We performed a comparison between Device42 and ServiceNow CMDB based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Configuration Management Databases solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The reporting part is valuable. You have classic reports, and you can also do advanced reporting. They also have the DOQL feature for queries. You can write SQL queries to get your data and create custom reports."
"The IP address tracking [is valuable]... We have a lot of different devices and some of them have many IP addresses, so keeping track of which ones are assigned where is very critical for putting new devices on the network and giving them new addresses. All of our devices are statically assigned, so if we don't keep good records then we could accidentally assign a duplicate, which would cause problems on the network."
"The topology layout is the most valuable feature."
"It has agentless discovery; you don't need to put agents on your servers. You can open one or two ports to discover all your infrastructure."
"The Insights+ component is useful for us because it does business application mapping and helps us visualize it. It saves us time because we don't have to hunt for data."
"The asset inventory is great because previously we had devices all over the place. We have been able to do multiscans to find devices that we didn't know about, which was great."
"The continuous asset discovery is good because it means not having to manually input all the small data, such as IP addresses, leases, etc. It helps and saves us a lot of time."
"The auto-discovery is brilliant. You can have it scheduled to run on a regular basis, and the infrastructure is always getting updated within the platform. I would rate the asset discovery very highly. It's very comprehensive. It covers quite a lot of different methods for doing discovery and it supports a lot of different types of hardware as well."
"We can use ServiceNow CMDB to create more tables that can provide granular information."
"ServiceNow CMDB works great for large and small businesses."
"The product's initial setup phase was simple."
"The support of the whole infrastructure is one of the main features that makes ServiceNow CMDB suitable for every type of company. It integrates with all other modules like change, business management, HR, and customer service management."
"The most valuable feature of ServiceNow CMDB is that it provides transparency and tracking of CI usage across multiple process owners or service owners."
"One of the most valuable aspects of ServiceNow CMDB is its user-friendly interface and high degree of customization at the user level."
"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."
"The centralization in general is great. You get one version of the truth when you have a CMDB because it's all centralized."
"Mapping items wasn't as intuitive as importing in Device42, so this is an area for improvement."
"Currently, if you want to ping devices, you need to log into Appliance Manager. This feature should be available on the Device42 side. You should be able to use the ping utility without logging into Appliance Manager. The features that are there in Appliance Manager should also be available on the main Device42 server so that you have more control on one screen. You don't need to switch to another portal, but it is not something critical."
"The product must provide AI features."
"If I want to delete an asset from a cabinet it does take a while. And if I'm doing it in bulk — say, for example, if we have one cabinet that has 20 servers in — if I want to remove all 20 servers, I have to do them individually, which is a bit time-consuming. If there were a way that I could just bulk-remove everything from there, that would definitely save some time."
"My biggest problem with the product is the upgrades. First, we have to do them manually and second, not this last time but the time before that, we actually had to build a new VM to deploy the solution again. We had to back it up and then restore it to the new version. That was inconvenient."
"The architecture is a bit old-fashioned. Device42 is on one server, appliance, virtual machine, or guest. We are loading more into Device42 than it can hold. Overloading Device42 with REST API calls or tasks will directly impact every aspect because the server will be too busy to answer requests."
"The dependency mapping can be quite slow sometimes, if you've got a lot of things connecting to services. It can be very slow to build up the map."
"The resources table needs a few tweaks. We've raised a feature request for this. When you click on resources, it opens up the entire CMDB or the entire data stored in Device42. If that could be customizable, it would be good. We should be allowed to add our own columns to that by writing a script or something like that. There should be an option to add or limit whatever we want."
"When running large queries within the system, it does have a tendency to bog down the system. This is something that should be improved. I would also like to see the HAM Pro module beefed up a little bit and integrated better into the SAM Pro module, which seems to be pretty much on the roadmap. Its pricing is pretty complicated and always fluctuating. Its pricing should be improved."
"ServiceNow CMDB could be easier to use. Beginners don't always understand the features. It would be helpful if ServiceNow offered more training or self-guided courses where people could learn to leverage the platform better. I've used ServiceNow for a long time, but I see new users struggling with these processes. There's a steep learning curve."
"An area for improvement in ServiceNow is the reporting because there are reporting features that would be better when done within the platform, rather than having to buy the performance analytics model. There is so much difference between the dashboarding that you can do from the platform versus what's on the performance analytics model. Some of the features currently available within performance analytics would be good to have within the platform because sometimes, customers will say that the tool is okay, but it's not enough, so you'll need to go with the performance analytics model, and that's costly."
"The initial setup can be very bad if the roadmap is not set up properly. You need a specialist to help you set up the roadmap."
"Definitely, the price needs to be lower because there are clients that I work with who cannot afford ServiceNow. I have to end up proposing alternate solutions to fit their budget."
"In general, the pain points are related to ServiceNow. There is a lack of development. ServiceNow is not a true configuration management tool. So, a lot of development is needed to get it to be the kind of tool that you would like it to be. It serves as a platform, and you only get out of it what you invest in terms of development. So, CMDB on its own isn't quite robust until you actually have a CMD project to make it robust. The same thing is there with asset management and all other parts of it. Out of the box, it's not competitive with a like-for-like application."
"The platform's stability needs improvement."
"If you select any CI, the associated applications with that CI should also be made available for users since, currently, the tool lacks such a feature."
Device42 is ranked 2nd in Configuration Management Databases with 25 reviews while ServiceNow CMDB is ranked 1st in Configuration Management Databases with 31 reviews. Device42 is rated 8.4, while ServiceNow CMDB is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Device42 writes "Good reporting and discovery capabilities, and helpful for understanding device dependencies and asset management". On the other hand, the top reviewer of ServiceNow CMDB writes "It has helped us consolidate information, improving reporting and visibility". Device42 is most compared with ServiceNow, Infoblox IPAM, JIRA Service Management, BMC Helix Discovery and NetBox.dev, whereas ServiceNow CMDB is most compared with BMC Atrium CMDB, OpenText Universal Discovery and Universal CMDB and IBM Tivoli CMDB. See our Device42 vs. ServiceNow CMDB report.
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