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BMC Helix Discovery vs FireMon Asset Manager comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

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

Automation Anywhere
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
668
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (2nd), Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (2nd), Process Mining (1st), Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) (1st), Agentic Automation (1st), Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies (2nd), AI Legal & Compliance (1st), AI Finance & Accounting (2nd), AI Procurement & Supply Chain (1st)
BMC Helix Discovery
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
IT Asset Management (10th)
FireMon Asset Manager
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (14th), IT Asset Management (11th), Cyber Asset Attack Surface Management (CAASM) (6th)
 

Featured Reviews

Venkat Sivaprakash - PeerSpot reviewer
Management Consultant at Accenture
Has significantly improved document-driven workflows and reduced processing time across finance and HR functions
Automation Anywhere has evolved significantly and upgraded itself to provide agentic AI and AI-based automation solutions for document automation. The product has matured considerably over time. We can create workflows that can call an API. We can include prompts in particular workflows for ChatGPT-related functions, connecting to an LLM and RAG to perform tasks. For document automation, modern features are available to train documents, ensuring high accuracy and repeatability over time. The system is very easy to use. I recently completed a course in document automation, typically designed for people involved in coding and technical aspects. Though I understand coding comprehensively, I don't do actual coding. The course was very accessible. Currently, extensive coding isn't necessary due to the hybrid model incorporating GenAI aspects, low-code, no-code capabilities, APIs, and numerous pre-built objects in Automation Anywhere. The features include GenAI-driven prompting methods and workflow creation capabilities. In these workflows, we can create decision boxes and call APIs without coding. We simply pull objects, drop them, connect them, and add minimal coding when needed. The most crucial aspect isn't coding but rather sizing the automation and fleshing out the details. Automation Co-pilot takes notes and performs automated analysis. It can extract details from videos, summarize conversations, and provide detailed information. During calls, it identifies instructions and performs tasks such as preparing reports and reconciliation. Automation Anywhere can also connect with Microsoft Co-pilot. Through Co-pilot, real-time operations can be executed, allowing direct interaction between vendors and automation through this component.
JP
Presales Manager at HCLSoftware
Comprehensive discovery has populated our CMDB and provides deep insight into asset relationships
The applicability depends on the customer environment. Usually it is straightforward to apply the policies. BMC Helix Discovery is seamless and has many plugins available. It is a good feature that they offer. I have heard about it, but I am not currently using it, though I know that they have that feature available. BMC Helix Discovery provides a lot of information that can be obtained from discovery, including the relationship between the CIs and how many CIs are orphans. The analytics capabilities are strong.
MC
Business Continuity And Disaster Recovery Manager at Cadence Bank
Continuous asset discovery has strengthened audits and BCDR planning but reporting needs improvement
