OpenText Service Manager Reviews

The workflow engine that standardizes and globalizes the process steps. It drives people through the process by standardization and automation.

Let's take request fulfillment. You are assuming the use of an iPhone or a notebook in the past. People sent around a lot of emails to somehow organize. The notebook gets ordered, delivered, installed, and so on. This is now completely organized and standardized in one workflow. And people work on one ticket. There's full transparency and there's no confusion anymore. Time to market is much faster and the email traffic is less. So, it's much better than before.

There's a lot of manual work, which is error prone and time consuming, in how the code gets transported from one system to the other. This consumes a lot of my resources that have to be available for that. So wish that it could transport much better. Which goes into the direction of DevOps and the other things that need support. Support is the real issue.

I have seen a lot of features on the road map, which will increase my rating. But my assumption would have been that, by now, we would at least half way on the road, from the features that we have been presented with until now. They should have made most of these improvements earlier. And we have permanent discussions where we compare with products like Service Now and HPE is not there.

We have just implemented Asset Manager and it seems, from an operational perspective, to be much easier. We need to use less resources in the administration, compared to Service Manager. Asset Manager looks like it's going to be a stronger product.

It runs stable. There's really no question around it. We have no issues with the stability of the system.

So far, we haven't had any issues with scalability. We have about 35,000 users. There was one issue during the upgrade, but this was fixed. In general, it's a stable system.

In general, we were not satisfied with technical support. We needed to escalate. We currently have escalation with the highest HPE management, because the support around the suite is not good, especially first level support. When you call the first level hotline, there is lot of lost time, because many questions get asked twice. And they ask simple questions. We are a big customer and at the first level they don’t even know which systems we have in use. That's really unsatisfying.

When looking for a new product, check how the user interface looks. That was the mistake that we made. We underestimated the acceptance of the end user community of the interface. And we currently use the Service Request Catalog for HPE Service Manager, which is really bad. We had big acceptance issues with our user community on that product.

The other issue is how the administration of the tool works and how many resources you really need to administrate it, to keep it running, and to keep it alive. That's something that shouldn't be underestimated.

Check how much configuration customization you can do in the system without impacting the upgrade path and increasing the upgrade effort for the system.

The product is completely integrated for our company, so it simplifies a lot. Also valuable is the ability to customize the tools, and learn to follow our process.

It is not so simple for the company. Basically, we are obliged to have an organization in order to do some development. We have a stronger requirement for our business to follow their process and the other very complex extra processes. For example, for change management, we have a very complex process, also due to all the regulators.

For me, it's a lot to follow. Previously, it was a lot to simplify the IT system. Before implementing HP service management, we had more than 10 different tools. One of the benefits was to simplify our architecture and significantly reduce the cost.

For me, we need integration with big data. I think it will be with the new version. We have to see it to be able to analyze more. In fact, we are able to look at data; but, in the end, we are currently not able to manage it. I think the new version will be much better when we have the view of big data.

It's not so easy to move to the next version. It's not quick to upgrade. It's a significant project for us.

It is becoming more and more stable. We are currently in version 9.43.

It has met our scalability requirements.

Technical support is absolutely very good.

I wasn’t involved at the very beginning of the project, but I was there just after the whole effect. It's not a technical project. It's much more of an enterprise project.

We looked into some competitors, including ServiceNow. One branch of our company bought ServiceNow. We are in an internal competition.

We chose HPE because it's a large company. We are also a business with other lines of business. It was very helpful to know that it was not only useful for that one project.

Keep it simple. Do not do a lot of customization. Keep the implementation of the tool simple.

It has features such as integration with Skype for Business, smart analytics, and smart ticketing. It integrates with our current proprietary system. It's provides end users with a single interface for multiple types of communication. This is how it is helping.

As a whole, it helps us to improve and automate workflows to make sure they provide the minimum guaranteed level of service, quality of service, and so on.

It's not the best trouble ticket system. We would like to have Skype for Business integration fail-over with our cluster-based solution. There are other enhancements we are waiting for and we are in touch with HPE support regarding them.

We are looking for a tool that is certified with Gartner. HPE is not the best tool for this. ServiceNow is better. We want to have more features, cloud-based solutions, and more enhancements regarding the digital service system.

Although we have never seen ServiceNow, it's been certified by Gartner, the certifying authority, so they have something that HPE doesn’t. HPE is now the third or fourth choice. It used to be second choice. So they need to be more competitive with the others and come up with better features.

