For incident brokering:

• When a service desk agent adds a comment to an incident in BMC Helix ITSM: Smart IT and clicks Share with AWS/Salesforce, the comment is added to the vendor ticket.
• When a field is updated in BMC Helix ITSM, BMC Helix Multi-Cloud Broker updates the corresponding vendor ticket with a comment listing the field name with the new and existing values. BMC Helix Multi-Cloud Broker adds a comment only for those fields that are mapped when you specify technology provider and field mapping during Vendor data configuration.
• Any updates to fields in the vendor ticket are reflected in the corresponding BMC Helix ITSM incident fields. This behavior applies to the fields that are mapped when you specify technology provider and field mapping during Vendor data configuration.
• An BMC Helix ITSM incident is marked as resolved when the vendor ticket is closed based on the option you select when you specify technology provider and field mapping during Vendor data configuration. 
• When a Case Comment is added to a Salesforce Service Cloud ticket, Smart IT displays the comment as an activity note for the corresponding incident.
• Status changes to a vendor ticket are reflected as an activity note on the BMC Helix ITSMincident.
• When an BMC Helix ITSM incident is Cancelled, Closed, or Resolved, the corresponding vendor ticket is Closed.

For DevOps integration:

• When a service desk agent adds a comment to the BMC Helix ITSM change request or incident (in Smart IT) and clicks Share with Jira/CA Agile Central, the comment is added to the Jira Software or Rally Software (formerly, CA Agile Central) issue.
• When a developer adds a comment to a Jira issue or user story, the comment is added to the corresponding BMC Helix ITSM change request or incident if the Viewable to all users option is selected in Jira.
• Any updates to fields in the vendor ticket are reflected in the corresponding BMC Helix ITSM incident fields.
• Status changes to a vendor ticket are reflected as an activity note on the BMC Helix ITSM incident or change request.

For more information, see the appropriate feature configuration at Configuring BMC Helix Multi-Cloud Broker.

The scope of My IT Service Broker, which is now a part of BMC Digital Workplace (Advanced) is limited to brokering service requests whereas BMC Helix Multi-Cloud Broker is focused at brokering other ITSM objects like Incident, Change, among others. It is possible that both solutions may share some connectors provided with BMC Helix Integration Service, their purpose and solution goals remains completely different.

The time required to create a new connector would depend on the third-party application you are trying to connect to and the capabilities you want to configure.

BMC Helix Multi-Cloud Broker ships with a couple of out-of-the-box flows for select vendors but there are many other connectors that are available with BMC Helix Integration Service. These connectors could be leveraged to build flows with non-OOTB vendors.

BMC provides a Connector builder that makes connector development easier. Two programming languages are supported to build the connector (broker): javascript and java. The Connector builder will help you to generate the skeleton of the connector codes. After it is generated, you need to implement the business logic to connect to the external application and pull and/or push data to it

Effort would also include getting insight about the external solution's APIs. If the vendor support REST API, it will be much easier.

Yes, some of our Remedy customers have implemented integration scenarios with different approach, incl. (but not limited to) partner solutions. As our customers move more and more to a multi-provider / multi-cloud approach to IT sourcing and have an increased need to bring DevOps and ITSM solutions closer together, BMC plans to support these uses cases with this OOTB service offering. With a BMC provided solution, we can integrate these use cases better into the user experience. 

Panama is now generally available from BMC and is called BMC Helix Multi-Cloud Broker. You can look at BMC.com and sign-up for free trials of BMC Integration Service. BMC Helix Multi-Cloud Broker application is built using BMC Helix Multi-Cloud Broker. If BMC Helix Multi-Cloud Broker is the Remedy Action Request System platform and BMC Helix Multi-Cloud Broker is ITSM.