No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

BMC Helix CMDB vs Device42 comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

BMC Helix CMDB
Ranking in Configuration Management Databases
6th
Average Rating
9.2
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Device42
Ranking in Configuration Management Databases
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
IT Asset Management (5th), IP Address Management (IPAM) Tools (3rd), Data Center Infrastructure Management (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Configuration Management Databases category, the mindshare of BMC Helix CMDB is 8.6%, down from 9.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Device42 is 26.8%, up from 21.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Configuration Management Databases Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Device4226.8%
BMC Helix CMDB8.6%
Other64.6%
Configuration Management Databases
 

Featured Reviews

Yousef Bayari - PeerSpot reviewer
ITSM Consultant at Smart IT Service
Serves as a repository for storing configuration items, encompassing both physical and logical entities
The main feature is the relational model database, where you define relationships between CIs. Being able to establish CI relationships and building a service model is a key aspect of CMDB. Additionally, the traditional features of asset management, such as tracking assets through attributes, location, and ownership (both organizational and individual), are also part of it. On top of these, the CI model, which handles relationships and service models, is pivotal.
Manmohan Rao - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Vice President at Hitachi Systems India Private Limited
Granular discovery has ensured confident workload migration and optimized cloud move group planning
Device42 offers the best features for workload assessment, particularly useful for cloud-to-cloud workload or on-premise data center workload, especially when planning for workload migration to the public cloud. For application and infrastructure discovery, Device42 has enabled me to know the number of machines running in the on-premise environment and has managed to capture complete utilization metrics or trends of their utilization. This has benefited me in right-sizing systems for my public cloud total cost of ownership (TCO) planning, providing me granularity to right-size these systems while planning a migration to the public cloud. Device42 has positively impacted my organization by providing granularity toward application discovery compared to other assessment tools, which is a differentiator since none of the other tools provide such granularity, leading to better decision-making for my migration to the public cloud. Device42 has improved my migration projects by providing granularity around system dependencies that gave me confidence knowing which systems communicate with each other parked in a particular move group. My move group planning became so robust that I am not leaving any system behind in the on-premise data center from my planning, which saves a lot of time and effort, leading to cost optimization—a value addition.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Over the years, we have progressed to have close to a real-time up-to-date view into the assets in our environment."
"The rules functionality makes it easier to classify data for different groups."
"The main feature is the relational model database, where you define relationships between CIs. Being able to establish CI relationships and building a service model is a key aspect of CMDB."
"Atrium CMDB is a great solution for having all your networks mapped into it."
"This solution has improved our tracking."
"Atrium Integrator​ allows me to manage my data, with regular updates, etc. and integrate with multiple systems."
"The most valuable features of BMC Atrium CMDB are its ease to build new classes. For example, let's say there are types of CIs or efforts that do not exist in BMC Atrium CMDB. You can create your own and their relationship to existing classes."
"It allows me to easily manage my data: Cleanse, load, and report on it."
"Device42 is a fantastic tool for workload discovery, and I believe everyone should start using it if they have plans to do so; it is a top-notch tool in the market."
"Device42 will be our single point of truth, and only Device42."
"The Insights+ component is useful for us because it does business application mapping and helps us visualize it. It saves us time because we don't have to hunt for data."
"A big plus for Device42 was the auto-discovery. With it, we have updated devices, updated systems, and up-to-date systems."
"The topology layout is the most valuable feature."
"The solution is agentless."
"The asset inventory is great because previously we had devices all over the place. We have been able to do multiscans to find devices that we didn't know about, which was great."
"Device42 has positively impacted my organization by helping us lead successful migration and transformation projects, and I have successfully completed cloud movement implementation from standard data center deployments to the cloud."
 

