IBM SmartCloud Control Desk vs JIRA Service Management comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM SmartCloud Control Desk and JIRA Service Management based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow, Atlassian, BMC and others in Help Desk Software.
To learn more, read our detailed Help Desk Software Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"In the early stages of our company, all requests were done in notebooks, and none of it was centrally managed. But now we have a central tool which is an entry point for all requests that come in.""What I like about the Control Desk is that everything is centralized. You have all the requests in one place, you know which ones are for whom and who is working on them.""The solution has been stable.""The workflow capability is useful. It's not a manual helpdesk operation. It's fully automated, even when an alarm has occurred. It covers the complete cycle of initiation to resolving the events. This is its most strong feature that is easily integrable with a monitoring solution. It creates tickets, and the workflow feature is the most important one.""The solution is very easy to work with.""A feature I found most valuable in IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is the service request. Another feature I like most about the solution is IT asset management, which tells you who owns a specific asset in the company and from which date.""The most valuable are its flexibility and agility. It's quick to change it, to adapt it to your needs. That's the most important for us.""SLA integrations, reports, and integration with other applications are the most valuable."

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"It is much more controlled and allows for different kinds of customization that we can plan and implement based on the project requirements.""Easy to use and user-friendly.""The platform is easy to use.""One of the main advantages of JIRA is that it can be customized for our solutions. I live in Iran and we translated some parts of it into Persian and customized it with extra features. We hid other features to customize it right to the point. We provide this solution for our customers.""The flow of the reports is good.""With Jira Service Desk, the simplicity of setting up a quick form and getting the service desk running quickly is very helpful.""Jira Service Management is flexible. It is easy to navigate without requiring extra learning. The user experience has been good.""Compared to other solutions, Jira Service Management is really reasonable regarding price and speed."

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Cons
"The user interface is not very interesting. If you look at other products like JIRA and ServiceNow, they have made it much easier for the end-users. Maybe not ServiceNow, but JIRA is quite flexible. From a presentation point of view, IBM should make more user-friendly interfaces.""The main issue that we hear from our customers is that the self-service user interface is a little bit old, possibly due to the fact that IBM is such a large enterprise company. People say that they think they're in the year 2004, because you can very clearly see that the technology is lagging behind modern trends.""The reporting in relation to updating could be improved upon.""What needs improvement in IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is its graphical interface because it needs to be more user-friendly. IBM is a big company, but this solution is a little bit outdated. The most common comment I get from customers is that IBM SmartCloud Control Desk looks old and needs a refresh. Its frontend needs a little bit of work. The solution needs to be more modern. In the programming world, you see a lot of new technologies, but this particular solution is still on Java. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk isn't like web-based service request tools, and that's an area for improvement. What I'd like to see in the next version of the solution is a more upscale technology. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk has small issues with document links and attachments, and those could bother you when you're using it for a long time. A more user-friendly GUI is also another improvement I'd like to see in the next version of the solution, plus a better user experience, and it would be great if IBM could resolve the current issues I've noticed in IBM SmartCloud Control Desk.""It could use more facility or flexibility for reporting, and business intelligence in the tool.""Support has been the biggest problem for us. I understand that because we use the product of a global company, some changes are not quick to deploy.""The time calculations can be improved. While working on reports, it was taking the time only in seconds, which was hard for me to work out. While creating some dialogs in the service portal, you have to use certain data types in some fields. It was very tricky to make them work. I was testing a certain type of input, and it didn't work. It didn't show me the domain that the fields have to show. I had to make the change to the database, and only then it worked. It was a tricky thing to make them work with the dialogs. Their technical support can also be improved in terms of response time.""The solution lacks a graphical user interface."

