Item: BMC Helix Configuration Management Database (CMDB)
Rating: 9
Author: Shayne Froelich

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We currently only use it to store information on our servers for our IT departments. However, we are looking at expanding this to include more non-IT type information such as creating assets for locations and things which would help assist with our IT Service Desk such as mobile phones and computer workstations.

Pros and Cons

Atrium CMDB integration with Remedy and SmartIT are great! It's very simple to select an asset which is affected by a work ticket.
The storage capacity of information which can be saved into the CMDB is vast. It's not limited to IT based assets only.

The vast ability of storage of an asset in the CMDB. While it is a great feature, it is also an area of potential catastrophe. It is akin to only driving a basic automatic car for years and then being put into the seat of an Formula 1 racer. If you don't know what you're doing, better prepare for disaster.
To utilize any advanced features of the Atrium CMDB, you'll want to look into some sort of training. Otherwise, you will have a large mess to clean up and getting rid of a mess of this size and potential magnitude is a large undertaking.

Return on Investment

Combined with BMC Discovery, the CMDB has enabled us to have very useful metrics on affected server assets. Especially those affected by incidents, which allows us to troubleshoot potential reoccurring problems before they get started.
The ability to pull up a users information and know where they sit, what hardware and software they are using, as well as the ability to easily process tickets against it will significantly decrease our response times for service outages.

Other Software Used

Microsoft Access, Joomla!, Snagit

Likelihood to Recommend

Atrium CMDB is very flexible and can meet needs both small and great. If you're looking to have a central location for all asset information, regardless of type (hardware, software, people, phones, location, etc), Atrium CMDB provides a great value. Especially if you are looking at tying this information into a ticketing system for affected assets. It can also be tied in with BMC Discovery, which will auto update the CMDB with its own discovered data. This is where the product really shines.

Usability

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.

Usability Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Like to use Well integrated Consistent	Difficult to use Requires technical support Slow to learn Cumbersome Lots to learn

BMC Atrium CMDB - the long and short of it

Overall Satisfaction with BMC Atrium CMDB