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BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps vs IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 3, 2025

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 Operations Manage...
Ranking in Event Monitoring
3rd
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
8.4
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
AIOps (7th)
IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manage...
Ranking in Event Monitoring
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Database Development and Management (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Event Monitoring category, the mindshare of BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps is 10.6%, down from 13.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server is 2.0%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Event Monitoring Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps10.6%
IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server2.0%
Other87.4%
Event Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Rafael  Pinto Ferreira - PeerSpot reviewer
Impressive automation capabilities, predicts problems, and even find unseen vulnerabilities across your infrastructure
The biggest challenge is ensuring the customer has sufficient ITSM maturity to get the most out of the solution. BMC Helix is very sophisticated, and some clients lack that internal process maturity. There's sometimes a gap between the solution's capabilities and the client's readiness. We have to bridge that gap, bringing the customer up to the level where they can fully use all the features and benefits. Otherwise, they're investing in a powerful tool they don't fully utilize. It's crucial for vendors like us to assess client maturity before the project starts. We need to do the consulting work to show them the solution's potential and help them evaluate if it truly makes sense. Sometimes, the client might not be ready for the way BMC does things, for that level of automation and AI. BMC's automation is like nothing I've seen. You can even deflect 30% of IT service desk tickets with an intelligent chatbot – that's a number from BMC. Imagine the reduction in human agents! It's a robot doing the work, but in a way that feels human... that's the impressive part. You can integrate with WhatsApp, Teams, etc. It's game-changing.
reviewer2317098 - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers effective monitoring of resources but lacks the ability to connect to an AWS instance and write custom queries.
We use it mainly for monitoring, including CPU, memory, and disk space, and for troubleshooting purposes We've set up alerts to notify us when performance deviates from the baseline we've configured for each resource. So, whenever that happens, we get an alert and can investigate immediately. So,…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The service operations monitoring features are valuable."
"It is evolving more and more into artificial intelligence."
"The product's initial setup phase is easy."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that BMC Helix Monitor is an agentless tool, because of which you don't need to deploy agents on each and every system in your IT environment."
"BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps' predictive analytics positively impacted proactive problem-solving capabilities. It has been the most interesting part of the solution! It provides detailed analytics that gives you a deep understanding of your infrastructure and recurring issues/problems. It really predicts the problems."
"BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps deserves a ten out of ten."
"The ability to go back and look at historical data is the most valuable feature."
"Monitors and alerts on our mission critical instances in real-time on a 24/7 basis."
"The best part of SQL DM is the ability to customize alerts and counters. This allows our team to find an issue then alert on the issue at a granular level."
"SQL DM made troubleshooting much easier and allowed multiple people to look into an issue with confidence."
"We're able to diagnose issues prior to their actually becoming issues. Without the alerting, we wouldn't have a clue as to what was going to happen. With the alerting, it gives us a heads-up that a specific threshold has been met, and we need to take specific action."
"Memory and CPU utilization features are good."
"The most valuable features are disk space projections for planning, and also the Snapshotting ability, to look back in time, to see what was going on the server at a particular time. It's basically the output of an sp_who2."
 

Cons

"The initial setup of the solution is complex."
"I feel that the tool's stability has some scope for improvement."
"The biggest challenge is ensuring the customer has sufficient ITSM maturity to get the most out of the solution. BMC Helix is very sophisticated, and some clients lack that internal process maturity."
"The solution's GUI and some patching-related information are areas with shortcomings where enhancements are needed, though I believe they are areas that fall under BMC's roadmap for the future."
"The product must provide more information and dashboards."
"We don't find that it helps us with performance monitoring and diagnostics. We find that SentryOne does that better. Also, in terms of alerts, we had to customize them dramatically so that we didn't get alerted on every little thing."
"I'm going to do an upgrade which may resolve my issues, but one area for improvement is its ability to handle the amount of data that we collect with it. We're likely one of the largest installations, with over 300 servers being collected with this product, and sometimes there are gaps. That would really be my only concern, in terms of how the data is collected and stored, for consistency."
"I would absolutely love to create customized dashboards but, unfortunately, they don't provide me the information that I need to create the report. The report I need is the detail or the transaction detail that's happening on those Snapshots. I'd like to be able to go back through time and search for things. I don't have that functionality, which is very disappointing. That's pretty bad and frustrating because I could query it and find out so much information about what's hitting my environment and when, but instead, they want control over it and to not give me that information. So it's encrypted. I can't pull it out and that is really bothersome."
"They can improve checking the status of the CPU, memory, and IO utilization from each task."
"It would helpful if SQL DM could mark when changes are made within the program."
"The initial setup gives too many user rights to the server, so you have to put a user that is part administrator's group - that's the preferred way - on each server, which is kind of a risk. You want to do least privilege and you're not doing that."
"One thing I'd like to see is the ability to view the execution plan and have the system automatically recommend potential query optimizations, especially at the query level."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"BMC solution is cheaper than ServiceNow, its main competitor. So, I'd rate the pricing a seven out of ten, with ten being expensive."
"The product’s price could be improved."
"We were upgraded to Premium Support without their actually asking us, when we were quoted. Then I asked for Standard Support and that they had to re-quote us that. But they don't do that by default. They upcharge you by default, which I didn't think was very nice, without even asking."
"The pricing is reasonable, it's comparable with the competitors."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
13%
Healthcare Company
10%
Retailer
5%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Insurance Company
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps?
BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps' predictive analytics positively impacted proactive problem-solving capabilities. It has been the most interesting part of the solution! It provides detai...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps?
The pricing is on the higher end due to the extensive features and delivery quality. However, it is worth the investment.
What needs improvement with BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps?
From my perspective as a customer, especially from tool administration, what would be beneficial is having end-to-end visibility all on a single page. This is challenging to achieve with any tool, ...
What do you like most about IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server?
The ability to go back and look at historical data is the most valuable feature.
What needs improvement with IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server?
One thing I'd like to see is the ability to view the execution plan and have the system automatically recommend potential query optimizations, especially at the query level. In future releases, I w...
What is your primary use case for IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server?
We use it mainly for monitoring, including CPU, memory, and disk space, and for troubleshooting purposes.
 

Also Known As

BMC Helix Monitor
IDERA SQL DM, IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Grupo Moura, Goodman, Aspect, Telefónica Colombia, Fujitsu
Padnos, University of Notre Dame, D4, Infeon Technologies, Chevron, LC Waikiki, Sisters of Saint Francis Health Services, Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, CVE, Colorado State University, St. Charles, Chaucer PLC, 1-800-Flowers, Ancoris, Money Management, National Opinion Research Center, California Department of Health, Plexus; Aviva, Burlington Northern Santa Fe, CBS, Comcast, Google, Merck, Regions Financial, Schneider Electric, Tata Consultancy Services, Verizon Communications, Zurich Financial Services
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps vs. IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,676 professionals have used our research since 2012.