AppFog (discontinued) vs. BMC FootPrints vs. Oracle Enterprise Manager

It was very good to use in small scale projects. Considering the high end projects with many instances and multi-platform architectures, it is better to test before the application is deployed. I think few of the questions can be general - who are the system users and what size is the application focussing on? How much resources are required? Will the application require any additional services?

Incentivized

BMC Footprints is so well suited to keep the documentation easy to read and find, as same as typification. You can find specific documentation for an audit so fast and export a report using the specific criteria that you need to comply with your boss or audit needs. As I told before, BMC footprints need to be more friendly to the end users because they get lost many times trying to track some ticket or typing documentation.

Incentivized

OEM is very well suited for all Oracle products, especially Oracle databases and Exadata machines; even not Oracle hardware, it is very good and displaying high level details. OEM is not well suited for older hardware vendors like AIX, HP-UX, DEC/Digital, Microsoft (sql server). This is a big negative as most large companies have a heterogeneous environment with many different vendor hardware and (database) software products.

Incentivized

• Quick deployment of pre-built virtual machines
• Some of the virtual machines also are readily available with a pack of softwares
• Good Stability. Using it as a student, I have never experienced any downtime issues with the projects deployed on AppFog.

Incentivized

• Documentation. We try to reduce the amount of paperwork needed for staff to do their job, so by automating certain tasks, we are able to speed up the resolution process for trouble tickets.
• Reporting. We'll use the reporting tool to get the number of tickets opened, response times and can go into granular reports.
• Surveys. When tickets are closed, we automatically send out surveys to end users to get valuable feedback on how we did and what we can improve.

Incentivized

• Monitoring Templates: There are out of box monitoring templates for each target types, you can customize them or use them as it is.
• Administrative Groups: This is a relatively new feature in OEM Cloud Control. This lets you create and manage your targets and monitoring templates smarter and with less re-work.
• DB Monitoring: There are so many cool DB monitoring features and visual graphics, that it can be used by both DBA and functional people to see what's going on in the database.

Incentivized

• Though it is good and easy for developers, it lacks operational activities and monitoring tools.
• It is easy to deploy WAR on AppFog with its console but sometimes it can lack on the performance and feasibility.

Incentivized

• Purpose based configuration- It would be beneficial to see a more purposed based, out of the box, configuration option. For example, if you need PCI compliance, more intuitive reporting would make managing compliance much easier.
• Initial design and implementation- Don't think that your experience as an IT professional will allow you to stand this system up on your own. To properly configure Footprints and set yourself up for success down the road, get Professional Services with this one.
• Somewhat behind the times- Service Core is making a huge leap forward with the latest version, 12, but Asset Core is far behind. There are quite a few quirks to how the application works and how it is used.

Incentivized

• Bugs. Every version we upgrade to has a number of bugs. Some stop us from rolling to production OEM (we have a sandbox OEM), some are simply annoying. If I could improve on one thing, it would be for better QA from oracle before releasing each version.
• Flash. I'm told that they are moving from Flash to Jet in version 13.3 and beyond (we are on 13.2 currently). That change cannot come soon enough. The OEM pages load SO slowly due to Flash.
• Hierarchy Groups. OEM allows five Hierarchy groups. A Hierarchy group allows a top down metric/rule roll out. However, they limit you to five. I'd like to see them open that up, so that we can have any number of custom groups.

Incentivized

It has been the business decision to go with them and that is what we will do. Going back, this would have not been the choice, but nothing can be done about it now. We are stuck with this application for years to come. Wish there were other possibilities that could be done.

Incentivized

It's so simple to use and customize however you want. You can create new workspaces and workflows with ease, set up new users, incoming email rules, customize the layout of the forms, and even change the colors and logos. It's just very easily customizable overall. It's also really straightforward to figure out how to use, you really almost don't have to show somebody how to use it. If you just sit them down in front of it and let them look it over, they could figure it out themselves easily.

Incentivized

It's great! It does everything and anything you would want it to do. It can monitor things which doesn't comes out of the box by adding plug ins to it, for example, you can even monitor Oracle GoldenGate Replication by adding a plug-in to OEM Cloud Control.

Incentivized

I've had no issues with the support for FootPrints. We haven't really had to use them all that much over the years, but when needed they have always been prompt and knowledgeable at dealing with any issue. I've worked with a lot of different support teams over the years, and they have been one of my favorites to work with.

Incentivized

I still rate OEM as a must-have tool for central management of Oracle fleet. The pros and cons of the product is prominent. Meanwhile, I also acknowledge that OEM was design about a decade ago. At that time, it did not have the landscape we have today, such as cloud, DEVOPS, machine learning, etc. I hope in future releases, the design will incorporate those features.

Incentivized

Primarily because it used to have a good free tier earlier, which it does not anymore. It's simple, and things are available to use. Compared to it's competitors, it does has less features, but that kind of acts in its favor. That adds to the simplicity, and ease of use for a new user.

Incentivized

I was not involved in the selection process but in my opinion either SQL or Access databases would have worked just as well without the same amount of cost. These two systems would have been much easier to manage and would have tracked the same information in a less convoluted process and expense.

Incentivized

Being an Oracle shop using Oracle Database and MySQL, management console from Oracle was a better choice than IBM or Microsoft even though we do use Microsoft Azure and storage/servers from IBM (on-prem).

Incentivized

I work with OEM SCP team. They are great.

Incentivized

• Our project was deployed with good efficiency and easily accessible.
• The platform was much recommeded across the groups and peers.

Incentivized

• It helps us with keeping projects on track, which saves time
• When someone wants to know about a project, they are able to without calling around
• I have had a difficult time searching specifics, as how many tickets closed by me in 2021

Incentivized

• We are a 7x24 shop. Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control helps us meet that objective by proactively warning us before issues cause down time. Things like disk space, archive log issues or temporary table space issues.
• Spreading the use of this tool outside of the DBA group has allowed us to not hire additional personnel for those teams. Over time, as folks have retired from our operations team, we are not replacing them. Instead we have used OEM Cloud Control to automate tasks.
• We also now have the tools to measure up-time by using specific measurements inside of OEM. This allows us to report real numbers to management.

Incentivized