BMC Helix ITSM Reviews

I'm a service management specialist and I'm in partnership with BMC.

I like the digital workplace, it's an appealing feature for me. 

One of the issues with the solution is the requirement to provide a lot of information in order to log a request. I'm not talking about end users, technicians or engineers need to provide too much information to initiate a work order or an incident. It doesn't flow; access should require minimal effort. They should consider using ITIL principles and not just IT. 

The initial setup required an engineer for configuration, to load data on the system. The datasheet form isn't user friendly, a client wouldn't be able to fill it in, a tech savvy person is required.

I like the tools BMC offers but it's very expensive.  The pricing model needs to be revisited.

BMC is definitely not for small businesses, especially those in Africa, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. It's difficult to get small businesses onto BMC because of the cost. For functionality, I would give this solution an eight out of 10 but I have a serious problem with the pricing and that brings my rating down to a six.

Helix ITSM has several great features. One of them is the chatbot — the artificial intelligence solution that BMC has. Secondly, Digital Workplace Advanced is important for the end-users — it provides great flexibility. Also, the end-users can manage all requirements and all of the information that they need related to IT services. The chatbots are also integrated with this. The workflow solution is another great feature for the end-users, as part of the engine. It has the power to automatize several different tasks in the ITSM world.

In fact, BMC had a business workflow — this is a solution that is out of the ITSM environment. This solution helps you solve business-related problems. You can automatize a lot of activities related to human resources, finances, production, and so on. It's very useful, it's another feature to emphasize. The presence of BMC in the market of ITSM has been around for more than 20 years. The maturity of ITSM processes has been very good. I think it's excellent. In fact, over the past several years, BMC has begun changing the idea of interfaces for end-users, users of ITSM, and IT people.

Nowadays, the interface is very modern, clear, and practical. It's very easy to use. The user interface is one of the best features. Also, it has a very advanced model of reporting. It's very powerful when it comes to managing metrics, in order to manage APIs. This process is constantly improving. In this arena, I think BMC has very good solutions.

Some parts of the solution are using the old interface — the contracts and contract management part of the solution. It needs to mature a little further in order to become more user-friendly. BMC has been a leader for several years now. In fact, it's a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant, along with ServiceNow. I believe BMC is actually on par with ServiceNow in terms of critical capabilities. For this reason, I don't see many areas for improvement.

BMC not only has ITSM solutions, but it also has solutions for asset management — they are really powerful. Discovery, for instance, is a very good solution. It complements ITSM because it's autodiscovery. It's very powerful in terms of discovering all assets connected to the network and the cloud. This capability not only shows all of your infrastructures and relationships in mass, but the connection with CMDB is very strong. It takes all of the information that has already been discovered and transfers it to CMDB. From an ITSM perspective, you can manage your CMDB and the construction of different services more efficiently because all of the information is updated and the relationships between assets are clear. 

When you have to use ITSM processes, you can assign incidents, requests, or changes for the right assets. For instance, in the case of a change in management, you can perform a very efficient impact analysis. This is another reason why Discovery is a very good complement to the ITSM solution. Of course, I am mentioning this as a complement to the ITSM environment, but all the solutions are related and work together very efficiently.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give BMC Helix ITSM a rating of eight.

Its integration and development capacity. Its ease of use and implementation, assuming you have hired the right kind of resources for that.

It’s a perfect tool to track any kind of event or service. Developing workflow within this application is quick (again with the right resources) and for the most part I have experienced trouble free runs with this product in live environments.

As a developer and a architect, there is very little I might feel a need for to do what I need to do for 99% of the cases. I may wish however for this product to mature a little more on the web front-end which I believe it has on version 9 which I am yet to be exposed to. Also, I would wish for it to remove a limitation I came across with in the past (2 versions ago) on web services on some constructs that the Remedy Web service engine does not handle all too well without modifying the WSDL itself.

Over 17 years ever since it was Remedy Corporation right though its acquisition by Peregrine and then BMC Software.

We had no issues with the deployment.

We have had no issues with the stability.

We have had no issues with the scalability.

Customer Service could use some improvement – while they are technically very good, some of the agents have poorer communication skills than others.

I have seen other solutions like ServiceNow which is cheaper than Remedy, but I did not feel that it had the same robust capabilities as the BMC Remedy product.

It's straightforward for someone who knows what he or she is doing.

I have implemented this product at multiple sites.

Remedy has third-party vendor products, some of them even free that can help you manage licensing costs through usage monitoring.

It might cost a few more bucks than its competitors like ServiceNow, but it certainly has a better technological edge over ServiceNow. I have heard of some shops that moved from Remedy to ServiceNow to take advantage of ServiceNow's smaller TCO, but then had several issues and problems with being able to successfully implement and use ServiceNow exactly how they would have wished to use it. Remedy has a motto of your business your way which is very fitting since that is exactly what it gives you.

In recent releases they introduced OOTB email tickets creation. In the older version we needed to write a lot of code for this.

CMDB & Asset management is very helpful in locating an asset. Also, the CI viewer helps in good impact analysis for a CR. Bmc SIM gives a good model too.

The SRM module is still pretty complex, this needs some improvement in AIF creation and configuration. Process designer needs some good video demos and documentation.

I have been working on this product for the last 10+ years.

During code deployment the Ar Server sometimes leaks a lot of memory which needs a regular restart.

Stability is as good as your defined architecture which is decided by load.

Horizontal scalability at AR server level and at mid tier level is very good.

Technical support has improved compared to six or seven years ago. Customers are happy.

The set-up is pretty easy.

Most of my implementations were done through an house team.

Get floating licenses if your user base is going to be big.

