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BMC Helix Discovery vs CA Asset Portfolio 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
6.8
Number of Reviews
665
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)
CA Asset Portfolio Management
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
IT Asset Management (15th), License Management (3rd)
 

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.
reviewer1998918 - PeerSpot reviewer
Enterprise systems management team lead
Integrates well, highly stable, and scalable
CA Asset Portfolio Management can improve the uploading of batch information. I have to upload large amounts of information and it can take a long time to finish. There are some other solutions that are better, such as Micro Focus. We have approximately 10,000 PCs that we are busy processing and we have to upload information to them but when we use this solution it is complex. When we use Micro Focus it is better.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We've had many sit-down conversations with the Automation Anywhere team when we were testing out the document automation. We gave them feedback about potential enhancements, so when we launched our most recent document automation use case, the capabilities were already there. We didn't need to come up with a workaround or put the project on hold because the things we needed were unavailable. That commitment to customer success stands out because they know that without us, the product won't succeed."
"It has allowed us to generate additional revenue without having to hire additional people."
"The recorders are highly beneficial when automating web scraping or web automation tasks."
"Comparing Automation Anywhere with other tools for RPA, in my opinion, it is better because it is easier to use for both the final user and the developer."
"Automation Anywhere is easy to use and user-friendly due to its intuitive interface and straightforward implementation architecture, making it accessible even for those without a technical background."
"This is a solution that I recommend."
"It has provided our organization a lot of benefits, as we have reduced our headcount, approximately 200 to 300 employees, by eliminating manual, repetitive work and providing profit to the business."
"It has helped us to save a lot of FTEs for our solutions that we have provided to our companies. Suppose a job which was done by a group of eight to nine people on a daily basis for 24 hours was taking a lot of time, so we created a bot with Automation Anywhere. It was done with a bot working 24/7. It reduced the numbers of guys required to do that process."
"BMC Helix Discovery comprehends the infrastructure you've procured and deployed within your environment."
"Accuracy and clarity are vastly improved for the service lines."
"It is important to have visibility of the complete infrastructure in one's organization."
"It is a stable solution. The stability is okay."
"BMC Helix Discovery is very intuitive."
"A valuable feature concerns the ability to integrate with different solutions."
"The ability of BMC Helix Discovery to save time and money for customers is all about resolution times and first fixes, linking heavily to the CMDB and ensuring that you have good clean data."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of CA Asset Portfolio Management is the full integration with our Service Desk, as it allows us to work both sides of life cycle management."
"They're staying up to date as vendors make changes to how they want to manage the software. CA is usually really quick about getting those updates in the system."
"It's easy to integrate with our system information."
"It enables us to make better business and financial decisions."
"You build the items one time and then you have your discovery that's coming in and the system will let you know whether or not you're out of compliance."
"My organization now understands what type of products they have: warranties, how long the warranties last, depreciation; we never really knew what our depreciation values were, so it was really nice to have that on hand as well, and it gives us a better view of our hardware, which is really beneficial."
"You could also look for software that is no longer being used and you can re-deploy the software, so then you save from a purchasing standpoint because you don't have to buy the software again."
"Cost, time, and risks that relate to auditing of compliance are greatly reduced with the use of IT asset manager."
 