Cons

"We would like a more efficient impact analysis feature to be developed for this product; at present it takes a lot of time to identify the risk and its impact."
"Looking for a more streamlined interface; one that matches the other parts of the BMC Remedy product line."
"There could be a provision in the back end to ensure unique collections and avoid duplicate services."
"Recently, improvements have been more focused on the interface side."
"We would like the service modelling functionality of this solution to be improved."
"I am just waiting for the new release with the new enhanced UI."
"BMC Atrium CMDB could improve if they had a cloud version and made the interface better."
"If they could make it so their remote connector could do as much as 10,000 devices, that would be better."
"The only thing which I have noticed so far that is not good is that we had an issue with some reporting from the tool, reporting we had to export. We couldn't do it in the way we wanted to, so we tried to reach out to their support but it took pretty long until we understood how we can manage the reports. We still haven't received a complete explanation of what we need to do and how to do it."
"It gets a bit confusing sometimes when you're trying to map things to a certain spot when you are trying to configure it."
"I think the graphical representation of all associated machines needs improvement to better illustrate how these systems have dependencies on each other."
"The solution’s automatic IT asset discovery and inventory functionality functions pretty well. There could be some improvement if there were some automated scripts to get it off the ground. I know it takes a bit of effort to get all of various managed devices into one place. We have to go and change how they are managed and make sure they are all linking up correctly so they can be tracked in Device42. Some type of automated script for each to get over that initial activation."
"Device42 is a main part of our processes. We need reliability, not only in terms of the data but with the solution itself."
"A con for Device42 is that Kubernetes integration is lacking. You pay for 10,000 spot licenses and if you're spinning up a Kubernetes cluster, or four or five or six Kubernetes clusters like we do, you're going to have 5,000 or 6,000 nodes in each of those, doing different types of business things."
"For the iPhone, the device diagram cannot be downloaded. You have to go to each device and download the device diagram for that device. E.g., suppose there are a 1000 or 2000 servers. You cannot go to each server or device to download a device diagram for each device. There should be a one-click solution for downloading all device diagrams."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"CMDB is more expensive than one of its competitors."
"It's in the top-three most expensive solutions in terms of cost, but it has all the features that are needed."
"We pay $100,000 per year."
"I am not involved in its pricing, but I have seen their plans during a discussion with the customer. For 500 servers, they were asking 50,000 USD. The cost of BMC Discovery was less than half. For the same thing, they were charging only 10,000 USD. Its pricing needs to be improved. As compared to other discovery tools, such as BMC Discovery and ServiceNow Discovery, its price is a little bit higher."
"On a yearly basis, our licensing is $10,000. However, our license is now nearly full with devices. We need the next bigger license with 5,000 devices, which will cost us $19,000. We pay for a set of licenses, a maximum number of devices, and a maximum number of IP addresses. We have the smallest amount of features, which is enough for us at this time."
"Functionality-wise, Device42 is on par with industry standards, but price-wise, the solution is expensive. I'm rating the pricing for the solution as eight out of ten."
"The product cost is low. It is quite cheap."
"Our licensing costs are on a yearly basis."
"The problem with using other vendor, like BMC, is the pricing. The price is so horrible and nobody wants to pay this money."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Configuration Management Databases solutions are best for your needs.
902,270 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Healthcare Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise20
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Device42?
The pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Device42 are relatively cost-effective and affordable. I do not know if a small organization would be able to afford it, but I presume it would also be co...
What needs improvement with Device42?
I think Device42 can be improved by adding more features around the CMDB aspect and lifecycle management. I do not think many people use it for that functionality, but if they were to expand the su...
What is your primary use case for Device42?
My main use case for Device42 is that we use it as a CMDB and affinity map to check out network topology or determine when we need to decom something in a life cycle. We use it for many different p...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Atrium CMDB
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Brookfield
Computershare, Concur, Doosan, Fitch Ratings Inc., Fujitsu, HomeAway, Jasper Wireless, Mercedes-Benz, Square, Twitch, UCSB, Zayo Group Inc.
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC Helix CMDB vs. Device42 and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,270 professionals have used our research since 2012.