I evaluated ServiceNow as an alternative solution. Many customers wanted a new tool to evaluate because they have a very old version of Remedy and upgrading is complex because too much customization is needed. Also, ServiceNow has a very good SAAS/PAAS solution.

Keep a balance between your ITIL processes and the tool. Don't break the costly product just to incorporate your old legacy process. When implementing it, you should avoid customising it too much, having complex SRM AIF forms. You should also ensure you don't have a customised approval process and having too much data in the CMDB.

• Logging of incidents
• Work orders
• Purchase orders and change requests

We use this to track all future development requests from our end users.

Provides a clean front-end for our users to log requests and has rich ITSM functionality.

MyIT application for logging and following up of requests. It is much more functional than the old SRM request application. 

The Approval Central system needs to be refreshed. 

It would also be beneficial if there was a text-based editor for the workflow rules instead of using the developer studio, which adds a lot of time when developing quick solutions to problems.

No issues.

No issues. 

Customer support is always fantastic and willing to help. No matter what time of day we have a problem. We always get a friendly, helpful support engineer to guide us through any small challenges that we face.

HEAT. We changed due to the rich functionality offered by BMC Software.

Initial, out-the-box setup was easy with no problems. The gathering of business data to import into the system was more complex.

At first, we used a vendor and then moved it in-house.

Not sure at this moment, as we have not been asked to provide that to the business.

Yes, FrontRange by HEAT.

Look at cloud-based hosting to a provide a stable, easily expandable solution. We found on-premise did have a few challenges.

With a proper well laid out project plan and some good developers, this solution is able to meet any requirements that your organization may have.

I am an administrator and developer of BMC Remedy ITSM Suite. I create service requests, templates, and do day-to-day admin duties. I also create customizations due to requests or business needs.

We were using outdated applications and spreadsheets. Now, with service requests, we have been able to give visibility to the business users.

Service Request Management was the first big win for our company. We are currently implementing Change Management and look forward to seeing more benefits.

Smart Reporting was added, then was purchased from another vendor. We have little ability to customize and correct issues due to this. 

I would also love to see consistency across all consoles.

Flexibility in development and the capacity of being used by so many different kind of businesses are the most valuable features for us.

It enhances the implementation of process between teams in a central way, and if that is not possible it makes the integration with other applications easily.

There is a lack of features to help the support team in supporting this application. Anything that help to understand the workflow would be very appreciated. Having a "big picture" of a solution is a great way to solve any issue. Something that allows the "navigation" in the workflow (step-by-step), would be fantastic.

We've used Remedy for 17 years and five years for ITSM.

There were no issues with the deployment

It has a problem with the memory management. It's the biggest problem from my point of view.

It has a problem with the memory management. It's the biggest problem from my point of view.

3/10 - customer service is very painful. It takes a lot of time to pass the issue to the technical support and until that happens, the issue jumps between the people in support, that ask us always the some things.

The technical service is OK.

I have always worked with this product, but the company where I work, has a lot of others products similar to this one, and along the years are converting for this one. So, for me, this is evidence of the quality of the product.

For the needs that my company have the structure is complex, and so the setup is a little complex to, but if you only need one server, the setup is straightforward.

In the many years I have experienced both situations. My advice is to have a vendor team so they can validate everything in the setup.

Very dificult to talk about ROI in financial terms. Taking into account that the main concern is to choose the best delivery for a service, we are very happy with this product, and the feeling is that it pays for it self.

The final product has an installation with many modules, so choose carefully according to what your needs are. If you have something simple and if you know how to develop, the price of getting this product will decrease a lot.

BMC products have been built over the years to make them highly stable and scalable, inline with the ITIL best practice.

The best part about these products is that it can be easily twisted and tweaked without compromising any of the underlining fundamental components, adding immense value to customers, vendors and partners.

BMC Software provides ETL tools that support seamless integration and data load activities, reducing the timelines to deliver.

ETL tools have helped automating the foundation data, CI and SLM data load process significantly reducing daily manual task.

SRM helped fast track On-boarding of Employees and fulfilment of user request.
BMC Remedy on-demand framework is highly scalable to support on boarding of more than 400 Customers at a time.

BMC Remedy applications like IM, PM, CM, AM are extremely robust and are fundamental to provide support for IT infrastructure.

Did come across few hiccups around some product documentation not available or not very useful or not enough support available or may be a utility not working as desired, however, these were not show stoppers and we managed to work our way around these. I will recommend good fall back in terms of very well documented products and utilities, and strong technical support.

At times, some consoles, forms are loaded with too much information and for the user it can get confusing, suggest take "Less is more" approach and make them intuitive and easy to use.

I have been implementing, customizing and integrating BMC products for the past 10 years.

Deployment issues have been encountered like compatibility issues of ITSM and SLM. Similarly issues of installing Analytics with BO on Red hat Linux platform.

BMC products are quite stable.

BMC products are quite scalable.

Customer service and technical support is exceptionally good in some cases and will certainly need improvements in some areas of concern. For ex. When we were trying to resolve issues regarding installation of BO on Red Hat, support from third party Vendor was very poor, and Customer was really concerned about the progress of installation.

None other than BMC remedy.

Initial setup is quite straightforward. You follow all the steps recommended and voila, you system is ready for use.

We had an in-house team for implementation.

For any project to be successful, everything should be meticulously planned and executed. Communication and collaboration with all the stakeholders is essential. Requirements and scope should be well defined and documented. Solution design should be optimal. One needs a great team with appropriate skill set for implementation. Check points should be well defined and system should be thoroughly tested before handing it over to the Customer. Post deployment support and documentation are important for smooth transition.