Device42 - Discovery & Dependency Mapping - Cloud & Hybrid IT

My typical use case for Device42  would be first, from a CMDB  foundations, for the IT teams. Second is focusing on the IP and the asset lifecycle management aspect of it. Third would be helping the teams set up an application dependency mapping in the environment. Another aspect, which is one of the major or most important aspects, would be from a data center documentation standpoint or helping in the data center documentation and also from a hybrid cloud migration planning perspective.

Whenever we have customers who are looking to move away from their current on-premise or data center environment to public cloud providers either AWS , Azure  or GCP, the first and foremost step which we suggest to our customers is having a footprint of your current environment landscape. This is basically called data center assessment, data center analysis, or current environment analysis. That is where we leverage Device42  to help gather the inventory of the current environment and also plan out the application mapping. With the application mapping or the application dependency, we are able to capture and see what is the app to infra mapping, app to app mapping, which apps are talking to each other and outside of the environment and we are able to build up stacks and do proper cloud migration planning for our end customers.

One of the things is around its automated agentless discovery aspect. We have leveraged it to discover IT assets because Device42 carries out continuous and agentless discovery in the environment. We have leveraged that to discover IT assets such as physical servers, VMs, network devices, containers, storage devices, the applications, cloud resources and their relationships or their dependencies with each other and to the outside. That is one of the places where we have found great benefits from that particular product. It also works across a hybrid environment. We have a lot of customers who are not just on one cloud, either public or private, but they have their workloads spread across different cloud providers. That is one place where it has really helped us. It has also helped us in the CMDB  aspect of it, acting as a single source of truth where it has helped us in automatically populating and updating the discovery, supporting relationship visualization, helping us with audits, compliances, and any change management related aspects of it. And around the data center infrastructure management of it, these are some of the areas where it has helped us.

Its depth of automated discovery is one feature. It works really well from an agentless discovery standpoint across very complex environments, both public and private cloud. That is one of the best features. Second is that it provides a unified platform because it really combines the discovery aspect, CMDB aspect, the IT asset management aspect, the IPAM aspects, and so forth. The third part would be the hybrid and the cloud readiness part because it really helps us to visualize the interdependencies and plan for migrations and also helps in operational decisions. Fourth, I can say is the faster deployment and helping to calculate a lower TCO. And with the recent introduction of AI features and functionality, the AI enrichment part really helps us to improve the data quality and give us really good operational insights.

The two features which I remember correctly are the Enrich AI and I believe the Insights AI feature. That has really helped a lot of our customers and even our internal teams when they are executing this product or running this product in the customer's environment from an operational standpoint. The push towards AI-assisted IT operations and data governance has really helped us to showcase this as a differentiator whenever we are speaking to new customers or existing customers. And at the end of the day, it has really helped us to enrich the data and the output which we are providing to the customers.

First, it has really impacted the organization in a positive fashion. Because it acts as a source of truth or a single source of truth for our IT teams. It has helped them in improving planning, even a lot of the aspects when troubleshooting was involved. And also in some important decision making if in case some customer of ours is churning or a customer of ours needs to optimize their environment or they want to have visibility and they want to take more informed decisions while moving from cloud A to cloud B. Second, because it has really provided that comprehensive IT infrastructure discovery and management aspect of it, it has really helped us give full visibility into a hybrid and a multi-cloud environment because we support a lot of the end customers and we manage a lot of different customers and different types of environments. So it has really helped us to give a very detailed and full visibility into not just our own environment, but also our end customers who we are managing. And one thing for sure, Device42 stands out as a really competitive tool as compared to some of the other tools which are out there in the market, such as BMC Discovery, Freshservice , and ServiceNow . So it has been really good and I am really happy to see that Device42 is really doing well in capturing and including the AI aspect of it.

From a feature functionality standpoint, I feel the AI data enrichment aspect of it could improve. There is definitely an improvement required at that standpoint. From an ITSM  and ticketing perspective, I would say if there were integrations available, that would have really been better because a lot of times what we end up seeing or leveraging is ServiceNow  because they have that native or out of the box capability, and even Freshservice  has that capability out of the box. I would love to see the ITSM  and ticketing aspect of it. Because at the end of the day, we would want a seamless experience for our customers.