Cons

"The certification exam for AA is not as per the training videos, as the questions are more scenario-based, which makes it very hard for beginners to clear the exam after just tutorial knowledge."
"The product needs to catch up to the promise of known technology and apply more intelligent behaviors concerning AI or unstructured learning."
"For order processing, I would say that it is not very much time-saving because it is also taking time to extract and process, but it is giving us freedom in that the people who are doing the repetitive task are not doing that repetitive task now, and they are doing something else, maybe validation or something more productive."
"I feel a lack of convenience when I try to scale it."
"The local support in Brazil could improve. While it has gotten better in the last few months, we've struggled as a global company trying to contact them sometimes."
"AA has many features but the issue is with the loss of overhead on computing resources. For example, if the bot is encrypted, the bot should decrypt it first then act accordingly. If there are issues with the logic in the bot, there will be a lot of computer memory overload. There should be an additional feature for cloud functionality."
"It should be easier to use."
"Right now, we are using a VM with Automation Anywhere installed inside it, but it would be nice if the solution could be used on macOS."
"An area that can be improved is the IoT."
"There isn't much that could be improved. The solution is pretty thorough, very easy to implement, and very easy to operate."
"What would make BMC Helix Discovery better is if it had more client-side discovery features, for example, printers and desktops."
"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."
"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."
"The interface is quite old and can be outdated."
"The solution's scalability is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are needed."
"A review of end of life data would be nice."
"The UI, even though they upgraded the UI, it's still kind of dated, it's a little bit convoluted to use. It's not like something that you can sit down and automatically understand how to use it."
"It needs ​stronger rebooting components and the ability to develop our own software metrics."
"I'd like to see end-of-life information on software products."
"Very complex to setup with Human Resource, help desk, procurement, and supply chain systems."
"There were a lot of things that we had to prepare for that we weren't thinking about with this installation. I think from a CA standpoint, the software was good. But us preparing for that, we had a lot more work to do."
"IT asset manager is very complex when integrated with other systems like HR, help desk, procurement and supply chain systems."
"Needs a stronger reporting component, and more integration with CA Client Automation."
"CA Asset Portfolio Management can improve the uploading of batch information. I have to upload large amounts of information and it can take a long time to finish. There are some other solutions that are better, such as Micro Focus."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is expensive. Automation Anywhere has reduced the price slightly, as we have grown. However, the price is still excessive enough that we are engaged in PoCs on other tools."
"They all are very competitive today. At the end of the day, it boils down to the negotiations that happen and what type of partner you are."
"We would like them to change the license model of charging per bot."
"Based on what I've heard, it's costly, but I don't know much about its pricing."
"If you look at the capital expenditure, Automation Anywhere is number two to UiPath. But if you take a long-term view, on a scalable model of a large number of bots coming out, it slowly goes on to become the costliest tool. There is something they can do about that. The capital expenditure goes out right at the point of buying the tool. For Automation Anywhere, I would need to spend $20,000. UiPath can give me something for $6,000, while Blue Prism will come in at $300,000."
"I don't agree with the IQ Bot licensing costs, which depends on the consumption of the document rather than per bot or user. This is confusing for me, because most of the cases for us in a possible future scenario, there would be a lot of invalid data to be scanned to get to real data. E.g., we would have to supply approximately 100 pages of scanned data to extract two pages of original data. In these type of cases, the IQ Bot might be a costly venture."
"The licensing fees are approximately $10,000 USD for between five and ten users."
"It's fine. However, I'm concerned with the credits in terms of the pricing for the AI models. It is understandable that the new ones are more expensive, but the base models, after doing the pricing conversion, cost about four to ten times as much as paying directly."
"The licensing fee is very low."
"The price was fair compared to competitors. BMC is very affordable. There are optional consulting services to assist with implementation."
"I rate the pricing an eight out of ten. All BMC products are expensive."
"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."
"I've heard that the solution was expensive earlier but is now much cheaper than its competitors."
"Operating cost is actually high compared to other products, actually. It's a little expensive only, but it's very good than other products."
"We have a perpetual license for the solution."
"You need a license to use BMC Helix Discovery. The license is paid yearly, though I have no idea how much it costs."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Outsourcing Company
23%
Construction Company
18%
Healthcare Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business161
Midsize Enterprise86
Large Enterprise562
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Large Enterprise8
 

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.
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Also Known As

Automation Anywhere, Testing Anywhere, Automation Anywhere Enterprise, Agentic Process Automation System (Now Certified for WorkSpaces)
Discovery, ADDM, Atrium Discovery & Dependency Mapping
CA IT Asset Manager, CA Asset Manager, ITAM, IT Asset Manager, CA SAM, CA Software Asset Manager, Asset Portfolio Management, Asset Portfolio Manager
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
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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)
First Horizon National Corporation, Logicalis, Racing and Wagering Western Australia
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC Helix Discovery vs. CA Asset Portfolio Management and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
917,433 professionals have used our research since 2012.