BMC Helix AiOPs - EMEA

I primarily use BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps  for monitoring all the servers and the entire structure of our customers.

The AI and machine learning capabilities within BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps  provide a significant advantage in the monitoring aspect. Proactive monitoring is a key feature where AI and machine learning, based on past behavior, predict and provide information on potential situations that could develop. It is fascinating how it studies server behavior and forecasts possible outcomes.

From my perspective as a customer, especially from tool administration, what would be beneficial is having end-to-end visibility all on a single page. This is challenging to achieve with any tool, but such a feature would significantly enhance user experience.

I have been working with BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps for the last two years.

I rate the stability a ten on a scale of one to ten, indicating excellent stability.

The scalability is also a ten out of ten. BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps is suitable for small, medium, and large environments.

Their technical support is fantastic. There are three levels of support - level one, level two, and level three. When provided with accurate information, they quickly supply the necessary articles to resolve problems.

Positive

There are two types of installations: SaaS and on-premises. The SaaS option is very straightforward, with BMC managing the infrastructure. For on-premises setups, investment in personnel for implementation is necessary.

The pricing is on the higher end due to the extensive features and delivery quality. However, it is worth the investment.

BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps deserves a ten out of ten. I wholeheartedly recommend it to other users, and we already promote it to new customers and existing clients.

On-premises

Google

My company's customers sometimes use BMC Helix Monitor to monitor applications and check for failures in one server or a specific service in an application. The monitoring tool sends signals or alerts to the operation team, and after some time, they escalate and are sent to management, the IT director, the CIO, or the CEO.

The solution's most valuable features are its ability to monitor the servers in the infrastructure, monitor the stability of the service, troubleshoot the root cause of the failure whenever or whatever happens, and send notifications to specific roles in an organization.

I feel that the tool's stability has some scope for improvement.

I have experience with BMC Helix Monitor.

It is a stable solution. I didn't use the tool by myself. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

The tool is used by ten of our company's customers. The tool has around 100 users.

The solution's technical support is fast, responsive, and friendly.

The product's initial setup phase is easy.

The product is well integrated with other products, so I face no problems with the operational workflows.

I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We have clients like Yamaha, the motorcycle company. There's a project here in Brazil where they've adopted the full BMC ITSM suite, including operations management.

BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps' predictive analytics positively impacted proactive problem-solving capabilities. It has been the most interesting part of the solution! It provides detailed analytics that gives you a deep understanding of your infrastructure and recurring issues/problems. It really predicts the problems. 

The real power is in the predictive capabilities. The AI and machine learning components get smarter over time, helping you anticipate problems.

BMC Helix really excels in pinpointing the root cause of problems quickly. Think of it as the "manager of managers." You likely have various monitoring tools like Zabbix, Dynatrace, Azure, etc., alongside CMs. BMC Helix gathers data from all of these sources, processes it, and continuously gets smarter through its AI.

It learns your infrastructure's baseline behavior. When something deviates from that baseline, it gathers more data from logs and other sources, compares everything, and can even predict something like a server failing in five days. Imagine it analyzes a complex cluster issue and suggests, "There's a 33% chance the root of this problem originates from this specific server or cluster."

It's incredibly intelligent and offers support, unlike anything I've seen for IT and infrastructure management.

There are good features around the visibility from discovery, operations management, and the AIOps capabilities – learning your infrastructure, predicting problems, and even finding unseen vulnerabilities. The AI Operations portion is the most valuable part of the whole BMC ITSM platform.

The biggest challenge is ensuring the customer has sufficient ITSM maturity to get the most out of the solution. BMC Helix is very sophisticated, and some clients lack that internal process maturity. There's sometimes a gap between the solution's capabilities and the client's readiness.

We have to bridge that gap, bringing the customer up to the level where they can fully use all the features and benefits. Otherwise, they're investing in a powerful tool they don't fully utilize.

It's crucial for vendors like us to assess client maturity before the project starts. We need to do the consulting work to show them the solution's potential and help them evaluate if it truly makes sense. Sometimes, the client might not be ready for the way BMC does things, for that level of automation and AI.

