While ServiceNow may be the newer darling taking the IT Service Management space by storm, there are a lot of companies still using or considering a BMC Remedy solution. Whether you're considering BMC as a competitive option or revisiting the vendor as an incumbent, it’s useful to understand the various ways they are delivering their ITSM solution.
RemedyForce is a hosted solution they sell on the Salesforce AppExchange. It requires the whole solution suite to be purchased (more on a la carte options via other purchasing options later), which means customers can’t just purchase Service Desk. The cost is $60/per user per month.
(Sidenote: While BMC’s RemedyForce is built on Salesforce.com's platform, SFDC has gotten its feet wet in the ITSM market. It will be interesting to see if any turbulence results in the BMC/SFDC relationship)
BMC also hosts a solution called Remedy on Demand. It’s sold as a suite, but customers can also just purchase Service Desk or Change Management –
the two biggest components of the suite. It’s offered in two licensing flavors: Named Users (similar to ServiceNow) and Concurrent Users (just like their competitor Cherwell). Concurrent User licenses are generally significantly more expensive than Named Users, so customers should understand their user environment and user-to-license ratio.
There's also Remedy on Premise delivering similar capabilities as on Demand but hosted by the customer.
Bottom line: The BMC Remedy purchase can get confusing. The options available, competitors and discounting tendencies by product make this a dynamic purchase decision and negotiation. Other elements that impact the decision include number of environments needed, DR requirements, reporting needs, and self-service expectations. Be aware of your options and consider using third-party expertise as you work through your analysis and decision-making. The potential to overspend is high, but so is the potential to save.