BMC Helix ITSM vs. Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)

There are many ITSM platforms available - but only a very select few are true enterprise leaders. BMC Helix is one. When it comes to managing thousands of incidents daily, BMC Helix helps cut through the noise with incident correlation and predictive problem management.

Incentivized

Well suited in an IT environment where you have limited staff. It can be managed by one administrator. Reliability of the SaaS environment has been excellent. Flexibility in developing automated workflows to open, manage, and close Incidents. Change Management due to ability to modify OOB to meet the needs of our staff. Contract Management allowing us to be notified when a contract or license is up for renewal and setting reminders. Integrations are not easy to create and manage.

Incentivized

• The Service Asset and Configuration Management capabilities of Helix ITSM are awesome. It can be used as a central repository for all SACM information and seamlessly integrated with Helix Discovery.
• It has the most certified ITIL process modules of any ITSM system. These modules work seamlessly with each other and give you the power to manage any situation effectively.
• As an Administrator of Helix ITSM you have many tools at your disposal to create customizations, workflows. BMC makes it easy to manage the system, leaving time to develop customizations and workflows.

Incentivized

• Cherwell's email handling automation works flawlessly. The only time that I have ever needed to reset the automation service that drives it is when my own server that houses the small connecting agent has some kind of problem and disconnects us from our hosted Cherwell instance. It just works. Emails to a certain address always result in a new ticket or update to an existing ticket.
• Cherwell is literally 100% customization in so many ways that it would be pointless to try to enumerate them. There is a very sizable list of already-created customizations (called "mApps") that you can download and apply to your instance. If you don't like them you can roll them back in seconds. But you can add and configure entire modules using one of these pre-defined, completely free, add-on packages. It's so easy to add features this way that I check the list of available mApps every month or so just to see what functionality I can add.

Incentivized

• Customization can be lengthy due to the numerous features included in the software.
• New staff members require some sort of hands-on training to get to know all the use capabilities.
• The analytics can be improved to include forecasts and trend analysis.
• Expensive compared to competitors.

Incentivized

• Cherwell lacks modern UI capabilities such as responsive forms and CSS styling for web portals.
• Built-in reporting engine is hard to use and resource intensive to run.
• No patching model for small platform fixes, must upgrade to receive platform code changes.

It provides the tool we need and is able to be customised to meet new requirements. Cost to change in training and integrations would be considerable.

Cherwell is still the best tool for the job in the market. Even though Ivanti bought them and are trying to convince everyone to move over to Neurons for ITSM, they have stated Cherwell will remain supported indefinitely and have a roadmap for future Cherwell development. Unfortunately, ISM is not as flexible as Cherwell (and the UX is atrocious), hence why many people are sticking with Cherwell (and why many Cherwell customers never purchased ISM originally)

Incentivized

At least Remedy is all contained in a single platform, so the interface is consistent. Also, the most heavily performed functions are generally usable. However, to use some of the more advanced modules can be a bit more cumbersome (such as Change Management and CMDB (Not Including ADDM)). So, overall BMC Remedy ITSM is better than some applications like CA SDM or HP SM, but not quite on par with ServiceNow.

I enjoy the layout and configuration of our Cherwell Service Management instance. It did take me a bit to get used to, as with any new ticketing system, but now that I understand the system more, I thoroughly enjoy it! There are just so many options and the UI is very intuitive.

Incentivized

for now we are satisfied. first two months 😉

Incentivized

Almost always available, with exception for a handful of outages due to infrastructure related issues

Incentivized

could be faster. db is slower from introducing postgresql

Incentivized

The browser client is mostly acceptable in terms of performance, but still lacks parity with the rich client. The rich client is not very performant at all. It's built on old architecture and relies heavily on a fast internet connection, good caching and database indexing. There are several unwritten rules with form design (and form arrangement) which most users are not aware of, but can severely impact performance in the rich client. This is where the flexibility of Cherwell can come back to bite you if you step outside the boundaries of these unwritten rules

Incentivized

Their tech support is top notch. They respond and get back to us, even on lower level incidents and issues, very quickly. It is rare that we deal with a support technician who does not know what they are doing.

We generally have a good time with Cherwell support, however, there are the few niche cases where I have to explain how Cherwell works to the customer support agent on the other end. A little more product education for tier 1 support could go a long way in helping expedite support requests from SaaS customers.

I didn't partake in the in-person training, but it was available. I preferred the online method instead, which was a great experience. It was nice to have someone available to bounce questions off of and demonstrate how certain functions worked.

Incentivized

the trainers dont have so much practical experiences. its mostly follow up and reading existing documentation withou own input. of course experiences people are on shore or have no free time. sad truth

Incentivized

The training was great! We got together to review the system, its UI, and how to perform basic functions. Then there was plenty of time to ask questions and test out the system while there was someone available to assist.

Incentivized

Satisfied because I didn't have to do it!

Incentivized

Implementation is a breeze. Each time I've implemented it, we had an outsourced vendor overseeing it & assisting where needed. However, Cherwell OOTB is ready to go, and configuring it for LDAP/SAML, etc. for authentication and user-imports is really straight forward. The infrastructure needed for Cherwell is extremely simple too - and installing the server & database takes no more than 20 mins

Incentivized

I did not select Remedy myself, so I am coming in from someone who is apart of the story, from somewhere in the midway. That being said: Remedy has begun a journey of understanding the problems associated with the implementation of ITIL, and indeed ITIL itself (it is a top-down process for management of an IT department). there are many alternatives out there. One, in particular, I am keen to investigate: Redmine. But in doing so, It will be evaluated via my experience with Remedy.

Incentivized

Much more customizable than other products, especially when ran in a self-hosted environment. Cherwell [Service Management] allows for greater flexibility of custom development and integrations to allow for automating tasks that traditional ITSM apps are not well suited for. Cherwell [Service Management] gives you the freedom to develop your own objects with minimal licensing costs.

Incentivized

unclear. lot of for less

Incentivized

We have had great contracts with Cherwell and love the concurrent licensing model

Incentivized

Again, always room for improvement, but a very stable product none-the-less.

Incentivized

We have never had any major show-stopper issues with Cherwell itself - more so with the infrastructure it sits on. Moving from in-house cloud (on Cherwell's side), to AWS then to Azure has caused multiple problems over the years (some still on-going), however the product has remained fairly stable

Incentivized

As mentioned, they were always great to work with (minus the project management side). My only feedback would be to push back on requirements that don't make sense

Incentivized

• The ROI was fine initially as we got what we paid for and it served its purpose
• Over time, we got behind on releases due to limitations with customizations we made to the application. The product then became out of support and completely out of date, and we had to replace
• Overall ROI was minimal and once the product was out of date we found more value in other tools

Incentivized

• As with any standard ticketing system, it helped decrease the time before first contact with clients.
• Our department was always concerned with keeping a low budget, and it was cheaper than most.
• My supervisor could easily tell how many resources were being put into each employee, so we had more visibility of our team's capabilities at a given time if we needed to take on something complex.

Incentivized