BMC puts the aaS in SaaS, but the Promise in on-Premise
Updated September 29, 2014
BMC puts the aaS in SaaS, but the Promise in on-Premise
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
BMC Remedy ITSM 8.1
Modules Used
- Incident Management
- Problem Management
- Service Request Management (Request Management & Fulfillment)
- Change Management
- MyIT 2.0
- Release Management
- Atrium CMDB (Configuration Management)
- BMC ADDM (add-on, but part of the suite)
- Service Level Management
- Knowledge Management
Overall Satisfaction with BMC Remedy IT Service Management Suite
For an additional fee, detailed review can be found in State of the ITSM Market at: http://www.itsmuniversity.net
Northcraft Analytics is a provider of business intelligence applications for IT Support & Operations built on the Microsoft BI Stack. Advanced Metrics for IT was originally built to address some of the limitations in reporting associated with the BMC Remedy reporting technology. We have since developed into a competitor of BMC Dashboards and Analytics, offering a Hybrid OLAP approach for enterprise IT departments (which we define as > 100 employees in IT).
- Data-Driven Configuration for quick setup of Categories, Support Departments, Locations, Assignment, Templates & more.
- Depth of Functionality across the ITSM Modules to reduce customization for mature IT organizations
- Customization - BMC Remedy AR System is an on-premise Rapid Application Development platform
- Inexpensive New Customer Licensing - When BMC changed pricing for BMC Remedy ITSM (in the blue model shift back in 2008), they became the least expensive ERP4IT style suite.
- Scalability - There are multiple customers running with 1000s of concurrent users on BMC Remedy. The largest commercial deployment has 8,000+ concurrent users.
- Upgrades - Even though BMC Remedy has a horrible reputation, they have changed their architecture in BMC Remedy ITSM 7.6.4 to add "overlays" which is something that none of their competitors have. This allows customized workflows to be seamlessly migrated, albeit with additional configuration required. Still, it should be applauded as an advance.
- Usability - BMC has been addressing usability issues since the release of ITSM 7.0 (a major shift in architecture). Northcraft Analytics measures average handling time for Incidents, which is about 5% higher than ServiceNow on average. That being said, there is more depth in functionality which leads to increased handling with the benefit of better reporting for management. Still, usability is usually mentioned by customers as an issue.
- SaaS Reliability - BMC Remedy on Demand (not built from the ground up for SaaS) has struggled on the IT Operations side. For a native SaaS offering from BMC - Remedyforce is worth a closer look. It's built on the Salesforce.com platform which is truly SaaS.
- Surveys - BMC Remedy ITSM has had basically the same survey functionality since version 4. It's time for an update. Kinetic Survey is a reliable alternative.
- Notification subscription - BMC added email conversation management in BMC Remedy ITSM 8.1, but BMC really needs to give users that ability to subscribe to IT notifications that they would like/prefer not to receive.
- Group by Group Auto-Assignment - Currently BMC offers group assignment OR individual assignment. Automated round-robin individual assignment would be very helpful if it could enabled for certain groups only... rather than all of them. For example, the L1 team could have individual assignments... but not every group.
- Graphical Workflow - BMC's acquisition of Abydos hasn't yet made it into the ITSM product line. This would help BMC compete more favorably with ServiceNow's glide workflow engine.
- Potentially lower operational expenditures than SaaS model due to a variety of complex factors (depends on exact price, maintenance bill, storage, administration, implementation, etc...)
- Higher % of Automated Incident Resolution (via automation) for customers with integrated IT Operations products from BMC
- Greater % of Release & Change orchestration (in total customer base) leading to lower average change durations
- Lower average approval times for changes due to native serial and parallel workflows (no coding required).
- Potentially much higher administrative costs due to poor implementation/support/upgrade partner. In fact, it makes much more sense financially to work with BMC's implementation community in all but the most exceptional circumstances.
- Increased % of Incidents & Requests created and resolved from Self-Service
- Higher % of customers with automated incident generation from event management, lowering handling times (not necessarily resolution!)
BMC Remedy ITSM should be on your short list if you are considering a robust solution in an on-premise model. The implementation community is very strong and mature. BMC still has the broadest suite of complementary IT Operations add-on products which are still currently on-premise. BMC ADDM is a star performer for application discovery and dependency mapping, especially with respect to integration with CMDB. That is BMC's strong suit. Usability & Support... well, not so much. One thing to be careful to watch for in the demonstration. Many companies simply have stronger sales teams which can make a product shine. That's not always the case with BMC, so ask around to ensure that you have an apples to apples comparison of pre-sales teams!
BMC Remedy IT Service Management Suite Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Kept well informed Quick Initial Response | Slow Resolution Poor followup Problems left unsolved Escalation required Need to explain problems multiple times |
No - Premium support can be very good if you pay absolute top dollar for a replicated environment, but that is not applicable for most customers.
Using BMC Remedy IT Service Management Suite
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Technical support not required Well integrated Consistent Feel confident using | Do not like to use Lots to learn |
- Advanced search function is excellent
- Full-Text Search is excellent, because it goes across multiple tables.
- The floating application bar is very convenient
- The breadcrumbs are a nice recent enhancement
- Submitting an Incident is straightforward and simple
- Change Management is robust, but cumbersome
- It's easy to get stuck in certain phases/stages of a change request
- While you are certainly following a process, it seems like your hands are tied if you want to log something simple. This does depend on application configuration.
- CMDB navigation is tough, but there is quite a bit of information that is gathered automatically with ADDM, so it might not be as big a deal.
- Nearly all of the problem management functions should be replaced by knowledge management. For example, why is there a solutions database (keyword only searching) inside problem management... when there is a simple and robust knowledge management application with full-text searching?
Yes - MyIT is pretty nice for end-users. For technicians, it would be wise to look at Mobile Reach. ServiceNow is a bit better on the mobile side, but I wouldn't really recomend either for heavy mobile usage by the IT department.