, down from 8.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Device42 is 5.5%, down from 5.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Asset Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
BMC Helix Discovery6.5%
Device425.5%
Other88.0%
IT Asset Management
 

Featured Reviews

Rafael  Pinto Ferreira - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers features for modern IT environments like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and continuous optimization and help in predictive maintenance and efficient resource utilization
An area that can be improved is the IoT. I have a customer here in Brazil interested in using it to discover assets that are not technology assets, like in a factory where you have machines that you need to monitor. All these machines already have software that monitors them, but they don't have the artificial intelligence and machine learning that BMC has. So, it's like a marketing issue. It's like a segment of the market that can be more explored. We get some opportunities in that market here in Brazil, so I think it could improve. But they already have a module called Edge, Discovery Edge, which works with the IoT, but I think it can improve that.
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 speed at which it's able to collect a wide-range of information, then make it useful for you, like asset management, knowledge management, and incident management."
"BMC Helix Discovery comprehends the infrastructure you've procured and deployed within your environment."
"It provides comprehensive dependency mapping, which is essential for reducing the time spent and addressing problem-solving between data centers."
"BMC provides great support. As managed service support, they are gold."
"Start anywhere application modelling brings a fantastic opportunity for users to see what is where."
"The initial setup is simple."
"Accuracy and clarity are vastly improved for the service lines."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its application dependency mapping."
"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."
"The solution is agentless."
"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."
"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."
"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 asset inventory is great because previously we had devices all over the place. We have been able to do multiscans to find devices that we didn't know about, 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."
"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."
 

Cons

"The improvement I want to see is a reduction in duplicate records."
"The product is not fully automated."
"BMC Helix Discovery needs more customization options."
"The solution is definitely useful."
"I would like to see the ability to scan some of the newer cloud platforms. I know that BMC has them on the roadmap, and they are coming soon, but they can't come fast enough. Being able to scan more of GCloud, Alibaba Cloud, or whatever the public clouds that our customers are buying, we need to make sure that Discovery can find them as well."
"The support from BMC Helix Discovery can improve, it takes a long time before we receive any feedback. It can take days to months sometimes."
"There are certain limitations in the mapping feature of the solution."
"The improvement which we require is to delete the Internet service. Till some of the features are coming, like, internally side. If you are taking one server to model, there are a lot of usages like three structures per diagram is coming, and we have to do the man lot of manual work. Instead of that, whatever our requirement, we should be able to provide the servers and get the structure. So this is what we want to implement with such data."
"For the iPhone, the device diagram cannot be downloaded. You have to go to each device and download the device diagram for that device. E.g., suppose there are a 1000 or 2000 servers. You cannot go to each server or device to download a device diagram for each device. There should be a one-click solution for downloading all device diagrams."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Device42 is a main part of our processes. We need reliability, not only in terms of the data but with the solution itself. It's really difficult when we have 10 minutes of Device42 downtime because none of our teams can work for those 10 minutes, and it's more time lost if there is longer downtime. An improvement would be to have a cluster implementation of Device42 to have high-availability and ensure that we don't have downtime in case of failure."
"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."
"It was hard to know which assets I'd already looked at because if I looked up another asset with a similar name, they would still pop up. I would have to make sure I was looking at the right asset. The search function should be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's not a cheap product. But the benefits it delivers is that it's a fair price."
"The price was fair compared to competitors. BMC is very affordable. There are optional consulting services to assist with implementation."
"I've heard that the solution was expensive earlier but is now much cheaper than its competitors."
"We are on a three-year agreement with BMC Helix Discovery to use the solution. There are not any additional fees other than the standard license."
"Operating cost is actually high compared to other products, actually. It's a little expensive only, but it's very good than other products."
"The solution offers yearly licenses."
"The licensing fee is very low."
"BMC is available for a reasonable price compared to ServiceNow — it's half the price."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
8%
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 Business11
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise13
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise13
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about BMC Helix Discovery?
I like the artificial intelligence and machine learning that it uses in the solution. Because once the solution discovers all the assets, all the infrastructure, and all the dependencies between se...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BMC Helix Discovery?
That's always a million dollar question regarding whether the solution is affordable or quite expensive; if you talk to the vendor, the pricing's great, but end users are always looking for a bette...
What needs improvement with BMC Helix Discovery?
Technical support from BMC is generally good. Resolutiion time is what's bothering me, as it's not always easy to get to the correct person or the right technical level needed to resolve the issue.
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

Discovery, ADDM, Atrium Discovery & Dependency Mapping
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Windstream Communications, News UK, Mercator Group, Wageningen University and Research Centre (WUR)
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 Discovery vs. Device42 and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
872,029 professionals have used our research since 2012.