Why BMC Helix Discovery Reigns Supreme

In the vast, often bewildering landscape of enterprise IT, finding a tool that can map your entire infrastructure—across public, private, and hybrid clouds, data centers, and everything in between—is like finding a unicorn. But guess what? BMC Helix Discovery is that unicorn. It doesn’t just find your assets; it uncovers hidden connections, maps dependencies, and gives you the power to understand your entire ecosystem with one tool. Let’s see why BMC Helix Discovery is leagues ahead of the competition, with some juicy details on protocols, patterns, and other capabilities.

Why BMC Helix Discovery eats the competition for breakfast

BMC Helix Discovery does more than just basic asset discovery; it also gives you a real-time, 360-degree view of your IT infrastructure, making it the Swiss Army knife of discovery tools. Let’s compare how it measures up against the competition.

Protocols that go the distance

Let’s be honest: a discovery tool is only as good as the protocols it supports. BMC Helix Discovery doesn’t mess around here. It supports a treasure trove of protocols, which means it can dig into every corner of your IT universe:

• Private cloud protocols: For on-premises systems, BMC supports SSH, SNMP, WMI, JDBC, PowerShell, and even NMAP. Translation? It’ll sniff out every operating system, application, database, container, server hardware, and network device you have. It also covers VMware and OpenStack, so you get deep visibility into virtualized environments.
• Public cloud protocols: BMC leverages IP, REST and SOAP APIs to discover assets in AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and IBM Cloud.

The secret sauce: BMC’s legendary pattern library and blueprints

BMC Helix Discovery’s secret weapon is its powerful pattern library and blueprints. Together, they’re like a detailed roadmap and toolkit rolled into one, helping IT teams understand what’s in their infrastructure and how it all connects. Let’s break down why this is important, what a pattern actually is, and why BMC’s library goes above and beyond the competition.

What’s in a pattern?

In the world of IT discovery, a pattern is essentially a preset, rules-based approach that tells the discovery tool how to identify specific types of assets, dependencies, or configurations. Patterns aren’t just lists; they’re also step-by-step instructions for recognizing, mapping, and analyzing every nook and cranny of your environment. Think of them as a set of fingerprints for each asset type—whether that’s a cloud instance, a mainframe component, or a storage solution. Patterns allow BMC Helix Discovery to precisely identify and map everything from commercial off the shelf (COTS) to custom software.

BMC’s pattern library is remarkably comprehensive. With over 1,300 patterns (updated monthly), it’s like having a superpower for recognizing your assets. Here’s a peek at what’s inside:

• Applications and middleware: Patterns for major middleware platforms (think Apache, IBM^® WebSphere^®, and Oracle^® WebLogic), along with databases, web servers, and more. The library dives deep into the backend, so you’re not left with just a “surface scan.”
• Operating systems and hardware: Patterns for Windows, Linux^®, UNIX^®, IBM AIX^®, IBM z/OS^®, and more. Plus, it covers network devices from all the big players: Cisco, Juniper, HP—you name it.
• Storage and virtualization: Patterns for storage solutions, hypervisors, and converged infrastructure components.
• Cloud services: Patterns specifically for AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and IBM Cloud, making sure you get a full view of your cloud-native assets, including serverless instances that other tools might miss.

Why patterns are the backbone of BMC Helix Discovery

The richer and more detailed a pattern library, the more accurately and completely a tool can identify what’s in your environment. Here’s why this matters:

1. Accuracy: Patterns provide the instructions that allow BMC Helix Discovery to recognize assets and their relationships, accurately identifying devices, applications, and even more nuanced dependencies within complex architectures. A well-developed pattern library, like ours, can discern subtle variations, which means fewer blind spots and more accurate mapping.
2. Automation: With our patterns, discovery of assets and dependencies is highly automated. Instead of manually adding assets or dependencies, the patterns of BMC Helix Discovery do the heavy lifting. This frees up your IT team from labor-intensive manual processes and results in greater real-time accuracy.
3. Coverage: With the largest pattern library of any vendor, updated monthly, BMC Helix Discovery covers a vast array of asset types across cloud, mainframe, on-premises, and hybrid environments. Competitors offer far fewer, which means they’re more likely to miss critical assets or configurations, especially in evolving tech environments. Our library is also future-proof, updated each month to cover new hardware, software, and services.

In contrast, our competitors face challenges in achieving this level of coverage due to their more limited and infrequently updated pattern libraries. It’s like bringing a tricycle to a Formula 1 race.

The BMC blueprint advantage

Alongside its robust pattern library, BMC Helix Discovery includes blueprints—predefined templates for recognizing and mapping common architectures and services. These blueprints act as a “quick-start” guide, offering structured layouts and relationships between assets for complex systems like microservices, databases, and multi-cloud configurations. Here’s why blueprints are a game-changer:

• Speed and simplicity: Blueprints speed discovery. Instead of building models from scratch, IT teams can use blueprints as a launchpad, then customize as needed, saving time and reducing complexity.
• Consistency: Blueprints provide a standardized way to represent complex architectures, ensuring consistent mapping across environments and teams, which is invaluable for organizations with multiple teams or regions.
• Scalability: As your environment grows, blueprints help scale discovery with a stable, predefined framework. You can easily replicate a blueprint across departments or deployments, ensuring nothing gets missed as you expand.

BMC Helix Discovery tech highlights: Why it’s your infrastructure MVP

• Pattern library muscle: With 1,300+ patterns that are constantly updated, BMC Helix Discovery gives you visibility into everything from cloud servers to legacy mainframes.
• Protocol support to cover it all: Whether it’s SSH, SNMP, WMI, REST—you get the idea—BMC speaks it. This allows for seamless discovery across your cloud and on-premises assets without leaving blind spots.
• Easy application modeling: Start-anywhere modeling means you can map out your app dependencies from any entry point, making life much easier for IT teams handling complex environments.
• Smart, scalable integrations: Whether you’re using ITSM, AIOps, or security tools, BMC integrates easily, providing flexibility that competitors can’t match. It’s the glue that holds everything together.
• Security and EOL tracking: End-of-life data is built in, so you’re not stuck managing outdated hardware or software. Plus, integrated security features ensure blind spots and rogue assets are dealt with before they become issues.

The metrics

Figure 2. Results of Forrester Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study of BMC Helix Discovery.

The bottom line: BMC Helix Discovery is the one tool to rule them all

BMC Helix Discovery is the real deal. With protocol diversity, a killer pattern library, top-notch integrations, and some serious tech advantages, it’s hands down the best choice for enterprises that need full visibility into and control over their infrastructure. It’s like having x-ray vision for your IT environment.

So, why settle for tools that are limited to certain environments or device types? With BMC Helix Discovery, you get the whole package—cloud, on-premises, and everything in between. Ready to discover what your infrastructure is really up to? Learn more here: https://www.bmc.com/it-solutions/bmc-helix-discovery.html

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These postings are my own and do not necessarily represent BMC's position, strategies, or opinion.

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