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OpenText Universal Discovery and Universal CMDB vs ServiceNow CMDB comparison

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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

OpenText Universal Discover...
Ranking in Configuration Management Databases
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
ServiceNow CMDB
Ranking in Configuration Management Databases
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Configuration Management Databases category, the mindshare of OpenText Universal Discovery and Universal CMDB is 8.5%, down from 13.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow CMDB is 19.5%, down from 28.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Configuration Management Databases Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ServiceNow CMDB19.5%
OpenText Universal Discovery and Universal CMDB8.5%
Other72.0%
Configuration Management Databases
 

Featured Reviews

RakeshKumar15 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Migration & Imp Senior Analyst at Accenture
Secure with a quick setup and helpful support
Based on the latest version, there were multiple changes done. It had multiple fixes. However, it's based on the customer's requirements. They have modified and created, and released the changes according to those needs. The UI could be better. The page loading is very slow. The customer wants faster loading. Before releases, it would be nice to be able to upgrade to the new release and check it out in order to see the new functionality and what they have changed.
reviewer2782440 - PeerSpot reviewer
ServiceNow Consultant at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Automation features and integrated service mapping have streamlined incident and change management processes
There is probably room for improvement in ServiceNow CMDB. I'm so immersed in projects and solving direct customer issues that I don't think too much about potential improvements. Maintaining an accurate and up-to-date ServiceNow CMDB can be challenging due to incoming data from various sources, but ServiceNow has been developing small AI components to help with data discrepancies and deduplication recently. They have also improved integrations with other tools, providing many out-of-the-box integrations to different monitoring tools and CMDBs, which previously required coding experience for custom integrations. They are moving towards a more low-code or no-code approach, which is part of their goal as a company.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It can discover various pieces from hardware, software, custom applications, and tie them together to create a map using ASM."
"Precision, trustworthiness, reconciliation, and user-friendly presentation are the key features I value most."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the discovery, knowing what assets are on the network and the configuration of items for it."
"This product discovers, maps and reports information about our configuration on a daily basis and is capable of being our source of truth for audit purposes."
"The auto-discovery feature is great."
"It's a governance oriented tool with a very good data model."
"Micro Focus UCMDB is built for stability and is the only solution which can support up to 60 million CIs."
"The product is easy to set up."
"Their support is very good and strong."
"The product's initial setup phase was simple."
"In ServiceNow CMDB, the most valuable features are the integration with external tools to gather and store asset data."
"The centralization in general is great. You get one version of the truth when you have a CMDB because it's all centralized."
"The CMDB for us is fed by our discovery tools, and it lets us be able to track the changes that we make to any incidents or escalation points that we have associated with a CI."
"It is a dependable source of data. If I want to understand what technologies are used to deliver certain business outcomes, this is what I would use. I can know that this particular server is being used to deliver this business application or business service."
"We like that this solution allows us to easily track the relationship between our CI and the IT asset module, for troubleshooting purposes, or to check the impact of an incident site."
"We can use ServiceNow CMDB to create more tables that can provide granular information."
 

Cons

"When we work in an environment, the production environment continuously changes and at that time we should have knowledge about the new server (node). However, the auto-discovery part should automatically discover the new CI (node/servers) in an environment and inform the IT person."
"Making it simpler to set up and understand would be a big improvement."
"Can be rather expensive to implement (for smaller companies)- can be support intensive - requires a lot of project resources to push toward implementation - requires a number of people to operate- as game changing technology requires a mature IT service organization, numerous resources for project management, design, implementation, evangelization - requires serious upper echelon management backing (sponsorship)"
"Mobile/iPad Apps version of the UCMDB Browser would be a step ahead, which should have features, like viewing CI information, ownership, etc."
"You are lucky to get over the first level, then you are happy with the support."
"Some of the UI could always be improved, but that is personal taste."
"Improve the GUI and documentation."
"I think the product is so large and complex that the learning curve is long if you want to understand all aspects of what it can do."
"I don't think it's a failure of Service Now or something that they don't offer, but I haven't seen any training modules."
"The solution is scalable, however, there is some room for improvement regarding the vCenter and the Virtual Machine Center, for which we are actually struggling right now."
"The discovery process and service mapping could be improved."
"In general, the pain points are related to ServiceNow. There is a lack of development. ServiceNow is not a true configuration management tool."
"I wish we didn't have to pay for additional modules. For example, the vulnerability module is at an additional cost so that we can pull the Qualys scans and actually have automated tickets involved. If that workflow can also be part of that, it would be nice."
"There are areas that could be improved, but that's a longer discussion."
"Because I'm an SME, the most important thing is the technical help that I can get, so better, more useful technical support would be good."
"We have various service levels and SLAs for our customers like platinum, gold, etc. Each SLA has an associated hardware and computing configuration. We cannot define that in ServiceNow for each customer. For example, a customer with 100 servers might be in the platinum category while a client with 25 would be in gold."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is competitive."
"Compared with other solutions, I would say that it's more expensive especially since we have an on-premise version and an older implementation."
"It is really expensive. I don't know actually how much it costs, but in 2016, when a client decided to move from an old solution to ServiceNow and had to choose a supplier for ServiceNow, I had heard that it could cost $10 per hour, which is really expensive. I am not aware of any additional fees to the standard licensing fees. There is no standard ServiceNow solution. When a company wants to acquire ServiceNow, they already know which module they will choose. In a basic package, you would have Service Catalog, Incident Management, and Change Management. These modules are usually required in an IT company."
"It is always fluctuating. It seems to change every six months. Every time they come out with a new iteration, it changes. It is pretty complicated, and they should improve it."
"The product price falls on the higher side of the spectrum."
"The market sees ServiceNow as the Ferrari in terms of pricing. It's at the very top, and its cost is very, very high."
"The product is pricey."
"In comparison to the cost of other solutions, you get value for your money with ServiceNow CMDB. It could definitely be cheaper though."
"I would like it to be cheaper. If you've got a large environment, it can get quite expensive quite quickly. You still get a return on investment, but everybody has a tight budget. In terms of licensing, everything is pretty much known upfront. Being SaaS-based, there are no real additional gotchas that we came across."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Outsourcing Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Large Enterprise9
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise23
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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What needs improvement with ServiceNow CMDB?
I believe that related to the solutions in the Now Assist platform, we can put more autonomy on that. Some reconciliation can be automated. AI Assist is the current improvement now. I don't have an...
What is your primary use case for ServiceNow CMDB?
I primarily work with ITSM, HR, SPM, AI, Now Assist, CMDB, and CSDM modules, covering almost all of these areas. I use the integration with ServiceNow CMDB with all the processes that we have imple...
What advice do you have for others considering ServiceNow CMDB?
I help customers evaluate their CMDB health. We use the CMDB health to make that analysis, to see the relationships, what is missing with the processes they have, and any mis-ownership issues. So, ...
 

Also Known As

Micro Focus Universal Discovery and Universal CMDB, Micro Focus Universal CMDB, UCMDB, HPE Universal CMDB
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

China Merchants Bank, NNIT, Alfa-Bank, Sprint
Wayfair, Siemens, Allianz, Experian, Vitas Healthcare
Find out what your peers are saying about OpenText Universal Discovery and Universal CMDB vs. ServiceNow CMDB and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
921,338 professionals have used our research since 2012.