BMC Helix Configuration Management Database (CMDB) vs. CA Service Management, with CA Service Desk Manager

Track and manage hardware, software, and cloud service configuration and relationship. Measure the success of your configuration management process and policy with predefined KPIs. Automatically populate and update CMBD minutes with BCM Helix Discovery, BMC Helix Client Management, and other connectors. Import and federate data from other sources with powerful Integra tools using a rich set of API.

Incentivized

It is a suitable tool for a large organization with extensive user needs. It is not for a small shop as it may be over-engineered for smaller organizations that don't have teams that can manage a solution of this size. It does have some significant hardware and configuration needs, but that should not deter customers from deploying it in-house. I've seen it deployed in the cloud as well as in-house; the downside to deploying it as a hosted solution is you're forever at the mercy of the vendor for customizations, and they cost an arm and a leg. The simplest things take a long time and cost much more money than necessary, so you can't truly get a custom solution and end up with mostly vanilla services (unless you have very deep pockets.)

Incentivized

• Atrium CMDB integration with Remedy and SmartIT are great! It's very simple to select an asset which is affected by a work ticket.
• The storage capacity of information which can be saved into the CMDB is vast. It's not limited to IT based assets only.

Incentivized

• This application is very easy to use. It is the best when it comes to training since the application is easy to understand and employees are able to easily catch up on work process.
• It is a great reporting tool because users can look up work they've done over a period of time.
• The auto populate feature is very helpful since at the service desk users do have several tickets to create for a single requester.

Incentivized

• Better financial systems, depreciation, chargebacks, etc
• Easier time to customize the forms

Incentivized

• Linking into other ITSM Tools for automatic event/alert generation could be a good feature to use. Not sure if this has been addressed in later versions of the product.
• Effective integration into communication tools such as pagers, text messages would be a great plus. Again this may have been addressed in later versions.

While the concepts of Service Desk and EITM were solid. The user interface, tool capabilities, and integrations fell behind the rest of the industry. Too often it seemed like CA bought and rebranded products without fully integrated them with their other products. It was a coat of paint, without the parts under the hood being updated. The overhead for administration was too high and the reporting capabilities were absolutely amongst the worst I've seen.

Incentivized

Once you have an understanding of the many use cases that this software can meet, you will be able to tightly integrate this into a ticketing system which increases the ROI of the product tremendously.

Incentivized

Let's detect potential conflicts when multiple changes are scheduled for the same time. Understand what services are affected by the ticket you're working on. Automatically route tickets to the potential solver based on CMDB data. Retrieve detailed configuration data for the assets you are troubleshooting. Resolve tickets faster. It is highly scalable.

Incentivized

We are too integrated with CA Service Desk Manager to disassociate anytime soon. We found the more we used the product the more we needed to customize it in order to better integrate with our business processes. There are other alternatives that have many built-in features that had we have foreseen our future requirements... would have chosen ServiceNow or Remedy as our "go-to" ticketing product.

Incentivized

• A properly maintained CMDB can save you large dollar amount when it comes to compliance, theft and replacements.

• Because of the difficulty in creating various functions and workflows, it has had a negative impact over time to where the 'knee-jerk' reaction to any new options requested or desired is to customize it which has resulted in mimicking out of box functions through the customizations.
• Examples of the use of certain areas and options is lacking. This has resulted in the misuse of various fields. For example: Multi-tenancy we do not have turned on and was never pursued because we we're told it "wouldn't work for us". This has resulted in previous administrators creating many new roles (which in turn has created just as many access types and data partitions) which has created a large amount of overhead. It's now difficult to turn on multi-tenancy until this overhead can be reconstructed/removed and the bringing personnel up to speed on the changes.
• On the initial install (which I wasn't with the company at that time) CA had provided us with custom scripts to execute certain functions (without considering if Service Desk could actually do that function out of box) and applied it. After a few upgrades to the product, these scripts are still being used and have caused underlying issues since their application. CA has denied support on these scripts because they are customizations even though we are looking to remove them.

Incentivized