BMC Helix Client Management Reviews

The most common use cases for BMC Client Management among my clients include managing inventory and deployment of a software package.

BMC Client Management is a stable solution and one of the best in the market. It allows me to manage all recipe endpoints, including iOS, Android, Linux, Unix, and Windows, all within the same solution.

In BMC Client Management, I would like to see more features for executing commands remotely. For example, with SAP, there isn't the capability to execute all the commands available in the console. The latest version includes more  endpoints, but they do not cover everything the operations team needs. Additionally, I think improving the hierarchy for managing endpoints is crucial. Extending the endpoint capabilities would be highly beneficial.

I have been using BMC Client Management for more than ten years.

BMC Client Management has very good performance and is a stable solution.

We don't have any issues with the scalability of BMC Client Management. It can handle a lot of processes and endpoints. If you need to scale, you just set up a new relay to discover new endpoints. Each relay can manage a maximum number of endpoints, so if you need to expand, you add new relays. It's a very simple application to use, and scaling it is straightforward. BMC Client Management works well for small, medium, and enterprise organizations.

The technical support for BMC Client Management is very bad, similar to other big vendors like IBM. The support is slow to respond, and sometimes the proposed solutions are incorrect. Often, we or the customers find the solution before BMC does.

Neutral

 The initial setup is straightforward and easy to use, but you need to understand the different functionalities and modules. The console version and the Hub application are different, and you need some knowledge to make the process easier. Deployment typically takes about two months. You start with the
initial setup and then continue with operations. 

The deployment process is straightforward. The master installation takes about thirty minutes. After that, you deploy different relays to discover the endpoints and create the credentials and sources to install the agents. Once the agent is installed on an endpoint, you can manage it as needed. The first step is always the installation. 

BMC Client Management can be deployed both on cloud and on-premises.
After the COVID-19 pandemic, there was an increased need for remote solutions, so we have customers using both models.

In BMC Client Management, I'd rate the initial setup as an eight out of ten.

BMC Client Management is a high-priced solution, but given its performance and capabilities, I think it offers great value. I don't have the exact number for the yearly licensing costs. I believe there is an additional cost of around two hundred dollars.

I recommend BMC Client Management. It offers a great experience with excellent performance and fast implementation. It's one of the best solutions on the market, with over twenty years of presence. For overall performance, I'd rate BMC Client Management a nine out of ten.

The company I work with, which is based in the UAE with branches in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, provides software for the EMEA market with entities that usually have more than 2,000 employees. At the beginning, some decades ago, we established ourselves by gaining knowledge and experience with ITSM service-desk solutions, starting with SDE Services, then FootPrints, then BMC Remedy, and now BMC Helix. Currently, we are a partner of BMC as well as a platinum partner of Ivanti (though not in the same field as BMC, which is otherwise a competitor in terms of ITSM and client management), both of which are Gartner leaders when it comes to ITSM software. We are also a partner of Genesis, which is call center software, and additionally provide several services in the field of security and a few other areas.

When it comes to our customers' use of BMC Client Management, there are multiple areas in which it can be used, such as compliance, inventory, remote control, patch management, and software deployment. As part of my work, I deal with most of these areas, but my main focus is in software compliance.

In client management, software compliance enables people such as CEOs and IT managers to see exactly which applications are used in the organization. This is important because these people need to know that there is a license associated with every piece of software that their employees use, and that the licenses are correct.

One example of a major use case for BMC Client Management in the area of compliance involved a large construction company in Saudi Arabia that had over 2,000 employees who made heavy use of AutoCAD. The license for AutoCAD is relatively high, especially when you consider that it is subscription-based and one has to pay renewal fees each year. In this company's case, the total amount for the annual subscription fees for their 2,000+ employees was over a million dollars.

One day, AutoCAD sent the quotation over to the new CFO, and the CFO requested a report from the IT department detailing which employees were heavy users of the software, and which employees barely used it, if at all. At this point, we jumped in to help support this initiative and deployed BMC Client Management on each endpoint. Through this, we obtained the full software usage details for AutoCAD, including which employees used it and when it was last used on any given endpoint.

Looking at the report, the CFO discovered that he could safely remove about 600 licenses which had not been used at all for more than six months, and only renew the licenses for the active users. Thus, he was able to cut over $300,000 from the total payment he was going to make for these licenses.

One feature I like, that was especially valuable during the pandemic, is remote control. Remote control grants administrators and support personnel access to the laptops and PCs of employees (who might be working from home) in order to fix any issues that come up as and when they come up, even without having to wait for a support request.

There are other solutions that attempt to solve this kind of problem, such as ScreenViewer, but they're not as efficient as BMC's Client Management's remote control feature. The client management software gives an admin the power to go through the endpoint and do whatever it takes to resolve the issue, whether it's upgrading the endpoint's software or deploying a new patch to the system.

