IBM SmartCloud Control Desk vs SCSM comparison

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Executive Summary

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

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Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The solution has been stable.""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 is very easy to work with.""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.""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.""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 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 brand name is the most valuable aspect of this solution for me. It's IBM. It's a global company that supports this product, it's not something open source or something like that."

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"It is one of the most stable solutions in the market.""The most valuable feature is the reporting of incidents.""The call logging is the solution's most valuable feature. It's very easy to use.""The reporting is very good.""For our cloud-based deployment of SCSM, the Autopilot is the best feature.""The solution is quite easy to integrate with other Microsoft products.""We've been in contact with Microsoft technical support mainly. After doing the research ourselves and troubleshooting, etc., if we can't find a permanent solution, we contact Microsoft to help us fix the issue. Sometimes the issue never gets fixed even by Microsoft. It can sometimes require us to reinstall the solution. However, these are very rare instances.""This product has helped our organization by allowing people to connect with each other."

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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.""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.""The solution lacks a graphical user interface.""Overall the user experience, as opposed to the system and databases, could be improved. It does work as it should and it's good, but they should invest more in the user interfaces to be less data oriented and more appealing for the user.""It could use more facility or flexibility for reporting, and business intelligence in the tool.""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 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.""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."

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"Once we had an issue with a desktop download that would not open.""Resources for understanding compliance and relative compliance need to be made available.""They need more integration with open-source products.""I have found SCSM not adequate enough to carry out some functions.""The price of this solution is high and it needs to be cheaper.""It would be better if they had a portal for administrators. It would help me use it from anywhere and connect to any device from anywhere. I can administer the solution without a VPN.""We would like to see a web-based interface that works on mobile devices.""The user interface needs to 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 →

  • "It is a lower price vs. other things on the market."
  • "It is an expensive solution."
  • "Licensing can be complex and confusing."
  • "The price should be lower."
  • "The price of the solution could be better. My organization has an enterprise annual license with Microsoft which provides us support."
  • "It comes free with the enterprise agreement that we have, but the expense really is in having to buy another product to sit on top of it to make it work properly. You wind up having to buy additional support and additional product with their own support and maintenance costs on top of that."
  • "The license for SCSM is cheap."
  • "I would rate the pricing as two out of five."
  • More SCSM 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:The solution offers good productivity at a low price point.
    Top Answer:The solution offers good productivity at a low price point.
    Top Answer:For any weaknesses in the product, our company's security team maintains the application for our environment. The logs and reporting-related features of the product have certain shortcomings where… 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
    14th
    out of 59 in Help Desk Software
    Views
    1,579
    Comparisons
    877
    Reviews
    8
    Average Words per Review
    511
    Rating
    7.6
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    SmartCloud Control Desk
    System Center Service Manager
    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.
    System Center Service Manager is a software product by Microsoft to allow organizations to manage incidents and problems. Microsoft states that the product is compliant with industry best practices such as the Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) and in the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL). SCSM has integrated ITIL compliant fulfillment of service requests. Service requests are submitted by the end user in order to obtain information, access to a new application or the most common of all, password reset.
    Sample Customers
    St Vincent's Health Australia, Kalibrate Pty. Ltd., Cognizant Technology
    Fibabanka, UMC Health System
    Top Industries
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company20%
    Financial Services Firm12%
    Energy/Utilities Company8%
    Government8%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm20%
    Computer Software Company10%
    Hospitality Company10%
    Comms Service Provider10%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Government25%
    Computer Software Company10%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business67%
    Large Enterprise33%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business27%
    Midsize Enterprise7%
    Large Enterprise66%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business38%
    Midsize Enterprise21%
    Large Enterprise42%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business15%
    Midsize Enterprise19%
    Large Enterprise66%
    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.
    765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is ranked 21st in Help Desk Software with 9 reviews while SCSM is ranked 14th in Help Desk Software with 23 reviews. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is rated 7.6, while SCSM is rated 7.2. 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 SCSM writes "Helps us manage IT operations, including incident and service requests, but could be easier to create reports". IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is most compared with ServiceNow, JIRA Service Management and SymphonyAI IT Service Management, whereas SCSM is most compared with ServiceNow, ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus, JIRA Service Management, BMC Helix ITSM and BeyondTrust Remote Support.

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