BMC's automation is like nothing I've seen. You can even deflect 30% of IT service desk tickets with an intelligent chatbot – that's a number from BMC. Imagine the reduction in human agents! It's a robot doing the work, but in a way that feels human... that's the impressive part. You can integrate with WhatsApp, Teams, etc. It's game-changing.

ServiceNow doesn't have a free-scope module like BMC does. Also, their artificial intelligence isn't as good as BMC's. 

A big differentiator is BMC Business Workflow. You don't need many IT analyst developers for applications and integrations because we have drag-and-drop. Many pre-built components are available on the platform, including integration components. You can create applications by drag-and-drop. You don't need to write a line of code because we have a low-code/no-code module called Business Workflow. This allows you to develop operations and deliver applications without many IT workers.

With ServiceNow, customizations require many analysts. They don't have a low-code/no-code module, so you would need a team of engineers. In BMC, a business analyst could create applications because of our low-code/no-code tools.

In Brazil, we mainly see competition from Avanti, which I'm less familiar with, and ServiceNow. There are other players in the market, like TopDesk from the Netherlands. These solutions are cheaper, but they don't offer the same level of functionality as BMC, so many enterprise buyers avoid them.

I have also seen people who use solutions like Jira being used for ITSM, which I don't quite understand. Jira is a project management tool. So, customers who don't have growth plans, maybe they don't have maturity on ITSM software and think to use cheaper options. 

Deployment depends on whether you choose the SaaS (Software as a Service) model or an on-premises installation. SaaS is much easier – BMC takes care of infrastructure, and you get a tenant, login, and password. It's ready to configure for your business.

An on-premises installation is more complex. You'll need in-house expertise in containers like Kubernetes or Docker, plus there's infrastructure planning involved. 

SaaS deployment is straightforward, the hard work is done by BMC.

But, on-premises installation is far more complex. You need container expertise, and the risk is higher. Frankly, most clients are opting for SaaS deployments these days. Only those with strict legal compliance requirements still choose on-premises, and that's increasingly rare.

Since the product helps the user predict problems, they proactively avoid faults that would otherwise stop your services. When a service is down, the user doesn't lose money. By predicting infrastructure issues and preventing downtime, the end user saves money. This translates to higher productivity than if the user didn't have BMC Helix Operations Management installed. You'll sell more thanks to increased availability and avoid the damage caused by unavailability.

The users will always be ahead of problems because they're predicting potential issues. That's the strongest argument for using Operations Management.

It's important to note that for maximum efficiency with BMC Helix platform, consider a larger implementation. While BMC Helix Discovery can be valuable on its own by providing infrastructure visibility, you'll get the full benefits I'm describing by combining it with modules like Operations Management, IT Service Management (ITSM), and others. This allows for continuous operations and brings all the advantages.

BMC solution is cheaper than ServiceNow, our main competitor. So, I'd rate the pricing a seven out of ten, with ten being expensive. 

The prices are lower than the competition because it's a BMC strategy to get a bigger market share. They're trying to regain some of the market they've lost to ServiceNow in the past.

Here in Brazil, BMC faces competition from ServiceNow and others. BMC is really evolving and differentiating itself from the others. BMC isn't focused on traditional ITSM processes like some competitors. They're focused on how BMC Operations Management can enable digital transformation for the entire enterprise.

This makes selling BMC a challenge here. IT management often doesn't want to hear about complex ITSM projects. They often see only the hard work of implementation, not the long-term benefits. BMC is trying to overcome that. They want to talk about digital transformation, not just granular ITSM features. I think they're making progress. I'm impressed with the direction of BMC Helix.

When you buy it for the whole enterprise, not just IT, the solution's cost scales very well. You can manage HR cases, legal cases, etc. This delivers integration and value beyond just IT issues. It helps the whole enterprise - that's the vision I see. 

I'm excited about BMC's future. With AIOps and machine learning, It's going to change how work is done by automating many manual tasks. This automation will be key to helping companies achieve their digital transformation goals. You know, we've been talking about digital transformation for a decade, but few have truly achieved it.

