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

Lets you run more effective CABs with accurate configuration and dependency data. Understand the impact of change on other assets applications and services. Detecting potential underlying issues [when multiple] changes are made. Provides very adaptable and highly reliable data quality and integrity engines configured through rules [to] ensure normalization, data source prioritization, and deduplication.

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

• Incredible with cloud migration of servers.
• Efficient with getting audit reports on systems.
• Terrific with compliance management.
• Fabulous with optimization of business operations.

Incentivized

• A large community where, if help is needed, is usually very helpful and quick to respond.
• Various sites with good information on various issues. If you have a problem, there's a good chance some else already had it and documented it.
• Fairly easy installation of the product if recommendations are followed and prep-work is done.

Incentivized

• The best IT services management that helps to increase overall service management does deliver business value.
• Great change manager.
• Service desk agent.

Incentivized

• The right-click feature is disabled in this application and users are unable to copy and paste with mouse or touchpad.
• The application also freezes quite a bit and a user will have to quite often close and reopen browser to get it functioning properly.

Incentivized

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

I didn't even know there was competion with BMC Atrium CMDB. I have been in the tech industry for sixteen plus years and I have never seen another product accomplish the task that BMC Atrium CMDB performs on a daily basis. Also BMC Atrium CMDB has been around longer than anyother product which means it has been tested over time.

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

• Moving towards a fully chargeback model would help non-IT departments help curb their spend. However, a company needs to be fully mature in order to do this. Without an iron tight process, the CMDB will be quickly filled with garbage. It'll require experienced asset admins to continuously monitor the system.

Incentivized

• Having CA Service Desk Manager within the company has increased the satisfaction of customer service from 68% to 95%. Teams are getting better customer survey scores and making better efforts to meet their SLAs.
• CA Mobile app has provided agility and collaboration among IT Users and Customers.

Incentivized