We have not seen much improvement in the analytics reports interface, so that would be welcome.

Stability is quite good.

The solution is widely scalable.

Technical support is average. It takes too much time to resolve issues in relation to the competency of the technical support engineers. Every issue is elevated to the lab level. Maybe we are more competent than the HPE support or they lack knowledge. We do everything we can to identify issues and we pass them to the HPE support engineers. They ask the basic questions and then it takes 2-3 weeks for him to understand the issue. Then they escalate it to the lab and he will say that he is waiting for the lab. This is bad support.

We started 13 years ago with the original HPE Service Desk. Now, it's not an original HPE solution; HPE took over Peregrine Systems. So that’s what we use, for better or worse. But, it's quite customizable.

It's not like we just choose a solution. We follow the HPE roadmap. Whatever they deliver, we end up with it and implement it. There are times when we keep asking for some advanced features and it's a matter of time waiting for new releases. They are not that very agile incorporating the changes. They take a long time.

The setup process is very well documented. It is straightforward.

HPE also has a cloud-based solution called Service Anywhere, but we are not sure how it works. Is the functionality the same and just the platform changed, or is the functionality different in the cloud-based solution? They are also looking at the road map for Remedy. But we would rather they improve HPE Service Manager.

The GUI interface portion of it is easy to use but when I have to revert to the non-GUI portion, it's very slow. It's very cumbersome.

We use it for the change management tool. All of our ticketing for the help desk, things like that, are put through the tool. You can call up the record on the issues that you have and report on it in Service Manager. They send the tickets to the appropriate departments who can resolve the issues.

Room for improvement is the speed with which you're able to access it and where it isn't as slow and draggy. It is really draggy.

Stability is great.

There's no problems there.

I've never had to contact them.

I didn't have a decision in that. That was made by the change management organization. They wanted to switch. They wanted something that could be interfaced with mobile phones that could send the approval notifications to the mobile phones or so the IM tickets could be sent to the mobile phones. I get them on my phone now. So that I can respond to those is it's an emergency and I can take care of them right away and I don't have to wait till I get back to the office or to a PC. I think that had a large interface in why they bought the product.

The GUI interface portion was very straightforward. The few little glitchy things that you had to figure out. But other than that it was very easy to use. On the non-GUI portion it's a little more cumbersome and complicated.

The interface is good, I like it. It's easy to use. It's intuitive and it does go to the mobile app for verification and approvals and it's easy to use on the mobile app. Just make sure that the PCs that are going to run the non-graphic interface have a fast processor because if they don't it's very time consuming to use.

Process Designer allows us to make modifications to certain attributes with the confidence that they will be forward compatible with new versions.

Improved rigor around Change Management workflows has led to increased operational stability. In turn, this means fewer High Severity Incidents, which is another Key Performance Indicator for us.

Authentication needs to natively support multiple AD forests, since this is typically an enterprise tool with global users.

HP iterations - over 10 years

SM 9.3.3 - since Dec 2014

Yes. Upon initial deployment, we did not correctly set up the license containers, which resulted in our floating licenses being active in the system but not available. The issue took some time to identify and fix, resulting in a false start in production.

Yes. In addition to the fat client used by system administrators and support, we rolled out a web client for the general user base. Load balancers were not delivered in Phase 1 (time/cost constraints), and that caused negative user experiences.

Not so far, but our user model to date has been relatively consistent. Growth in recent years has been driven outside of North America, meaning we have substantially more users and traffic, but it is spread over 24 hours.

Our customer-vendor relationship is solid. We get the responses we need to stay productive. From a product perspective, we would like to get more traction of shaping the enhancements in future releases. A large part of that is ensuring we stay current.

From a professional service perspective, it's excellent. We partner with HP to support the entire application suite. Anything they cannot resolve is escalated to product support.

Prior to SM 9.3.3, we had various iterations of SC (most recently 6.2.7) for approximately 10 years. Before that, we had a series of internal processes in place.

Our approach was to install the entire suite globally at one time. This was aggressive and complex, but in hindsight the right choice. There were a great deal of challenges with user adoption, but delivering everything at once eliminated a lot of potential data issues and future integrations/conversions.

Implementation was via vendor engagement for the core team, partnering with our dedicated HP support team (we outsourced support in 2011). Their expertise is solid, and, of course, should they run into challenges, they have direct access to HP product at their fingertips.