BMC wants to deliver the ease of use seen in apps like Uber or iFood into the enterprise experience. Imagine requesting services within your company – vacation scheduling, WiFi access – with that same simplicity. 

BMC wants to empower employees to provide an even better experience for external clients. So, the transformation begins internally and extends out. BMC isn't just an ITSM solution anymore – it's a solution for the whole enterprise. You can manage any case, automate any workflow – IT infrastructure monitoring or streamlining HR processes. You don't miss deadlines, you avoid fines. It's about providing a solution that scales across the business, not just within the IT department. 

That's why it's a harder sell sometimes, but if you sell it with that broader vision, it's much more compelling.

Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten.

The solution provides more options for artificial intelligence. It gives us more information on what needs to be monitored and what is happening in the background. We do need people to monitor the servers. With its machine learning capabilities, the tool gives us advanced options to ensure 100% availability.

The service operations monitoring features are valuable. Apart from the operations management and server monitoring, it gives advanced options to integrate with other tools. Based on the customer's requirements, we can use it to automate alerts and take action on the triggered events. All the options are combined to ensure the customer's requirement is accomplished and 100% availability is provided.

The world is moving to smart AI. The product must provide more information and dashboards.

I have been using the solution for the last one and a half to two years.

The product has been in the market for a long time. It has been in the top ten for very long. I rate the stability a ten out of ten.

The product is scalable.

The support team works 24/7 all around the world. We raise a ticket, and the available team reaches out to us. The quality of support depends on the customer’s contract. The vendor provides different levels of support. All the customer support agents are very knowledgeable and have enough information about the environment and the tool.

The initial setup is straightforward. The time taken depends on the customer and their environment. The deployment process also depends upon the customer's requirements. There are multiple tools associated with the product. Based on the customer, it differs.

The tool is cloud-based. The number of people required for the deployment and maintenance depends on the environment. It is a container-based implementation. Multiple teams are involved in it.

The tool helps us to know the unknown. It helps us with proactive monitoring so that the servers do not go down. It helps us ensure that the availability is 100%.

BMC Helix Monitor is the best option in the market for advanced monitoring. Overall, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

BMC Helix Monitor is useful for monitoring your assets. The solution just scans your entire network, giving you the system under the network as it can scan your servers, desktops, laptops, and anything connected to the network. BMC Helix Monitor is an agentless product, so you don't need to deploy agents on every PC in your IT environment. You can just deploy your monitoring servers and install BMC Helix Monitor, which will scan the entire asset to get detailed information about any particular asset.

The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that BMC Helix Monitor is an agentless tool, because of which you don't need to deploy agents on each and every system in your IT environment. If you want to install an agent on each and every system, manpower is needed, while there is no such need when one uses BMC Helix Monitor. BMC Helix Monitor provides you with details on asset relationships. If a particular printer is connected to a core network printer or a particular desktop is connected to the servers, the product scans and gives you a free structure of relationship, which doesn't need any human intervention, making it an automated process. BMC Helix Monitor gives you the entire information about your assets, because of which you can sit in one place and keep track of whether a particular asset is online or offline.

The solution's GUI and some patching-related information are areas with shortcomings where enhancements are needed, though I believe they are areas that fall under BMC's roadmap for the future.

I have experience with BMC Helix Monitor. My company has a partnership with BMC Helix Monitor.

Scalability-wise, it is an absolutely wonderful and dependable product.

Under critical conditions when a ticket is raised under critical conditions, the solution's technical support team responds within 30 minutes. The solution's technical support team responds within a day when we face medium to high-intensity issues.

I rate the technical support an eight out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup of BMC Helix Monitor is pretty straightforward and won't be complex. If it's in the SaaS environment, you don't need to worry because BMC takes care of everything, but you only have to take care of your admin credentials properly.

BMC Helix Monitor is a very basic level tool since monitoring is a part of TSOM.

I rate the overall solution a nine out of ten.