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BMC FootPrints Service Core vs IBM SmartCloud Control Desk comparison

BMC and IBM are both solutions in the Help Desk Software category. BMC is ranked #28, while IBM is ranked #27. BMC holds a 0.6% mindshare in HDS, compared to IBM’s 0.7% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of BMC users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 88% of IBM users who would recommend it.
BMC FootPrints Service Core
Read 10 BMC FootPrints Service Core reviews
  • 269 Views
  • 134 Comparison Views
90% willing to recommend
IBM SmartCloud Control Desk
Read 9 IBM SmartCloud Control Desk reviews
  • 401 Views
  • 197 Comparison Views
88% willing to recommend
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 1, 2024

BMC FootPrints Service Core and IBM SmartCloud Control Desk are competing products in the IT Service Management domain. Data suggests IBM SmartCloud Control Desk holds an advantage in features, offering value that justifies its cost.

Features: BMC FootPrints Service Core includes customizable workflows, seamless integration capabilities, and a reliable relational database system. In contrast, IBM SmartCloud Control Desk stands out with advanced IT asset management, comprehensive incident management, and robust service request applications.

Room for Improvement: BMC FootPrints Service Core could enhance its analytics capabilities, expand its automation features, and refine its user interface. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk may benefit from a simplified deployment process, improved reporting functionalities, and reduced learning curve for new users.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: BMC FootPrints Service Core offers straightforward deployment and responsive customer service, ensuring an intuitive experience. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk presents a more complex deployment due to extensive features but provides strong customer support.

Pricing and ROI: BMC FootPrints Service Core boasts a lower initial setup cost, appealing to budget-conscious businesses with a quicker ROI. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk demands higher investment yet offers long-term benefits through its extensive functionalities, attracting enterprises seeking comprehensive solutions.

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To learn more, read our detailed BMC FootPrints Service Core vs. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk Report (Updated: April 2025).
Buyer's Guide
BMC FootPrints Service Core vs. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk
April 2025
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Helped 847,862 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

BMC FootPrints Service Core
Ranking in Help Desk Software
28th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
IT Service Management (ITSM) (30th)
IBM SmartCloud Control Desk
Ranking in Help Desk Software
27th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of BMC FootPrints Service Core is 0.6%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is 0.7%, down from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Help Desk Software
 

Featured Reviews

CW
Supports the convergence of ticket management, IT, and customer services
I would give this product a rating of 8 out of 10 because it's a good system and it meets most of our requirements. It still has a lot of space to improve because the service desk function is changing all the time. This solution has to continually be innovative. It should also generate more user-friendly reports utilizing a collaborative framework. Additionally, I would tell anyone looking at similar solutions to first figure out their most important requirements. Then compare their requirements with the function of the ITMS to ensure compatibility. While at the same time they should look ahead at future requirements such as the cloud configuration, along with other vendor capabilities before making a decision.
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Jose Pedro Muñoz - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps standardize our workflow, track client tickets, and it's very flexible
Initially we used HPE Service Desk. Then, Remedy (IBM SmartCloud Control Desk) version 5. When selecting a vendor, the most important thing for us is the flexibility of the tool. It must be very flexible to change the workflow or to add new workflows for the clients. It must have stability and scalability as well.
Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It is stable and its technical support is good and quick."
"It has helped the help desk team. We get our tickets in and are able to support our customers, the end-users, with this solution."
"We can track issues easier and run reports on issues to see if there are patterns."
"Implemented system-wide process for approving and tracking "employee move" requests for over 15,000 employees."
"I like the fact that FootPrints is a relational database, so every item in the database can be linked to another. This helps create history and audit trails for each CI."
"I have used Tier II BMC support a few times. They were very responsive and recreated my environment in their lab to support me."
"This product solidly handles incident management, problem management, and change management."
"I think the most important feature is the ability to receive valuable ticket status support in a timely manner with little to no downtime interruptions."
More BMC FootPrints Service Core pros
"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."
"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."
"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 solution is very easy to work with."
"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."
"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."
"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."
More IBM SmartCloud Control Desk pros
 

Cons

"The mobile version of this product does not support asset management."
"Hyphens are not allowed in the quick search bar. This has created a problem in our environment where we use hyphens in our asset names."
"It is pretty clunky and not very intuitive. Even though I have used it for many years, I don't think it is a very good ITSM platform in general. In the telecom space, a lot of telco providers use this solution, but from my perspective, it is not very user friendly. It is a bit more laborious. There are still too many human touchpoints. There can be a little bit more automation. It would also be good to integrate it with other tools. Integration is quite difficult, especially in the telco space."
"The workflow should be made to be more user-friendly. It should also have more granular scalability."
"The pricing could be a little lower and the product should cover more iTel versions."
"It would be better if it were more user-friendly. The reporting part in the version we have is a little complicated. It takes too long to build and report. It would also be better if there were another way to manage notifications."
"Reporting could be improved along with the option to create more fine tuned reports and to create specific fields for each type of ticket."
"We need more customizable reporting functionality. We could also use more collaboration of service desk tickets. This will allow for two departments to share the same information, track the progress of the total task scope no matter how complex the request is."
More BMC FootPrints Service Core cons
"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 reporting in relation to updating could be improved upon."
"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."
"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 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."
"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."
"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 solution lacks a graphical user interface."
More IBM SmartCloud Control Desk cons
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our costs are well over $250,000."
"The licensing for FootPrints is a perpetual license with an annual support fee."
"This solution has good pricing."
"Cost was on par with other service desk products, and well below Remedy, while still being a BMC product."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
17%
Computer Software Company
13%
Educational Organization
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
IT Service Management (ITSM)
March 2025
BMC FootPrints Service Core reportDownload BMC FootPrints Service Core product report
Buyer's Guide
IBM SmartCloud Control Desk
April 2025
IBM SmartCloud Control Desk reportDownload IBM SmartCloud Control Desk product report
 

Also Known As

FootPrints Service Core
SmartCloud Control Desk
 

Overview

FootPrints Service Core integrates IT service and asset management for end-to-end business services, and it's easy to install, use, and support. With configurable capabilities that streamline service delivery, FootPrints improves customer satisfaction and IT's reputation with your business users.
BMC
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.
IBM
 

Sample Customers

Cast & Crew
St Vincent's Health Australia, Kalibrate Pty. Ltd., Cognizant Technology
Buyer's Guide
BMC FootPrints Service Core vs. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk
April 2025
Free Report: BMC FootPrints Service Core vs. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk
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