We evaluated two or three other options on the market. At the time, we chose Device42 because of its effectiveness in actually discovering the infrastructure. The second reason was the cost and the third was its ease of use.

We looked at RackTables, OpenDCIM, and we looked at another one from BMC and, for asset management, we looked at ServiceNow.

Our IT lead evaluated this.

We evaluated a few other tools, even open source tools. Big pluses for Device42 were the price was clear and the features received. 

The problem with using other vendor, like BMC, is the pricing. The price is so horrible and nobody wants to pay this money.

We've looked at a few different products. One of them was called Sunbird and there was something by HPE that we might have looked at a long time ago.

Sunbird did not have a full web interface for the solution, so you had to have desktop software. Quite honestly, I wasn't interested in desktop software. I wanted something that I could hit with either my computer or my tablet, or even my phone for that matter, and still be able to get at our information.

I believe that they evaluated one or two other options.

We also evaluated Microsoft Mover, but it was not approved by our management.

I haven't used another solution with customers.

I've used NetBox, MyIP, and RackTables. I've used quite a bunch of these other tools out there, and honestly, Device42 is the best. The others don't compare to it. It is so much better.

I, myself, and people in roles up to the VP, looked at a whole bunch of options, ones that they've used in the past. Together, we came to the conclusion that, for pretty much any commercial company — and this is really the takeaway — that would rather focus on making money than spending a whole bunch of time fiddling with different databases, different underlying hardware; any company that wants an app that will get up and running, the very best thing to do is to get Device42.

We evaluated KiwiTech, but only for IPAM. We also checked out some free tools.

The main advantage of Device42 was the ability to have IPAM and another solution in the same tool. The rest of the vendors had different tools for different purposes. There were different KiwiTech tools for IPAM and for hardware inventory. It's not easy to administrate four or five tools. It's easier to administrate only one tool. This was an important advantage for us. Also, the discovery process was very easy with Device42 and more complex in the other tools.

Before Device42 we trialed dcTrack for a little bit, but it was over-complicated in terms of usability. You would really need to do a training course on how to use it properly, whereas Device42 is a lot more user-friendly. So we ended up going with Device42 because a lot of people in the company do you use it. It's not like it's a select few people. Most people have access to it: the server teams, the network teams.

Device42 is user-friendly in terms of navigating through all the pages. Everything's very simple. If we want to find out, for example, what we have in a comms room in Bahrain, we just click on the Buildings tab, scroll down to Bahrain, and it will have the comms room on there. We can then have a look. Whereas with dcTrack, doing that was a lot more complex.

We evaluated other options but that was quite some time ago. We chose Device42 for its ease of use and quick stand-up.