BMC Helix ITSM vs. OpenText Dimensions CM

BMC Helix ITSM fits our environment particularly well, where standardized, auditable processes are already in place: Incident and Problem Management can be structured cleanly, with clear ownership, escalations, and fully traceable documentation—crucial in a highly regulated banking context. Through the customer platform/portal, users can log incidents and requests consistently, track their status transparently, and use a single central communication channel across service boundaries. This supports a service-oriented setup spanning multiple business services and locations. It becomes less suitable—or at least more effort-intensive—when core foundation data is not yet stable: an immature CMDB, insufficient ITAM data quality, and an unstructured knowledge base limit the value of automation and self-service. In addition, heterogeneous integrations and strict authorization models can increase implementation and ongoing maintenance efforts, especially when SLAs are not harmonized across different customer environments.

Serena CM is well suited to highly controlled, audited, and process driven environments. It will allow strict segregation of duties, and change traceability. If implemented correctly it will help you quickly build trusts with your auditors. It is also well suited to environments that require constant branching and merging. Due to the complexity of the product and learning curve for your development and operations team it may be overkill in a small shop with loose rules

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• AI drive incident correlation leading to identifying problems and major incidents quickly.
• Digital Workplace gives end-users a modern and personalized UI to submit requests, monitor service health, and receive self-help.
• As an enterprise ITSM, it is critical that Request, Incident, Problem, Asset, and Change Management are integrated and flow together. BMC Helix is built on this principle.

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• Code Promotion: Dimensions CM allows supervisors to control changes to code, in that they delegate requests to developers, and act as a gatekeeper prior to promoting to the next environment. This functionality is configurable so you can set up a workflow that best fits the structure and requirements of your own company.
• Code Repository for changes and versioning: Code can be checked out by item or by synchronizing folders. Code revisions can be compared against other revisions or work files. Item histories show which developers made which modifications, and which supervisor and operations personnel were involved in assigning the request and promoting the code to each environment. Additionally a pedigree will show a stream diagram which graphically displays branches and merges.
• Deployment: Serena Change Management offers help automating deployment including integrations with SVN and Jenkins. Its newer versions also have a powerful graphical deployment automation tool (Serena Deployment Automation- SDA). It comes with a certain amount of licenses built-in. If you have a many nodes to deploy to there will be separate licensing costs for that.

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• Service Level management configs can be lengthy, and when changes are needed to specific SLA, it does take a long time to configure. Templates work but only for certain things, lots of manual work is still required.
• The Online product documentation can be confusing or in same cases not correct.
• BMC products are sometimes expensive. When partners try to resell licenses or increase their own allotment, it becomes very expensive.

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• The only major negative that I have encountered with Serena CM product is that the very power and flexibility of the tool means there is a risk that you will make a mess of things. In other words it gives you plenty of rope to tangle yourself with. I recommend careful, well thought out deployments implementing the built in roles and workflows that can be turned on and configured, using a consistent methodology.
• My experience with the Serena help desk support has not been impressive. Though reasonably polite and diligent, the technicians were well trained, and often gave bad advise and terrible scripts. On several occasions I had to rewrite scripts they have me; if I had run them as provided they would have caused even more difficulties than the problem I was trying to solve. I speak of the support in the past tense because I conditioned myself not to call them, it was usually just easier to solve nay problems my self. They do have a good account management team though, and for any major issues you can go thru them.

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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.

Overall the product enhances the capability of incident management, problem management and change management. The AI based framework helps generated better visibility and reports. The effectiveness of enhanced service desk suuport improves end user experience as the incidents are handled well in time and aged incidents are highlighted at the right time.

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for now we are satisfied. first two months 😉

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could be faster. db is slower from introducing postgresql

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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.

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

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Satisfied because I didn't have to do it!

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I believe Remedy's performance and market share exceeds its competitors. But it is worth mentioning that Microsoft's SCCM has excellent integration with Microsoft enterprise solutions and has is less expensive and not efficient. The IBM solution has better analytics but lacks the wide features and capabilities of Remedy. HP & CA are the real competitors for Remedy but lacks the stability, maturity, and effectiveness in Remedy

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Serena CM is superior to Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS) in overall functionality, but does not have very good native integration with Microsoft. Therefore in a Microsoft centric shop with no audit needs ,TFS would be better. Otherwise I would choose Serena CM

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unclear. lot of for less

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

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• Positive: an introduction to ITIL and viewing Asset, User Management from the perspective of ITIL, and how BMC has implemented those processes
• Negative: The development team needs to communicate better with the sales and support side, and they need offer an open API
• Negative: Currently the Asset Management side has little security and validation of Asset input: anyone can make API (mostly), at any item, which is a problem that I am apart of solving.
• The UX needs updating, badly. Its quality is poor: it functions, but it is cumbersome, click-heavy and requires several hours to understand how to function with it. Also, it needs to ditch IE11 support, altogether.

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• Serena has facilitated our annual completion of various audit and technology control certifications. These certifications make a huge difference to our company's reputation and bottom line.
• There has been no negative impact on our company.

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