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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 (3rd)
IBM Maximo
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
23
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 7.4%, down 8.4% compared to last year.
IBM Maximo, on the other hand, focuses on Enterprise Asset Management (EAM), holds 24.5% mindshare, down 26.2% since last year.
IT Asset Management
Enterprise Asset Management (EAM)
 

Featured Reviews

Fairoz Gadad - PeerSpot reviewer
Effortless network component identification, provides API details, and an easy setup
We need to discover anything in the network and ensure that the discovered data is moved into the CMDB for asset management The best part is that whenever there is an outpost or any particular network, it can identify servers, routers, switches, etc. It immediately understands which component it…
Jose Pedro Muñoz - PeerSpot reviewer
A very strong and powerful tool in the market preferred by a variety of industries
I rate the technical support a seven out of ten. Three levels of support in IBM. The first one is a fixed level, while levels two and three are very good. Here, level one is not very good, as it takes time to go from level one to level two and from level two to level three. So, level one is of low capacity.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The best aspect of BMC Helix Discovery is its flexibility. You can perform scanning at any time, and it provides substantial data for extraction."
"The most valuable feature is the automated service mapping."
"BMC Helix Discovery is very intuitive."
"It is agentless, which means you don't have to install anything on all the different pieces of hardware that you are looking to discover."
"It now comes with a very flexible deployment solution, whether you want to keep it inside your data center or want to have the cloud, depending on if you're cloud forward or not."
"Weekly reports to management really make our life simple."
"The most valuable feature of BMC Helix Discovery is it operates well. It is well known and has gained recognition for its software."
"The tool's accuracy of the results we receive looks promising in general. Its values are more than 95 percent accurate compared to other clients or different tools. I would say that Discovery offers a valuable mechanism to discover information."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to correct maintenance."
"We were able to scale perfectly.​"
"I have found Work Order management the most valuable feature. Additionally, it is a very robust and powerful solution."
"It can be particularly useful for power line operations, enabling linemen in the field to gather information and send it across the country as well as different parts of the world."
"There are not many enterprise asset management systems on the market and not many that have the categories that IBM Maximo has."
"It is configurable, where you can add extra fields to screens and to the database."
"The ability to configure and integrate it with other solutions for ERP."
"Work order management and scalability enables the businesses' needs to be met."
 

Cons

"It would be nice to see more updates to the solution."
"The solution's scalability is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are needed."
"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 product is not fully automated."
"I would like to see a lower price and better technical support."
"We would like updates more often."
"The improvement I want to see is a reduction in duplicate records."
"The product falls short compared to storage discovery mechanisms offered by Tenable or ServiceNow ITOM. In the market, there are various applications available that provide different sets of features. Its drawback is that it doesn't give the database configuration customers need out of the box. Additionally, the classification of storage virtualization is relatively lacking. Therefore, there is room for improvement, particularly in the database areas."
"The standard reports that shipped with the package need to be enriched with more advanced reports, especially for the Inventory Management sections."
"IBM Maximo can improve the financial support and financial application, to make it more similar to an ERP as opposed to an EAM. Overall they can improve the financial processes."
"Initial setup is a longer process because Maximo is bigger and has more processes."
"It's quite reliable, but new versions often are not too stable. They bring in enhancements but they break other stuff."
"It was very slow due to the lagging issues. So that was kind of frustrating, considering how slow it was while functioning."
"It's not user-friendly. It could use shortcuts for frequently requested services."
"Could use some alignment regarding some standards and the tracking of the IT assets. Even though they have all of the information (i.e. where are the assets, who owns the asset, etc.), they were not mapping it to different cyber standards."
"There are always ways to improve and make things better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 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."
"You need a license to use BMC Helix Discovery. The license is paid yearly, though I have no idea how much it costs."
"The solution offers yearly licenses."
"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."
"We have a perpetual license for the solution."
"The licenses are very complex and quite costly."
"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."
"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."
"The concurrent user license is much more effective in management and cost-wise, as it is more suitable for maintenance management."
"Where available, concurrent licenses can be more cost efficient and provide more flexibility."
"I do not know about the price of the solution. However, this has been an expensive project overall."
"You pay for what you get. There are lots of options depending on how you would like to implement Maximo."
"The price of IBM Maximo could reduce, it is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Government
12%
Energy/Utilities Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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?
The price of BMC Helix Discovery is licensed by asset. It is challenging to maintain licenses, as every piece of equipment is considered a license. We pay attention to the growth of assets. The pri...
What needs improvement with BMC Helix Discovery?
The query language is somewhat challenging to learn. It uses a Berkeley database, and the query language is not easy to master for performing complex queries.
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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, BMC and others in IT Asset Management. Updated: January 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.