BMC Helix ITSM replaces Remedy. It is a broad suite of ITSM, tools with strong integrations to other BMC tools and in-built ITAM. The product is used mainly by global brands and is offered in on-premise and SaaS configurations.
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SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
Score 8.4 out of 10
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SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor (SAM) delivers application and server monitoring capabilities. SAM allows for self-service for easy setup, 1200+ monitoring templates, and customization options, as well as integrate with other SolarWinds products.
Large complex organisation, with complex technology that needs to manage Technology Services. It is very flexible and able to manage a large complex environment but the knowledge required to set this up correctly (foundation data and configuration) is the key factor for success. It can integrate with many other systems and tools and integrate data from many sources - whether that be AWS cloud, or an on premises bespoke system. I would not recommend for a Small Organisation without the resources to set up and maintain the underlying foundation data and configuration.
For monitoring applications that run on Windows hosts on VMware or HyperV virtualization, SolarWindows offers a nice, vertical view of both the loads and the resources. In such an environment, this makes life really good! But if you have something else -- for example, Linux hosts -- you're on your own to some extent. That is, the things it does well, it does very well -- but everything else is much less polished.
Integration with monitoring software like SolarWinds. where Remedy can transform notifications to work orders and assign to respective teams.
Detailed Customization capability to fit the exact needs of the organization.
Change management calendar, which integrates change orders from all organization departments and facilitates the scheduling process of project managers.
It can be offered as a cloud-based service, where you don't need to worry about server maintenance or database backup.
The interface (ironically). My company has made an attempt to replace the "classic" Remedy interface with some more functional, modern, but Remedy set to a particular look and feel (and consequently, functionality)
The API is hidden from the user: There exists an API for Remedy, that would make my job TONS easier, as I like to perform actions on Remedy in bulk (and therefore - programmatically). Exposing a user API is very much mainstream these days, so Remedy relying on its interface to perform ITIL is very limiting
By extension- the result of Remedy's interface is that it becomes very "click-happy": little buttons, and links stuffed into every corner of the screen, with options API logically together. API is old, but it still feels very rushed.
The primary tool for most of my ITIL operations is: searching. API of searching goes into finding assets, checking in equipment, finding users, tickets, etc. What Remedy could very much benefit from a "Google" -like interface
Provides basic monitoring/visibility. Visibility into detailed/fine-grained issues best suited for more specialized/expensive solutions.
Licensing per monitored application rapidly uses up purchased license count.
More out-of-the-box templates or easier setup of monitoring less-common applications would make the solution more appealing given the target audience of the product.
We are heavily invested in Solarwinds products for a reason. They are generally easy to setup and run with, requiring only some interfacing with support or help articles on rare occasions. They do what we bought them to do and we can't ask for more.
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.
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor is quite easy to use and super versatile. It allows you to do just about anything you can through premade templates or through scripting. You can use an agent on the servers if you want to, or you can monitor through WMI or SNMP credentials. You can customize thresholds for alerting quickly, and you can configure alerts to be as complex or as simple as you want.
The graphical interface and the performance of the database leave a little to be desired, they could be better explored.Some functionality and screens do not work well depending on the browser used. The integrations never had any problems or caused crashes in other systems.
The support is good in overall resolving the issues and even in the deployment phase. We are able to use it in production without any trained in-house engineer as the support team gets the job done. We can say that experts completed the deployment for us, and now it is functional.
I think there was only a couple times I had to open a support case for SAM and one time they got multiple engineers on the phone to get a better idea what I was trying to monitor and was able to point me in the best direction to monitor that system.
The decision to select BMC Remedy was made prior to my employment. We did conduct an RFC process for a new ITSM platform and BMC was considered but not selected. We looked at several platforms and ended up choosing Ivanti Service Desk (previously LANDESK) due to the features, ease of customization and price.
It has been a while since we first purchased SolarWinds, but I looked over several other products that I can't remember now. Many other products tried to scan the network to find computers but given that our computers are located in various places across campus with other computers in our buildings that are not ours that type of network scanning was not what we needed. Other services have extra services that we had no need of and I liked the ability to add custom fields in SolarWinds so we can track the information on each computer that we need to know.
When I was in Management discussion calls, and all the team is happy while using BMC Remedy so I don't find any specific negative impact on our organization.
I really enjoy Smart IT as the tool of choice for our incident management team.
Visibility of tickets is key. All support staff users can see tickets in consoles they have access to.
Less time spent investigating causes of issues. We are alerted straight away and can find the root cause of the issue in less time.
We have been able to ditch all our previous individual monitoring solutions, none of which integrated with each other for a single solution which fully integrates with each of the different modules to provide a single portal for monitoring and alerting.