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"There should be better connections with access management. They should improve the connectivity.""The pricing could be better.""I would like to see the user interface changed, it is not very user-friendly, and it transitions workflows.""With Jira, we were unable to implement time-based automation in its ticketing system. We would like a feature where we can define tickets based on severity, then tickets are automatically escalated to the next level after a set period of time if they go unanswered.""As a consultant, I have used the support. Some of the support I have received has been good and other times it could improve.""The price is a point of contention for me. It does overall work out as a significant amount of money that will be spent over a shorter period of time.""We have a lot of add-ons, however, instead of the add-ons, for example, cloning could be better.""The performance in cloud service management could be improved."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "It's basically for a big company because of the costs. A small company can't afford the licensing cost. For medium and large companies, it's the best product. The price of the license is on the higher side compared to others."
  • "The licensing we have for IBM Control Desk is on a yearly basis. They have a concurrent license and an administrative license. And with these, you get all the products. There aren't any additional fees for extra add-ons or anything like that."
  • "The license for IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is paid yearly and is on a per-user basis. You buy the product and pay for its license yearly. IBM is changing the licensing structure, but for now, it's a yearly license. There's no additional cost. It's just the license that you need to pay for to use IBM SmartCloud Control Desk."
  • More IBM SmartCloud Control Desk Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Costs are about $50 per user per year. JIRA is sold in user tiers of 25, 50, 100, 250, 500, 2000, 10,000, and unlimited users. It is bad when you have 51 users then the price is based on that 100 user tier. Users at 100 will be the most cost effective."
  • "JIRA Service Desk has different pricing as it is based on agents. On average, the price is about $300 per agent."
  • "Do not forget to calculate add-on costs. These cost a percentage of the JIRA purchasing costs and are based on the number of JIRA users."
  • "Buying a software solution is only a half part of the solution (or even less). You need to optimize usage of the software by hiring professionals who will help you to make the most of the software, especially in the beginning."
  • "I would suggest to always buy licenses through an Atlassian partner, so you can also rely on their expertise."
  • "But about the plugins, I found one plug-in — its name is Actionable Metric I think — and it is $3000. That is very expensive for users in Iran."
  • "Actually in Iran we don't have copyright or intellectual property, so we can use JIRA for free."
  • "It's not really expensive, especially when you compare to ServiceNow or other solutions, and it's not expensive to maintain."
  • More JIRA Service Management Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:A feature I found most valuable in IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is the service request. Another feature I like most about the solution is IT asset management, which tells you who owns a specific asset… more »
    Top Answer:The license for IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is paid yearly and is on a per-user basis. You buy the product and pay for its license yearly. IBM is changing the licensing structure, but for now, it's a… more »
    Top Answer:What needs improvement in IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is its graphical interface because it needs to be more user-friendly. IBM is a big company, but this solution is a little bit outdated. The most… more »
    Top Answer:JIRA Service Management is a very user-friendly solution.
    Top Answer:It is one of the premium products on the market, but it is very costly, especially in the Indian market. Smaller organizations cannot afford it. We pay monthly licensing costs. We only have to pay for… more »
    Ranking
    21st
    out of 59 in Help Desk Software
    Views
    632
    Comparisons
    356
    Reviews
    1
    Average Words per Review
    1,117
    Rating
    8.0
    2nd
    out of 59 in Help Desk Software
    Views
    8,100
    Comparisons
    5,654
    Reviews
    36
    Average Words per Review
    550
    Rating
    8.2
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    SmartCloud Control Desk
    JIRA Service Desk
    Learn More
    Overview
    IBM Control Desk on Cloud offer an access to a user friendly self-service, automated service management, and seamlessly-integrated, best-practice based service desk capabilities. IBM Control Desk provides the IT service management (ITSM) needed to simplify support of users and infrastructure. It also offers a unified IT asset and service management software provides a common control center for managing business processes for both digital and physical assets and enables control, governance and compliance to applications, endpoints and assets to protect critical data and prevent outages. Control Desk is IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL)-compliant, accessible through mobile devices and integrates with social media and development tools.

