IBM SmartCloud Control Desk vs SolarWinds Web Help Desk comparison

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM SmartCloud Control Desk and SolarWinds Web Help Desk 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 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.""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.""SLA integrations, reports, and integration with other applications are the most valuable.""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 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.""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."

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"It is easy to use.""Once installed, it runs like a charm and doesn't ever crash.""It has a pretty good search function. If you do the advanced search, you can basically search for anything in any field. If I do a search on the request field and just put in some terms I'm searching for, I can usually find the ticket that I'm looking for.""SolarWinds is scalable as far as adding devices and servers.""The most valuable feature of this solution is the assets management module."

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Cons
"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 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 reporting in relation to updating could be improved upon.""It could use more facility or flexibility for reporting, and business intelligence in the tool.""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 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 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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"A little outdated compared to newer products that include protection and detection.""It would be good if there were training and tutorial videos on the Web Help Desk.""This solution needs to have mobile application support added.""The interface feels clunky to me compared to some other systems that I've used. I used ManageEngine Service Desk prior to this at my previous job and that had stuff like categories that we use that I don't see in SolarWinds.""We would like to see automation included in the next release. We would like to eliminate the L1, and L2 support, by at least 80%. To do this, we need automation with AI (Artificial Intelligence) in combination with ML (Machine Learning)."

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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 →

  • "When you compare with ManageEngine and ServiceNow, SolarWinds is reasonable."
  • "They charge by the technician. It costs $117 per technician per year."
  • More SolarWinds Web Help Desk 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:Once installed, it runs like a charm and doesn't ever crash.
    Top Answer:It would be good if there were training and tutorial videos on the Web Help Desk. There are videos on the website, but it would be handy if they were on the Web Help Desk.
    Ranking
    22nd
    out of 59 in Help Desk Software
    Views
    611
    Comparisons
    337
    Reviews
    1
    Average Words per Review
    1,117
    Rating
    8.0
    18th
    out of 59 in Help Desk Software
    Views
    972
    Comparisons
    487
    Reviews
    1
    Average Words per Review
    254
    Rating
    10.0
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    SmartCloud Control 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.

    SolarWinds Web Help Desk simplifies service management with unified ticketing, asset, knowledge, and change management. Key features include:

    1. Maintain asset inventory by managing the use, availability, and health of IT assets, and tracking this over time.
    2. Control change management, It regulates and manages change requests through automated approval workflows and panel voting options.
    3. Employs robust reporting and monitoring using a built-in reports and dashboards to track ticket status, technician performance, and customer support needs.
    4. Automate ticketing management that Automate service request management through ticket creation, assignment, routing, and escalation.
    5. Centralize your knowledge management, Leverage a built-in help desk knowledge base to create and maintain KB articles and promote end-user self-service for common issues.
    6. Meet your SLAs, it has "SLA breach approaching" notifications and date-specific SLA reminder alerts that help customize escalation and de-escalation workflows.
    Sample Customers
    St Vincent's Health Australia, Kalibrate Pty. Ltd., Cognizant Technology
    Instacart
    Top Industries
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company19%
    Financial Services Firm11%
    Energy/Utilities Company9%
    Government9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization71%
    Computer Software Company4%
    Government4%
    University3%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business67%
    Large Enterprise33%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise8%
    Large Enterprise67%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business57%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise29%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business10%
    Midsize Enterprise72%
    Large Enterprise19%
    Buyer's Guide
    Help Desk Software
    April 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow, Atlassian, BMC and others in Help Desk Software. Updated: April 2024.
    767,847 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is ranked 22nd in Help Desk Software with 9 reviews while SolarWinds Web Help Desk is ranked 18th in Help Desk Software with 6 reviews. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is rated 7.6, while SolarWinds Web Help Desk is rated 7.6. 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 SolarWinds Web Help Desk writes "Has good search functionalities but the interface feels clunky". IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is most compared with ServiceNow and SymphonyAI IT Service Management, whereas SolarWinds Web Help Desk is most compared with ServiceNow and ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus.

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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.