Another advantage of remote control is that it allows administrators to keep an eye on whether the employee's machine is compliant with the latest security policies, and keeping up to date with the latest versions of security software. With BMC Client Management, all the information needed to manage these aspects are in the admin's hands, either by exporting a report or simply looking at a dashboard.

More generally, when we're talking about the SaaS version of BMC Client Management (BMC Helix), this version is designed like a German-made machine; that is, it works flawlessly, has no issues in terms of features, and everyone is very happy to use it.

The on-premises version of BMC Client Management has powerful remote control functionality and decent compliance features, but these features both rely on the discovery tool in order to gain a complete set of insights about the endpoint's environment. Now, BMC's discovery solution depends on having an agent installed in each endpoint and sometimes the agent doesn't work properly, making it difficult to get an accurate understanding of the environment (including special topologies) even with BMC's discovery tool.

This can be a pain when it comes to the area of compliance, since you might not have full access to everything running in the organization, including important infrastructural components such as servers and databases. For example, some endpoints may have gotten their software updates from servers not visible to the discovery tool, and this can further impact operations when it comes to patch management. Compare this scenario with the way Red Hat handles patch management: their software is always updated from the main patch providers, so you will always know what is running on the endpoints in this kind of environment. Although their endpoint management has its pros and cons, this is where BMC Client Management is at a bit of a disadvantage and I believe they need to improve on this area. 

Another area BMC could look into improving is the mobile device side of client management. It has lots of support for Microsoft products in terms of client management, but lacks comprehensive mobile device management support, such as for Android devices.

My company has been working with the on-premises version of BMC Client Management since it was first acquired by BMC almost a decade ago. Personally, this is about my fourth year working with it.

For stability, I would rate BMC Client Management a ten out of ten. Once the administrators gain sufficient knowledge of it, it's very easy to use and there are no major issues encountered. On the odd occasion, admins may come across policy or configuration issues, but in terms of the stability of the solution itself, we've heard of no problems. 

Each time there's a new version, we will usually upgrade our existing customers' implementation or use it as the preferred version for new implementations. However, we also tend to use the most recent previous version instead of the absolute latest version for a while so that we can be sure that there aren't any major issues or bugs with the new version. Once the latest version has been proven to be stable, we know that we can safely install it.

In terms of overall scalability and capacity of BMC Client Management, I would rate it a seven or eight out of ten.

Typically, the only time we refer to BMC's technical support is when we need a new patch or some kind of update from them directly. Otherwise, when customers need help with the solution, the support request will be escalated to our company because we have a highly experienced team consisting of senior professionals who have been working on BMC Client Management from day one.

My company is partnered with both BMC and Ivanti, which are both Gartner leaders in the field of ITSM. Between the two, my preference would be BMC, without a doubt.

The setup isn't complex, and we usually deploy the solution as a series of patches. That is, there will be one main server and we will deploy patches from this server at a certain limited pace (e.g. 100 patches now, 100 patches a bit later) rather than sending out all 1000 patches at once.

We space it out like this to give a reasonable amount of time for the patches to be taken up by the employees in an interactive manner, and at times when employees are not actively at work on their laptops or PCs (either before work or after).

BMC Client Management is a very affordable solution. There is one main server license which I believe is around $1,000 per year, and then there is the license for the actual solution. With the solution license, you can opt for a suite license where you get access to all the features and benefits, or alternatively you can buy any of the five main components of the suite license individually. For example, if a customer only needs remote control, they are able to purchase this separately.

Other endpoint management solutions that I have considered include SCM and Ivanti ISeC, but I have also evaluated several mobile device management solutions as well. The good thing about BMC Client Management in comparison is that it supports both normal endpoint configuration management and mobile device management (though, as it seems, not fully; I believe BMC only supports iOS).

Although BMC has stopped innovating on the on-premises version of BMC Client Management, there is constant innovation and new features being added to the SaaS version. Overall, the SaaS version is way more advanced than the on-premises version at this point.

I would rate BMC Client Management a ten out of ten.

Our company provides implementation and support services for customers. The solution provides the entire automation of desktops or laptops for our clients. It can provide detailed inventory like software and hardware details, automate the deployment of software, automate patch management, and provision or upgrade the Operating System. It also provides compliance management. 

We currently have multiple customers using the solution. 

The inventory, software deployment, compliance , and patch management features are very valuable. 

The solution needs to add whitelisting of applications because many customers request it. Also if BMC Client Management can provide vulnerability assessment scanning at the endpoint and mitigate that, that would be a great enhancement as we will not have to rely on a third-party VA tool.

Our company partners with OEM and we have provided client automation solutions for many of our clients.

The solution is very stable. 

The solution is definitely scalable. 