FireMon Asset Manager supports my disaster recovery and business continuity planning through continuous real-time discovery, which is the foundation of everything. The fact that it's not a point-in-time scan, but ongoing, passive and active discovery, means my inventory is always current. That's what makes it useful for BCDR, where stale data is dangerous. The best features FireMon Asset Manager offers include leak path detection, which is genuinely valuable. It identifies rogue internet connectivity, unauthorized connections, and paths in and out of the network that shouldn't exist. In a bank, that's both a security concern and a BCDR concern because undocumented network paths create recovery risks I don't know I have. The topology mapping is also excellent. Being able to visualize how assets connect to each other and to the network helps my BCDR team understand dependencies between systems, which is critical for sequencing recovery procedures correctly. If I'm recovering a system, I need to know what it depends on and what depends on it. FireMon Asset Manager has positively impacted my organization primarily on our audit and examination posture. Before FireMon Asset Manager, when examiners asked about our asset inventory, I was presenting data I knew had gaps and hoping nobody looked too closely. Now I can walk into an examination with a continuously updated, discovery-validated asset inventory and answer those questions with confidence. That's a qualitative shift, but it has real consequences. Examination findings in banking are not trivial. This shift has led to measurable outcomes, such as reducing the time to compile our annual BIA asset inventory from roughly three weeks of manual effort down to essentially a report pull. That's significant staff time saved. I've also seen our CMDB accuracy improve. FireMon Asset Manager's continuous discovery keeps finding things that manual processes miss. And from a regulatory standpoint, I've had two examinations since deploying FireMon Asset Manager, and in both cases, the asset inventory questions that were previously a weakness in our program were answered cleanly. That's the metric that matters most in a regulated banking environment.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Automation Anywhere is frequently releasing new features to their product. I find this amazing as they provide frequent product updates, introducing new features to the frameworks and similar aspects."
"This solution allows us to more fully automate our clients' specific tools."
"Earlier users were converting the unstructured data from the PDF into the structured format to process the task but now, this activity is replaced by IQ Bot."
"Bots add a lot of productivity and value to our business, because a robot can work for 24/7. They work a lot better, as compared to a human being, specifically for tasks which are repetitive in nature."
"In terms of monetary savings, we automated a bot in three days that has saved us $30,000 in costs."
"With IQ Bot, we can now include cognitive automation into our process. The cognitive document processing is pretty good with IQ Bot."
"With Agentic capability, you can actually do those things; it has memory, it has access to tools, and it can do the job on our behalf as opposed to just telling us what to do."
"There are quite a few very strong features available to users."
"The solution is very stable and powerful."
"BMC Helix Discovery is very intuitive."
"The initial setup is simple."
"It is agentless, which means you don't have to install anything on all the different pieces of hardware that you are looking to discover."
"I'd recommend BMC Helix Discovery to others because I've been working with it for the last eight years and my experience with it has been good."
"We have seen a return on our investment many times over."
"Weekly reports to management really make our life simple."
"The most valuable feature of BMC Helix Discovery is it operates well. It is well known and has gained recognition for its software."
"FireMon Asset Manager supports my disaster recovery and business continuity planning through continuous real-time discovery, which is the foundation of everything."
"FireMon Asset Manager fills a genuine gap in network security visibility that many organizations underestimate."
"Now I can walk into an examination with a continuously updated, discovery-validated asset inventory, and I can answer those questions with confidence."
"The most valuable aspects of FireMon Asset Manager are its integrations and its ability to passively monitor the network for unknown assets."
"The most valuable feature is the change modules. Whenever there is a change in the firewall, it automatically reflects on FireMon."
"It offers a single platform for managing firewalls of different brands and simplifies policy deployment and auditing. It helps push policies to different firewalls, and it also helps with policy auditing."
 

