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IBM SmartCloud Control Desk vs JIRA Service Management comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 1, 2024

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

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
JIRA Service Management
Ranking in Help Desk Software
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
86
Ranking in other categories
IT Service Management (ITSM) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is 0.6%, down from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of JIRA Service Management is 10.2%, down from 12.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Help Desk Software
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Karim Yousef - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficiently track and document projects with seamless tool integration
We are a management warehouse that provides services to different customers in different sectors. Primarily, we serve the banking sector and the military sector. We manage all the software delivery projects through tools such as JIRA Service Management or TFS Confluence is a great tool for…

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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"SLA integrations, reports, and integration with other applications are the most valuable."
"The solution is very easy to work with."
"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."
"Auditing team uses this solution to track audit findings and follow-up."
"One of the best things about JIRA is that it searches for answers while questions are being typed so some tickets do not need to be submitted."
"Using JIRA simplifies tracking issues and updates."
"The platform is easy to use."
"A good organizational tool."
"The most valuable feature of Jira is that it is free of cost, which is a significant advantage."
"JIRA helps integrate Kanban Board features and for this reason what it does it does well."
"Compared to other solutions, Jira Service Management is really reasonable regarding price and speed."
 

Cons

"The reporting in relation to updating could be improved upon."
"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."
"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."
"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 solution lacks a graphical user interface."
"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 product does not allow customization of reports."
"JIRA Service could benefit from improvements to its voice support."
"Integration possibilities with other products that are not Atlassian would be helpful. Support should also provide separate installation guides for each product even though they are easy to install."
"The interface could be made easier to use."
"A lot of users have said that they want a feature that was on the on-prem version of Jira and the vendor can't deliver. They're either unwilling or unable to give feature parity."
"I would like to see improvement in the ability to filter completed tasks."
"Every time there's a problem with JIRA Service Management, you have to have a look at how to solve it, and there's always a feature request or the feature request on the solution is too large and the development cycles are too slow."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"On a scale of one to five, where five is a good price and one is high, I would rate this solution as a three. It isn't cheap but it's not ridiculous."
"On a scale of one to five, with one being really high and five being good, I would rate the price of this solution as a four."
"The price for JIRA Service Management is reasonable and cheaper than other ITSM solutions, but the licensing model is different, so you cannot compare it with other solutions. Overall, the pricing for the solution is acceptable."
"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."
"It is one of the premium products on the market, but it is very costly, especially in the Indian market."
"This is pricey solution. Should we move to using all cloud solutions in our business, we may move to different tools that have multiple functionality versus having a solution for each area. This would be too pricey and we would need to replace Jira with a different solution that also offers other features."
"It depends on the number of users but it starts at $20 per month per user. I would rate them a three out of five for pricing."
"We have an annual license with JIRA Service Management, but it is billed monthly."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Also Known As

SmartCloud Control Desk
JIRA Service Desk
 

Overview

 

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
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM SmartCloud Control Desk vs. JIRA Service Management and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,651 professionals have used our research since 2012.