We have a strong support system within our company so we have not needed technical support. 

Positive

The application setup/implementation of the tool is pretty easy. The agent can be installed using the AD policies or any of the existing automation tools in the client's environment. The solution offers on-premises and hybrid cloud versions. 

We implement the solution for customers. Deployment strategy varies to the customer's environment. We have automated the client management solution for around 40,000 to 50,000 desktops, and laptop users within three to four months. 

First, we capture the customer's requirements. We provide a detailed plan based on the inputs we capture. We prepare the solution design document, implement the application, roll out the agents, and configure all other features. 

The license is based on the number of endpoints. 

I definitely recommend using the solution for endpoints for automation. 

One of our customers is a financial institution with more than 15,000 endpoints. We use BMC Client Management to manage their regulatory compliance needs. We also manage the endpoints from a security perspective using this solution. Service management has been integrated with this solution as well.

It would be good if BMC Client Management can perform vulnerability assessment scanning at the endpoint on its own and mitigate that. Then, we wouldn't have to rely on a third party VA tool.

I would like to see this application move to being a web-based one.

I've been using this solution for 10 years.

It is a stable solution.

It's a scalable solution. We have deployed it for customers using 3000 nodes to those using 300,000 nodes.

I would rate technical support at seven on a scale from one to ten.

Neutral

The initial setup is easy. However, agent deployment can take time. To get the setup ready for the data center, it can take one to two weeks.

Before using it for the first time, go through the virtual training so that you know how to use the tool.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate BMC Client Management at eight.

In my company, we use BMC Client Management for patching.

The most valuable features of the solution are its patching capabilities and the help it offers when it comes to use cases, like prompting for the reboot after a certain period of time.

Right now, I don't have anything to say about which areas in BMC Client Management need improvement.

The solution does not offer the functionality of remote access to users. From an improvement perspective, it would be great if a remote access functionality was added to BMC Client Management. I want something similar to Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) in BMC Client Management.

I have been using BMC Client Management for a year. I use BMC Client Management 20.x, and my company has a partnership with BMC.

I have not experienced any breakdowns when using BMC Client Management.

Three to four people in my company use BMC Client Management.

I have had reasons in the past to contact BMC Client Management's technical support team. I rate the technical support a seven out of ten.

Neutral

BMC Client Management is a tool that was already deployed in my company before my joining.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

I am unsure why my company chose BMC Client Management over other products in the market.

I recommend the solution to those who plan to use it since it is a good product while also considering that it is a client management tool.

I rate the overall tool a seven to eight out of ten.

My clients are mainly using BMC Client Management for patching.

BMC Client Management has helped us be able to patch our OS or any software to the latest version. It can be done agentless.

BMC Client Management could improve in the area of integration.

I have been using BMC Client Management for approximately two years.

The support from BMC Client Management is very good.

I rate the support from BMC Client Management a four out of five.

Positive

If you are planning on implementing BMC Client Management on-premise, then it can be complex. However, if you are planning to use the cloud version, then it will be easy, it takes 10 to 15 minutes to set up. The full deployment took approximately eight months.

We use the help from BMC Client Management for the deployment and third parties. We had five to six engineers that did the deployment.

To use BMC Client Management they charge annually per node.

I rate BMC Client Management an eight out of ten.

The primary use case of the solution is to deploy the software through plan management. It's used for patch management and software deployment.

The most valuable features of the solution are patch management and software license management. They audit because of the concerns with the software license. They might have to pay a fine to the respective organization. That's why software license management and patch management are widely used.

The solution could be improved with additional support. They have support for patching for Windows only. If they provide support for Linux patching as well, it would be good because many customers have Linux systems as well. In that case, it is quite difficult to patch those systems.

Also, additional support for mobile development, MDM. BMC Client Management supports only iOS devices. It would be good if they would support Android as well. Most of our organization is not using iOS, so the feature would not be used for most of the organization.

I have been working with BMC Client Management for over six years.

The are no issues with the stability of the solution; it's been good.

The scalability of the solution has been good enough.

Currently I'm working on BMC Client Management and there is a scope for BCM. Since BMC has provided this solution on cloud, now customers are preferring the solution.

I've had to work with the technical support, and it has been good.

The initial setup is straightforward. No complications. We can have single master server. It is really straightforward. 

Our license cost is very low.

There are multiple solutions we have compared, and BCM is low cost plus they have multiple features.

The solution provides multiple features in one place. They should provide features for other OS platforms, too. That is the only limitation we can see.

I have seen customers facing issues with client devices where most of the people who have access locally can install anything without any permission. Plus there are situations where some devices have been stolen by employees or anyone else. In that situation, it would be good if you can implement BMC Client Management end to end. Then you'll get relief from those painful areas.

I would rate the solution a nine out of ten.