Cons

"When we need to upgrade the bot version for various applications like SAP, the compatibility issues could be easier to resolve. The financial team is using version 5 or 6, but the automation engineer recommends only version 6 because it is more compatible. I think Automation Anywhere could handle these compatibility issues better."
"I would suggest adding more fields while calling in API. There is no option to generate Authentication token within the Bot."
"Automation Anywhere is a technical application. It is not so easy for a regular user. It requires technical knowledge."
"If I want to do something that is more purely business-related and is somewhat complex to write or is nuanced, I sometimes have trouble implementing that inside of the Automation Anywhere script. I feel limited at times with some of the looping and some of the branching and some of the ways to make procedure calls when I have a complex business issue."
"We would like to have a better debugging facility."
"The AI Sense functionality is what I believe can be improved since when I tried to use it for automating a use case involving a Citrix Virtual Machine, it was unable to capture objects consistently."
"Automation with bots runs fine only if it is an attended bot. With unattended bots, the bots run only 25 to 30 percent of the time."
"Automation Anywhere should add a couple of commands which will help most developers not to always use a script, a good example is in String operations."
"The query language is somewhat challenging to learn. It uses a Berkeley database, and the query language is not easy to master for performing complex queries."
"While I consider the solution to be good, it should better be able to integrate with other solutions."
"BMC Helix Discovery needs more customization options."
"The solution's scalability is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are needed."
"I would like to see the ability to scan some of the newer cloud platforms. I know that BMC has them on the roadmap, and they are coming soon, but they can't come fast enough. Being able to scan more of GCloud, Alibaba Cloud, or whatever the public clouds that our customers are buying, we need to make sure that Discovery can find them as well."
"There isn't much that could be improved. The solution is pretty thorough, very easy to implement, and very easy to operate."
"A review of end of life data would be nice."
"The improvement I want to see is a reduction in duplicate records."
"FireMon Asset Manager can be improved in reporting customization, which is more limited than I'd prefer."
"The discovery process could be improved. If incorrect credentials are entered, it should give an error message. That would make our work easy rather than having to troubleshoot why the issue is occurring."
"The biggest friction point or frustration I have encountered with FireMon Asset Manager is the support experience being inconsistent."
"While passive discovery remains important, active retrieval of asset details would be valuable, and this functionality is starting to be implemented, as I've observed in recent updates but it is not fully there yet."
"I find that FireMon Asset Manager's reporting customization is more limited than I would like."
"It is not very good at monitoring the Check Point firewall, but it works very well with other firewalls such as Palo Alto, Fortinet, and Cisco ASA."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is not cheap, but we are able to get an ROI."
"I don't know exactly what the pricing schemes are for the product as this type of negotiation is not my responsibility, but I think the basic pricing comes to $15,000."
"I am using that Automation Anywhere Master Certification for version 11. Recently, this has been updated in Automation Anywhere University. Until this month, it's free to use. There are no charges. That's why I would like to complete it this month."
"Whatever investment, licensing, and resource costs together are put in for development and delivery, we are still at an ROI of 250 percent."
"It is affordable for us."
"The cost is at the highest end of the spectrum."
"I do not know the price, but I am told that it is cheaper than UiPath."
"Automation Anywhere is reasonably priced because it can sustain us for a long period."
"You need a license to use BMC Helix Discovery. The license is paid yearly, though I have no idea how much it costs."
"We are on a three-year agreement with BMC Helix Discovery to use the solution. There are not any additional fees other than the standard license."
"We have a perpetual license for the solution."
"The solution offers yearly licenses."
"BMC is available for a reasonable price compared to ServiceNow — it's half the price."
"I rate the pricing an eight out of ten. All BMC products are expensive."
"The price was fair compared to competitors. BMC is very affordable. There are optional consulting services to assist with implementation."
"The licensing fee is very low."
"FireMon Asset Manager's pricing has been reasonable and has worked well for us from a licensing standpoint."
"FireMon is more expensive than other brands but justified by its comprehensive feature set. It includes several functions that might require additional subscriptions in other solutions."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Outsourcing Company
23%
Comms Service Provider
19%
Media Company
10%
Insurance Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business162
Midsize Enterprise86
Large Enterprise564
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
It depends on your use case. Is it simply to automate a couple of processes? Is it to augment a human team? AA is ver...
How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
From my experience using AA tool, it depends on the applications that you want to automate, because there some applic...
How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
It is a highly preferred RPA tool. You can check my Automation Anywhere Review to know more.
What needs improvement with BMC Helix Discovery?
The interface is quite old and can be outdated.
What is your primary use case for BMC Helix Discovery?
BMC Helix Discovery is used for discovery of the assets and configuration items so that you can populate the CMDB.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FireMon Asset Manager?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing reveals that it's not inexpensive. The license cost is manageab...
What needs improvement with FireMon Asset Manager?
The biggest friction point or frustration I have encountered with FireMon Asset Manager is the support experience bei...
What is your primary use case for FireMon Asset Manager?
My main use case for FireMon Asset Manager is continuous network asset discovery and visibility. We have a complex hy...
 

Also Known As

Automation Anywhere, Testing Anywhere, Automation Anywhere Enterprise, Agentic Process Automation System (Now Certified for WorkSpaces)
Discovery, ADDM, Atrium Discovery & Dependency Mapping
No data available
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Google, Linkedin, Cisco, Juniper Networks, DellEMC, Comcast, Mastercard, Quest Diagnostics
Windstream Communications, News UK, Mercator Group, Wageningen University and Research Centre (WUR)
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC Helix Discovery vs. FireMon Asset Manager and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
919,894 professionals have used our research since 2012.