The true benefit of HP Service Manager is beyond the modules in the basic package. Leveraging Universal Discovery to create a concrete foundation in the uCMDB allows processes to deliver maximum value.

Like anything else, shop around. The beauty of HP's model is the concurrent licensing that they offer. This allows you to build a common foundation for a large audience without feeling every single seat needs to be justified.

Yes. Starting with industry evaluations such as Gartner, we shortlisted three vendors (HP, BMC & SNOW), who came in with proposals around product, pricing, deployment, etc. HP won out based on a combination of factors.

I think it's fair to say it is a workhorse. It's extremely reliable, relatively cost effective, scalable, and has good existing integration points.

I mainly use Service Manager to log tickets, receive calls from end-users, and monitor our daily operations. I also use it to record all incident requests and for our self-service catalog.

Service Manager's best features are flexibility and customizability. For example, we can customize reports and dashboards and integrate with third-party systems. 

Service Manager would be improved with access to automation.

I've been using Service Manager for twenty-two years. 

Service Manager is very stable.

Service Manager is scalable.

Micro Focus's technical support is the best - once we send in a request or revision, we get an immediate response and are informed of any delay.

I previously used Remedy.

The initial setup was complex, and installation took two months.

We used a vendor team, as their expertise is required to complete the implementation correctly.

I pay for Service Manager on a yearly basis, and the price is reasonable - I would rate it five out of ten.

I would recommend Service Manager to other users, and I'd rate it seven out of ten.

Micro Focus Service Manager is fine. It's a good solution for small accounts with minimal reporting. Micro Focus is a good option because you don't have to worry about the budget.

Micro Focus Service Manager is not very great. It would be better if it had more features. When it comes to features, BMC tops the chart. When it comes to usage, people use BMC more. 

I have been using Micro Focus Service Manager for a few years.

Micro Focus Service Manager is a stable solution.

Micro Focus Service Manager is scalable up to a certain point.

Technical support is okay.

The initial setup is straightforward, and it took us about two to three months to implement this solution.

Micro Focus Service Manager is a little cheaper than other options. You have to pay a monthly subscription fee.

Compared to BMC, Micro Focus Service Manager is coming out a little cheaper.

I don't think I will recommend  Micro Focus Service Manager to potential users. But if the customer wants it and it fits the requirement, then it's okay to go ahead with it.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Micro Focus Service Manager an eight.

We can have all our requests and incidents registered in one system. We have about 250 employees in the IT department and we have one system. We don't have to email each other and we are sitting in a geographically large company, in many departments and in many hospitals. So it's great that we just have one system and we don't have to call or drive to each other. That's the most important thing.

Some years ago we were three departments and now we're just one department for the whole region. And we have different systems, so we can't communicate. With one system you have to write emails and stuff. When I make a request it's immediately reaches our technicians, so it's great.

The greatest issue for us is to understand the roadmap. We want to know whether we should upgrade now or should we wait three months. Which version should we install? It's not the project, but it's the plan for the project. So we went to a recent conference to find out because we want to know which way we should go.

After we upgraded stability is good. But with our last version it was not very good. We had lags and it was performing slowly. We tried different solutions, upgrade servers, and databases, but the performance was not very good. Then we upgraded and we haven't had those problems since. Also, previously we had the client/server system, but now we only have web clients. That also may be an explanation of the improvement in stability and performance.

We are a big company, but we also have small departments in the hospitals who have this system as well. So it is scalable.

We have a partner to HPE helping us and we also have Premium support technicians that we work with all the time and we use them a lot. The support is good. We can have help any time, so it's good.

I was in the project from the beginning. Some of the problems are from our company because they don't always decide what way we want to go. Our company wants to go one direction, and when we start they sometimes change the direction and it will complicate the solution. Sometimes, it's our own fault.
But, for the product itself, the setup is straightforward, with some issues. Sometimes the logical database structure and tables is not very easy to understand. So we need to have some help with that. It seems like it's old tradition from the old versions, going up the system. It's hard to see the logical structure of the tables.

We looked at Service Now two years ago. We stayed with HPE over Service Now because we have a suite of HPE products. We think it's easier to make the integrations into one.

We heard some other customers in Denmark have the back end as Service Manager and the front end as Service Now, as a portal to Service Manager. I don't know if it's easier to deploy in Service Manager, so I don't know. But I know some Danish companies have done it.