What is our primary use case?
My main use case for BMC Helix Enterprise Service Management is related to the environment; once I provide feedback, it's helpful if your environment needs this service to serve it. BMC Helix Enterprise Service Management portal is divided into multiple services, including Discovery, workflow, ITSM, BHOM, dashboard, and service monitoring, all powered by AI. I have worked on all of these features, which has helped me. We use ITSM in our company to solve the ticketing system for support tickets, and there are workflows opened from divisions like financial and sales that are very helpful. The Discovery tool helps discover all your assets in your company, making it necessary for collaboration between your servers and services.
Out of all those services, I mainly interact with the BHOM part day-to-day, where I work on the events that trigger the services and servers based on the threshold monitored by the monitor policy and the alarm policy. I also follow up with service monitoring. If there is any event opened or an incident occurred, it gets flagged based on these policies. The AI features help predict future issues with the server or service, such as potential thresholds being reached after a few hours. Therefore, I am mainly dedicated to BHOM.
One unique aspect of my workflow with BMC Helix Enterprise Service Management is that the dashboard reflects results from the BHOM, as well as from Discovery and service monitoring. Before using BHOM, it's important to have a good Discovery to know all your assets, as this assists in monitoring your services effectively.
What is most valuable?
The best features of BMC Helix Enterprise Service Management depend on what your environment needs, as different companies might only require the dashboard or just Discovery without BHOM, ITSM, or workflow.
Personally, the most valuable features for my environment include BHOM, service monitoring, and the dashboard. The Discovery tool is necessary but works best in tandem with BHOM and service monitoring to establish reliable monitoring and insights into my environment.
BMC Helix Enterprise Service Management has positively impacted my organization by sending event alerts. For instance, if I monitor a server with disk thresholds, an email alert notifies the end user when storage is reaching its maximum capacity, which is extremely helpful.
By receiving alerts and emails ahead of time, I have noticed reductions in downtime. For example, monitoring a Hyper-V environment allows me to keep an eye on the Cluster Shared Volume (CSV). When the CSV nears capacity, I can take action before an outage occurs, which has been crucial for system stability.
What needs improvement?
BMC Helix Enterprise Service Management could use improvements on the dashboard; having a ready-to-use dashboard that just needs asset information instead of building one from scratch would be helpful. The lack of templates for dashboards and limited email notification customization are also areas needing attention.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using BMC Helix Enterprise Service Management for one year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
In my experience, BMC Helix Enterprise Service Management is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability of BMC Helix Enterprise Service Management is good, as it grows with our organization's needs.
How are customer service and support?
I have had positive experiences with customer support, having worked with both third-party teams and the BMC support team, including escalating cases to the R&D team which have been resolved successfully.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I did not use any solution before BMC Helix Enterprise Service Management, but I worked with a company that used ManageEngine, which is also good. I am familiar with other tools such as SolarWinds and Zabbix, but my primary experience is with ManageEngine.
What was our ROI?
I have seen a return on investment, especially in terms of time saved. For instance, developing metrics to monitor disk capacity prevents potential disasters.
What other advice do I have?
I do not have any advice for others looking into using BMC Helix Enterprise Service Management, as I have provided all the information I have. I do not have any additional thoughts about BMC Helix Enterprise Service Management before we wrap up. I rate this product an 8 out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.