HaloITSM vs. OpenText Dimensions CM

If you want a value for money full system, which you could use out of the box then this is the one for you. If you want a system that can take care of tasks then this is the one for you. [HaloITSM] is easily scalable with very competitive pricing. New features are added regularly based on best practices and customer requirements.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

• The Self Service Portal is very easy to configure and the end-users have commented on how easy it is to log and manage their own calls.
• Asset and User Management works very well and it is simple to link them to tickets. Looking up ticket history for particular Users or Assets is also very useful.
• The ability [to] use different ticket types and templates is fantastic. The added ability to merge and clone tickets is also a great benefit.

• 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.

Incentivized

• Support for M365 \ Power Platform, Power Bi reporting in particular
• Feel the asset management side of the product is not as good as the ticket management
• Support is excellent but maybe an old school user forum where other admins can share and discuss ideas

• 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.

Incentivized

Its simple and intuitiuve - requires minimal training to get people in and working at speed

I've made overall positive experiences with the Halo support. The only thing to increase would be some follow ups on feature requests. If someone would reach out to me, telling me wheter or not my feature request will be considered in future updates or not.

Incentivized

HaloITSM offered the highest level of functionality, available as standard, at our price level. Halo support during our trial period was second to none and unrestricted. We had a list of deciding factors covering the most important areas of functionality and HaloITSM covered all of these.

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

Incentivized

• It enabled us to allow our Service Desk Staff to work from home during COVID and this has continued ever since.
• We have halved our average resolution time.
• Some of the automation processes, when implemented alongside the MS Power Platform, have saved approximately 30 hours a month. This includes times when customers were unable to access the system until they had been trained. This is now automated via Halo and they get sent to on-demand training, instead of waiting up to 3 weeks for the next scheduled session.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized