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11/06/2026 10:37 pm
TL;DR: A wider problem in IT operations is that ticket-centric service management does not automatically solve app access governance, approval bottlenecks, or lifecycle visibility across users and machines, according to Zluri. The real decision is whether ITSM tooling can support identity-aware controls for access, workflows, and auditability without creating new manual steps.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Zluri: IT Teams Top 10 BMC Helix Alternatives & Competitors in 2026
By the numbers:
- Only 44% of organisations have implemented any policies to manage their AI agents, despite 92% agreeing that governing AI agents is critical to enterprise security.
- 72% of organisations have experienced or suspect they have experienced a breach of non-human identities, 46% confirmed and 26% suspected.
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should teams govern app access requests in ITSM tools?
A: Teams should make the ITSM workflow an input to access governance, not the control itself.
Q: When do self-service access portals create more risk than they reduce?
A: Self-service creates more risk when it speeds requests without preserving policy context.
Q: What do security teams get wrong about asset management and access governance?
A: They often assume that good asset visibility means good access visibility.
Practitioner guidance
- Audit request-to-access workflows Trace where app, role, or admin access is approved inside the ITSM process and confirm the approval outcome is enforced in the target system, not just recorded in a ticket.
- Separate asset visibility from entitlement control Use asset inventories to identify where access should exist, then verify the actual permissions on those systems through a separate entitlement review process.
- Add ownership and expiry to self-service access Require every self-service request to carry an accountable owner, a reason for access, and a removal condition so access does not persist after the need ends.
What's in the full article
Zluri's full article covers the product-level comparison detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- Side-by-side feature lists for each BMC Helix alternative, including ticketing, incident, and service desk capabilities.
- Vendor-specific pros and cons that compare UI, workflow automation, reporting, and scalability across tools.
- Customer rating snapshots from G2 and Capterra for each platform.
- Short descriptions of who each tool is positioned for in IT service management buying decisions.
👉 Read Zluri’s comparison of BMC Helix alternatives and feature trade-offs →
BMC Helix alternatives: what IAM teams should really evaluate?
Explore further
12/06/2026 6:51 am
ITSM selection is now an identity governance decision, not a service desk purchase. The article frames BMC Helix alternatives through incident handling, workflow automation, and asset tracking, but those capabilities increasingly touch access control decisions. Once app requests, approvals, and fulfilment are inside the same platform, service management becomes part of the identity control plane. Practitioners should therefore evaluate ITSM tools by their impact on governance quality, not just on ticket throughput.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 72% of organisations have experienced or suspect they have experienced a breach of non-human identities, 46% confirmed and 26% suspected, according to The 2024 ESG Report: Managing Non-Human Identities.
- The average organisation believes more than 1 in 5 of their non-human identities are insufficiently secured, which helps explain why identity governance must extend beyond human access reviews.
A question worth separating out:
Q: Who is accountable when access workflows sit in ITSM but enforcement sits elsewhere?
A: Accountability should sit with the process owner who defines the approval logic and with the system owner who enforces it. If the ITSM tool records a decision but another platform grants the access, both sides need controls that reconcile the request, the entitlement, and the eventual revocation. Otherwise audit trails become misleading.
👉 Read our full editorial: Identity governance gaps in ITSM tools and BMC Helix alternatives
