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BMC Helix ITSM 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 ITSM
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
78
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (4th), IT Service Management (ITSM) (4th)
IBM Maximo
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) (1st), Billing Software (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

BMC Helix ITSM and IBM Maximo aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. BMC Helix ITSM is designed for IT Service Management (ITSM) and holds a mindshare of 11.1%, down 13.6% compared to last year.
IBM Maximo, on the other hand, focuses on Enterprise Asset Management (EAM), holds 28.8% mindshare, up 26.5% since last year.
IT Service Management (ITSM)
Enterprise Asset Management (EAM)
 

Featured Reviews

Fairoz Gadad - PeerSpot reviewer
Development team is quick to address bugs or shortcomings in their product
BMC's technical support team needs to improve. Right now, the problem over here is we are not getting the exact answers on time. Their engineers are mainly based in the US or Israel, and we get comprehensive dedicated support. Some of the Indian customer service representatives are also outstanding. Unfortunately, in the past six months or seven months, I've been getting brand-new engineers. Either they're not entirely aware of most cases, or they don't know how to troubleshoot further. So for any product to be stable and work correctly, BMC must ensure that customer service is excellent. Even though if your product is a hundred percent, we'll have problems marketing it to our customers.
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 versatility and customizability of the product is what I like most."
"Smart Reporting makes it easy to create/publish views for tables, so our customers can easily create their own reports."
"Resolution time has decreased significantly since implementing the self-service portal."
"This product has helped us to maintain our OLAs (Organisation level Agreements) and SLAs (Service Level Agreements) by tracking incidents, requests, problem records, and change requests, all in the form of tickets."
"Reports have helped us to improve our IT processes. The main benefit is providing the right information to our decision makers."
"BMC Smart IT is somewhat rigid, but they have a powerful backend that supports our complex need for extension versus customization. Between extension and customization, you can achieve complex business processes. That's one of the main advantages of BMC."
"It provides a good user experience."
"The ease of use and integration made it a worthwhile investment, since we did some integrations with other tools making our lives easier."
"I have found Work Order management the most valuable feature. Additionally, it is a very robust and powerful solution."
"The large range of configurability of the product is great, since everyone has a different way of doing things."
"Work order management and scalability enables the businesses' needs to be met."
"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."
"Provides great flexibility."
"The incident management feature is good because it allows you to keep track of and classify issues."
"We were able to scale perfectly.​"
"Preventive maintenance management."
 

Cons

"The interface should be more user-friendly, and the customization should be easier."
"The notifications that the solution is providing are very helpful, they should keep improving them for the future."
"Whenever you start exploring some new product features, you run into defects. It has been like this for the last six years."
"Compared to ServiceNow, BMC Remedy is somewhat "closed." I can go to the ServiceNow website and learn everything there is to know about the product, and training is available. That really wasn't available with BMC Remedy."
"Maybe it could be more simplified and easier to change the reporting point of view, like from a different vendor to another."
"The interface isn't that great."
"It takes a long-time to plan and deploy the on-premise solution."
"Support could be better."
"Vendor management needs enhancement."
"It needs full-service visibility. There are a lot of things that are hard for users to find out. For example, the Service Catalog is not too friendly. You really have to know what you're looking for."
"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."
"Revision management of file attachments."
"​Maximo is a big system, so the initial setup is complex."
"Areas for improvement would be the user interface and support for Arabic. They could also be more customer-oriented."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"While purchasing, try to negotiate on per user licensing costs, associated maintenance, and purchase 20% more then what you think you should have. Bulk is always cheaper."
"There are licenses to use this solution."
"If you are looking for some kind of professional services form the OEM then you would have to purchase that."
"BMC Helix ITSM is a very cost-effective solution."
"The cost is relatively high, especially for the BMC Controller application. However, the expense is justified by the standard and reliable features it offers. This product's reputation in the market is strong, providing assurance in terms of data and other considerations."
"BMC is a little bit cheaper than ServiceNow, but BMC doesn't have the same capabilities in its entry-level product at the moment. The basic version does not have the DWP features that most of our customers are requesting."
"If Customer and IT agents are happy, that is one of the greatest ROI. However, one of the major factors is Leadership, because at the end they have to justify the cost."
"The solution's pricing should come down."
"The concurrent user license is much more effective in management and cost-wise, as it is more suitable for maintenance management."
"The price of IBM Maximo could reduce, it is expensive."
"IBM Maximo offers a licensing application, and you have to comply with the license."
"Where available, concurrent licenses can be more cost efficient and provide more flexibility."
"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."
"Explore the possibility of using DB2. You will avoid the cost of SQL Server or Oracle licenses."
"$USD700 per agent user."
"​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.​"
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
29%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Energy/Utilities Company
9%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about BMC Helix ITSM?
If we consider major players like Ford or BMW, their core focus is manufacturing products like cars. To ensure smooth operations, any arising issues, be it security concerns or issues within depart...
What needs improvement with BMC Helix ITSM?
In User Group sessions held by BMC in India, I mentioned the challenges with vast documentation, making it difficult to find the right information quickly. The recent move to a new platform is bene...
What is your primary use case for BMC Helix ITSM?
I am currently working as a BMC Remedy developer. I have been working for over ten years on the BMC platform. My company uses BMC Helix ITSM for IT service management processes.
What do you like most about IBM Maximo?
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.
What needs improvement with IBM Maximo?
Though I liked it a lot, I think it was lagging a lot. It was very slow due to the lagging issues. So that was kind of frustrating, considering how slow it was while functioning. The aforementioned...
What is your primary use case for IBM Maximo?
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. With IBM Maximo,...
 

Also Known As

Remedy ITSM, Remedy, Helix Remedy
Maximo
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Brookfield, HealthSouth Corporation, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, Mercator, SAP, Stanford University
Royal Boskalis Westminster N.V., DTE Energy, Swedish Match, Projetech, Fingrid, East Coast
Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow, Atlassian, ManageEngine and others in IT Service Management (ITSM). Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.