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BMC Helix Discovery vs ManageEngine IT Asset Management 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
6.9
Number of Reviews
661
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)
ManageEngine IT Asset Manag...
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
IT Asset Management (8th), License Management (1st)
 

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.
Md Abdul Hakim - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at Corporate Projukti Limited
Helpful smart automation and tracking that can be used with minimal adjustments
This is a recording system, and it's an automation system. It's very smart. I use it with minimal adjustments needed. The focus is on test management. Everything can be tracked from asset management. Asset management offers many facilities. It doesn't require additional training for ManageEngine or technicians. Assets are simply reported from the dashboard, indicating where IT is missing, where compliance is mentioned, or where action is needed, with driver updates. All facilities are available in the enterprise edition, allowing users, customers, or any organization to easily obtain their referred insights. Anyone can easily install it. There are no handbells. An app provides instructions, with documentation available. Sometimes, IT issues arise like fraud blocking or service-related problems. Upon facing an issue, feedback is integrated, and the solution is provided from their end. This is a very IT-friendly solution. We get LiveSat and IT management. Facilities are accessible, like exporting the installation folder, making the migration process easy. Failover or redundancy can occur within two to five hours, making it scalable. This is a very stable solution.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Having no restriction for any single programming language is very useful."
"In terms of development for our developers, it is very easy and quick to learn because Automation Anywhere has provided an online academy where developers can easily learn the features. It is very easy. If someone does not have a coding background, they can also learn from it very easily because it is just drag and drop and very interactive."
"Automation Anywhere has not only my organization but several customers as well, particularly the organizations from the automobile industry, benefitted in their vision to transform their business objective towards the path of digital transformation."
"Automation Anywhere's support has been great since we signed up for gold support last year."
"Automation Anywhere (AA) is easy to use and understand, even if the user didn't have previous experience with RPA (robotic process automation) software before."
"It is easily understandable and very well structured."
"TestingAnywhere is a scriptless automation tool which is easy to learn and implement, with many effective features such as creating test cases using web recording, object recording, image recognition, Smart recording, or an editor."
"The support team responds quickly."
"The most valuable feature is the automated service mapping."
"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."
"The initial setup was quite easy."
"BMC Helix Discovery is very intuitive."
"It is important to have visibility of the complete infrastructure in one's organization."
"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."
"BMC Helix Discovery has delivered a very good return, and we cannot stop using it at this moment."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that it is easy to install and deploy."
"In my opinion, it is the MDM; patch management and deployment are the valuable features."
"The ability to define custom templates for asset management helps track assets, budgets, warranties, and expiries effectively."
"It's very smart. I use it with minimal adjustments needed."
"The technical support is great."
"We are satisfied with the product because each module is user-friendly, and we can customize it based on our organization's requirements."
"As far as IT Asset Management is concerned, I would rate it at ten out of ten."
"It is a great product, and we are very satisfied with the features."
"The auto-discovery feature has helped us a lot."
 

Cons

"We'd like to see more AI features."
"In the learning track, I was looking at the latest feature which is coming in A2019, which is very nice, because it is a web-based. So, we can do our development while sitting from anywhere. We don't need any type of installation. It's a web-based. Nowadays, everyone has the Internet."
"Our tool is a bit slow, as it's a legacy tool. Automation Anywhere is having some issues when running back."
"I think Automation Anywhere could be improved by addressing the learning curve, as it is a little complex to start using it, especially for people new to automation tools."
"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."
"The version that we are using has been difficult for us to code. As changes are very frequent, we have to make sure the code can be updated automatically so we don't have to make a change every time a user makes a change. Then, the user doesn't have to update us and we don't have to push a change to production. We have found a workaround with the help of the Automation Anywhere support people for this."
"The areas for room for improvement are always going to be around experience, making it even easier to get engaged, and get started. Because lowering that threshold to get started is what enables an additional set of problems to be solved."
"Better use case management to prevent each development from scratch would be an improvement."
"A review of end of life data would be nice."
"The license model could be more flexible and cheaper pricing."
"It would be nice to see more updates to the solution."
"There isn't much that could be improved. The solution is pretty thorough, very easy to implement, and very easy to operate."
"The support from BMC Helix Discovery can improve, it takes a long time before we receive any feedback. It can take days to months sometimes."
"BMC Helix Discovery needs more customization options."
"There is still room for improvement in terms of stability."
"I would like to see the ability to scan some of the newer cloud platforms."
"It would be helpful if there were a premium technician license that includes all the suites, eliminating the need to buy separate licenses for each feature."
"It requires some development to be better, more comfortable, and usable, enhancing customer satisfaction."
"However, the issue is that the knowledge base often shows information for older versions such as versions 12, 13, or 11, while we are working with ManageEngine IT Asset Management 15.1."
"The assets that can be discovered are pretty easy to manage, but there should be a better way to manage non-discoverable assets. Our development team works on bots and tests particular hardware. They have got different varieties of hardware. They want a feature for managing these assets within a warehouse kind of environment. For example, our IT has received 100 items, and they have assigned these items as a bulk unit to a project manager. The project manager further wants to distribute these items within his or her team. Instead of maintaining a separate Excel sheet, the project manager should be able to reallocate these items from within the tool so that we have hierarchical entities for the same unit."
"The engineering area needs improvement."
"Currently, we are having some challenges in managing assets. We are still managing them in Excel sheets and keeping a track of them outside the system."
"Responses from ManageEngine should be faster."
"The asset management tool is costly compared to other tools in the market."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Annual licensing costs would be about $100,000."
"Additional costs will be for the machines and the number of machines that you are using. You can deploy virtually as well as on physical machines. In both the situations, you do need to allocate a certain budget for securing the machines and where the software will be installed and running. The machines cannot be used for anything else, because only a certain bot can run at a certain time. You need to be very particular about your scheduling of running the bots, and while the bot is running nobody can use the machine. You cannot have an agent working on a machine and the bot running in the background. It has to be completely dedicated. Then there are the network bandwidth requirements and space requirements, which are additional costs apart from the licensing and software costs. The developer is also going to charge you for their coding time too."
"The Community Edition is a good offering from the company."
"It's cheaper than other similar solutions."
"This is a value for the money product."
"We have saved customers 400% in terms of time saved by implementing this product."
"One of the things that will be good for the community will be to get the free version to download, which came out just a month ago called Community Edition. So, you can actually download it and try it for yourself."
"Despite being less expensive than UiPath, Automation Anywhere remains cost-prohibitive for many small and medium-sized businesses."
"The solution offers yearly licenses."
"Operating cost is actually high compared to other products, actually. It's a little expensive only, but it's very good than other products."
"I've heard that the solution was expensive earlier but is now much cheaper than its competitors."
"The licensing fee is very low."
"The licenses are very complex and quite costly."
"We have a perpetual license for the solution."
"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."
"BMC is available for a reasonable price compared to ServiceNow — it's half the price."
"Its price is reasonable, but I wish it was lower."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business161
Midsize Enterprise82
Large Enterprise558
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise2
 

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 ManageEngine IT Asset Management?
The pricing of ManageEngine IT Asset Management is publicly available, so customers can verify its fairness. Some com...
What needs improvement with ManageEngine IT Asset Management?
When we encounter issues with ManageEngine IT Asset Management, we check the online portal or ChatGPT, and they provi...
What advice do you have for others considering ManageEngine IT Asset Management?
The pricing of ManageEngine IT Asset Management is handled by the management team, so I am not involved with that asp...
 

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)
TRA
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC Helix Discovery vs. ManageEngine IT Asset Management and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,924 professionals have used our research since 2012.