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BMC Helix Discovery vs IBM Maximo 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 Discovery
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
IT Asset Management (4th)
IBM Maximo
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) (1st), Billing Software (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

BMC Helix Discovery and IBM Maximo aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. BMC Helix Discovery is designed for IT Asset Management and holds a mindshare of 5.3%, down 8.9% compared to last year.
IBM Maximo, on the other hand, focuses on Enterprise Asset Management (EAM), holds 16.0% mindshare, down 27.4% since last year.
IT Asset Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
BMC Helix Discovery5.3%
ServiceNow14.6%
Lansweeper7.3%
Other72.8%
IT Asset Management
Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM Maximo16.0%
Oracle Enterprise Asset Management7.8%
IFS Cloud Platform7.4%
Other68.8%
Enterprise Asset Management (EAM)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2729955 - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems Integration Specialist Advisor at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Flexible data discovery has streamlined processes and enhances efficiency
The best aspect of BMC Helix Discovery is its flexibility. You can perform scanning at any time, and it provides substantial data for extraction. If there is data it doesn't extract and you understand TPL, you can write your own patterns to pull the data out of it, making it very powerful from that standpoint. The query language is somewhat challenging to learn as it uses a Berkeley database. However, it has an excellent query building tool, and they have recently released a new visually-based version, which is very beneficial. Extracting data is straightforward through writing queries, running them, and pulling reports. The scanning process and credential setup are also easily manageable. Overall, it is an excellent tool.
reviewer2796087 - PeerSpot reviewer
Développement Fullstack at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Asset workflows have become highly customizable and have delivered significant downtime savings
IBM Maximo can be improved by providing developers with more documentation. I think IBM lacks a lot of documentation and hopefully the community who uses IBM Maximo can help if other developers have questions, but we really need official documentation because what is available on the internet is not official and we don't have strong documentation from IBM. I would also note that around usability, we see some lack of real custom needs in the applications of IBM Maximo Mobile. For example, in applications such as inspections, we cannot really sort by specific field and the search or filtering methods are not very clear, making it difficult to easily find what we are looking for.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is a stable solution. The stability is okay."
"BMC Helix Discovery has delivered a very good return, and we cannot stop using it at this moment."
"It provides comprehensive dependency mapping, which is essential for reducing the time spent and addressing problem-solving between data centers."
"The ability of BMC Helix Discovery to save time and money for customers is all about resolution times and first fixes, linking heavily to the CMDB and ensuring that you have good clean data."
"BMC Helix Discovery is very intuitive."
"The initial setup was quite easy."
"I've used other discovery tools, but I found BMC Helix Discovery to be more UI-friendly, and that's the most valuable feature of the solution."
"The solution's most valuable feature is service modeling."
"They have a real strength of tracking the asset itself along with the condition of the asset, the maintenance of the asset and who has access to the asset, etc."
"There are not many enterprise asset management systems on the market and not many that have the categories that IBM Maximo has."
"The incident management feature is good because it allows you to keep track of and classify issues."
"IBM Maximo is the best software for assets management."
"The most valuable features of IBM Maximo are the overall power and interface, and there are a lot of different modules that we use that are helpful. Additionally, it's an integrated solution and it has a lot of capabilities."
"The ability to configure and integrate it with other solutions for ERP."
"We were able to scale perfectly.​"
"We were doing all kinds of paperwork for every type of order and to maintain our assets but with the use of the IBM Maximo application, we can automate a lot of the processes."
 

Cons

"It would be nice to see more updates to the solution."
"An area that can be improved is the IoT."
"The license model could be more flexible and cheaper pricing."
"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."
"I would like to see a lower price and better technical support."
"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."
"BMC is agentless discovery, followed by hybrid discovery, which performs discovery across clouds, on-premises, and then dynamic service modeling."
"IBM is a big company and they have a lot of products. Level One, the first level of tech support, is the one that is used to stop the tsunami. For everyone, it's always work to get past that."
"The solution is not stable. We can have one day when it is stable and another day it is not. Sometimes it crashes or becomes very slow, and there are times we are not even able to download all the databases. Without the database, we cannot work on that application. These are the small glitches, and stability issues we are facing."
"It's not user-friendly. It could use shortcuts for frequently requested services."
"There are always ways to improve and make things better."
"It's quite reliable, but new versions often are not too stable. They bring in enhancements but they break other stuff."
"Revision management of file attachments."
"The pricing model of the solution has room for improvement as well as the after-sales support."
"It was very slow due to the lagging issues. So that was kind of frustrating, considering how slow it was while functioning."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have a perpetual license for the solution."
"I rate the pricing an eight out of ten. All BMC products are expensive."
"BMC is available for a reasonable price compared to ServiceNow — it's half the price."
"I've heard that the solution was expensive earlier but is now much cheaper than its competitors."
"You need a license to use BMC Helix Discovery. The license is paid yearly, though I have no idea how much it costs."
"The licensing fee is very low."
"It's not a cheap product. But the benefits it delivers is that it's a fair price."
"The licenses are very complex and quite costly."
"The concurrent user license is much more effective in management and cost-wise, as it is more suitable for maintenance management."
"Explore the possibility of using DB2. You will avoid the cost of SQL Server or Oracle licenses."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is low and ten is high, I rate the pricing a nine. The price is very high."
"IBM has changed the licensing policy. As I understand now, they are going from a complex way of licensing to a more simple way of licensing."
"$USD700 per agent user."
"I do not know about the price of the solution. However, this has been an expensive project overall."
"​Explore internal processes in order to evaluate the correct number of users in each Maximo module, then evaluate the different offers of pricing and licensing.​"
"You pay for what you get. There are lots of options depending on how you would like to implement Maximo."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Government
12%
Energy/Utilities Company
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

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 Business15
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise19
 

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 IBM Maximo?
IBM Maximo could be improved if they added a comprehensive finance module, as that would make it a more complete standalone application. Currently, if you need specific finance software, you need t...
What is your primary use case for IBM Maximo?
My main use case for IBM Maximo is managing maintenance. I used it first as an end user, and later joined the implementation team. Now I'm administrating and implementing IBM Maximo. The transition...
What advice do you have for others considering IBM Maximo?
There are many good implemented functions in IBM Maximo, but I see these two functions as the most valuable ones from my point of view. My advice to others considering IBM Maximo is that top manage...
 

Also Known As

Discovery, ADDM, Atrium Discovery & Dependency Mapping
Maximo
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Windstream Communications, News UK, Mercator Group, Wageningen University and Research Centre (WUR)
Royal Boskalis Westminster N.V., DTE Energy, Swedish Match, Projetech, Fingrid, East Coast
Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow, Lansweeper, Qualys and others in IT Asset Management. Updated: December 2025.
881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.