    JIRA Service Management is Atlassian’s IT service management (ITSM) solution. It unlocks all teams at high velocity by:

    1. Accelerating the flow of work between IT teams, development teams, and business teams

    2. Empowering teams to deliver their service more quickly

    3. Bringing visibility to their work

    Built on JIRA, JIRA Service Management enables best practices across request, incident, problem, change, knowledge, asset, and configuration management so that teams can streamline collaboration between themselves. More than 30,000 customers of all sizes rely on JIRA Service Management to deliver service.

    JIRA Service Management Features

    JIRA Service Management has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

    • Request management: Allows businesses to manage work across teams with one platform so employees and customers get the help they need quickly.
    • Problem management: To minimize the impact of incidents, this feature groups incidents, fast-tracks root cause analysis, and records workarounds.
    • Change management: IT teams are empowered by richer contextual information around changes from software development tools. This helps them minimize risk and make better decisions.
    • Asset management: Manage inventory efficiently, track lifecycles and ownership, and reduce costs.
    • Configuration management: Attain visibility into the infrastructure that supports critical services and applications. Understand service dependencies to minimize risk.
    • Incident management: The solution brings development and IT teams together to rapidly respond to, resolve, and learn from incidents.
    • Knowledge management: While fostering team collaboration, the solution enables self-service, deflection of more requests, and management of knowledge articles.

    JIRA Service Management Benefits

    There are many benefits to implementing JIRA Service Management. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

    • The solution empowers all teams across IT, development, and business with intuitive, flexible workflows.
    • Work is made visible through the open and collaborative JIRA platform.
    • Connect IT and development on a single platform to accelerate workflow.
    • Gain significant ROI with competitive pricing on useful features.
    • Benefit from faster time to value by implementing a full ITSM solution in just a few months.
    • Lower total cost of ownership without expensive ongoing maintenance and upgrades.
    • Enjoy a broad ecosystem of more than 4,000 best-in-class apps and integrations.

    Reviews from Real Users

    JIRA Service Management stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Some of these include its stability, its easy customization, and its seamless integration with other solutions. PeerSpot users take note of the advantages of these features in their reviews:

    Abhishek S., a Program Lead at PureSoftware, writes of the solution, “You can scale the solution whether it is deployed to the cloud or the data center. While we might have up to 5,200 people using the solution, we do not require that many licenses, as only those dealing with the tickets are required to be licensed.”

    Andrew B., a Technical Engineer at a consultancy firm, notes, “One of the valuable features is that an automatic response or action can be taken on tickets. We can have certain responses for tickets that contain keywords or are logged and tagged with certain labels.”

    Sample Customers
    St Vincent's Health Australia, Kalibrate Pty. Ltd., Cognizant Technology
    mgm technology partners, Telestream, Build.com, Zend Technologies, OfficeDrop, PGS Software, American Diabetes Association, NEPTUNE Canada
    Top Industries
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company21%
    Financial Services Firm12%
    Energy/Utilities Company9%
    Government9%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company35%
    Comms Service Provider12%
    Retailer9%
    Transportation Company6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company18%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    Government7%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business67%
    Large Enterprise33%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business26%
    Midsize Enterprise7%
    Large Enterprise67%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business38%
    Midsize Enterprise28%
    Large Enterprise35%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise60%
    Buyer's Guide
    Help Desk Software
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow, Atlassian, BMC and others in Help Desk Software. Updated: March 2024.
    765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is ranked 21st in Help Desk Software with 9 reviews while JIRA Service Management is ranked 2nd in Help Desk Software with 73 reviews. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is rated 7.6, while JIRA Service Management is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of IBM SmartCloud Control Desk writes "Stable but clunky and lacks a user interface". On the other hand, the top reviewer of JIRA Service Management writes "Customizable, stable, and integrates well". IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is most compared with ServiceNow and SymphonyAI IT Service Management, whereas JIRA Service Management is most compared with ServiceNow, ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus, BMC Helix ITSM, Freshdesk and PagerDuty Operations Cloud.

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    We monitor all Help Desk Software reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.