I feel the application dependency mapping could be improved. It could definitely improve with maybe a more detailed map whenever we are building up the application stacks. And a little bit of customization can be improved over there. Then I can say from a documentation and reporting standpoint, at present, it is useful, but I feel that it can be improved because it currently feels incomplete in certain areas. There are a few reporting nuances which I see that can be a little confusing for new users without the proper explanation. And then the custom discovery configurations is also something which can be improved in the UI as well.

From a performance standpoint, in cases in which there are very large data sets, I feel they face some slow performances when they are handling large data sets. And there are certain hardware types which are not auto-discovered without the right set of building a custom integration. So I feel these two aspects could be improved.

I have been using Device42 probably from around 2017 or 2018 across different organizations. So I have been using it for about eight years now.

Device42 has been pretty stable, and that was the similar feedback which we received from our customers as well and even the operations team who are out there in the field and actually carrying out deployments and using the products on a daily basis.

The scalability is good and with the increase in the size of the environment, it has definitely grown and changed over the last couple of years.

Customer support has been good. We have received timely support in case of any issues. Our internal teams have also leveraged the platform which is available for the customers and the partners to onboard them, have a bit of training on the tool and then ask any specific questions to either the TAM or the customer support team. So the overall experience has really been good.

I was evaluating different solutions out there, and because we are a managed services provider, we are not tied down to one solution. We have used different solutions from ServiceNow CMDB  or discovery to BMC Discovery as well, depending upon specific use cases.

The setup was a very strong plus. The automated agentless discovery part is really good. The setup is really quick. The learning curve is good for new people who are jumping onto the platform. So that is really a positive. We have always seen accurate inventory analysis across hybrid cloud environments.

There is definitely a good return on investments because, as I mentioned, it has helped accelerate the process in a lot of different areas. The time to resolution, even from a troubleshooting or a discovery standpoint, has highly shortened. Fewer employees are needed. With its capability, we require less people on new projects when we are leveraging this platform. So definitely there is a little bit of time saved and money saved as well. I would not be able to share any rough estimates, but from a percentage standpoint, I can confidently say at least 30% is the savings which we have seen.

I felt the pricing was a little bit mid-range as compared to the other tools which are out there in the market. For example, I felt the BMC Discovery pricing was quite high. So I think the pricing can definitely be improved.

Before choosing Device42, we did evaluate different options. As I mentioned, BMC Discovery, ServiceNow CMDB  or the discovery module. There was another one which was called Virima. It is really good in the ML-powered aspect of it, and it also ticks a lot of boxes which Device42 also does.

One of the advices is to understand the need for a product like Device42 and build up your use cases first. As I mentioned earlier, Device42 is really valuable if you are using it for hybrid cloud migration and planning exercises, data center documentation, or if you are carrying out rationalizing of the data center, as a CMDB foundation tool for your internal IT teams, in terms of building up application dependency mapping in the environment. So I would suggest drilling down your use cases, figuring out the use cases which you are looking for, and if Device42 is checking all of those boxes, even in terms of use cases or features and functionality, then definitely go ahead with that.

The experience was decent from a licensing standpoint and scaling up and down was definitely convenient. Ours was more of a custom-based model, so there had to be a couple of discussions, but I would say overall the experience was positive from a licensing standpoint because there was a subscription-based model available.

It is spread across all three different cloud providers which are industry leaders.

From a user interface standpoint, I think it is not the most modern as compared to the newer SaaS tools which are out there. So that is another area where there is definitely a need for improvement.

It was earlier leveraged or purchased as part of the AWS  marketplace, but from a deployment standpoint, we did have certain customers where it was deployed on-premise. So if I would have to sum up the overall deployment, I can say that it is a mix of public and private, hence a hybrid cloud. The overall review rating I would give is seven out of ten.