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OpenText Service Manager [EOL] vs ServiceNow comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

OpenText Service Manager [EOL]
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
ServiceNow
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
216
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (1st), IT Asset Management (1st), IT Service Management (ITSM) (1st), Rapid Application Development Software (2nd), No-Code Development Platforms (1st)
 

Featured Reviews

MEKKAB Raouf - PeerSpot reviewer
Excellent pricing with great change management and service management capabilities
We started with version 9.3, and now we're on 9.6 with the full solution, including the CMS. They have lots of options. They propose a full solution for technology and IT service management. We are a telecom company. We are a leader in the market, and therefore, we need to have all details about our own environment and assets. So far, Micro Focus answers all our needs. I'd advise new users to go directly to the SMAX solution, the last, last version of Service Manager. If they are a technical company or information technology company with engineers and developers, they can use it on-premise. If they don't have such competence in the company, they can ask for the solution on the cloud. It is easily available on Microsoft, Amazon, or Google clouds. I'd rate the product nine out of ten.
Somnath Kand - PeerSpot reviewer
Custom integration and reporting lead to efficient ticket management
There is a need for bug or error tracking in ServiceNow. Although there are child incidents or tickets, tracking primary issues or bugs within enhancements is not present. The reporting features in the new portal could be more user-friendly. While it provides options to minimize chart and image sizes, actual implementation doesn't always reflect these changes.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Micro Focus Service Manager is fine. It's a good solution for small accounts with minimal reporting. Micro Focus is a good option because you don't have to worry about the budget."
"The solution will streamline productivity and also improve automation. That would bring efficiency as well the ability to handle a big number of enterprise-wide service needs. Productivity and collaborative capabilities are some of the key benefits."
"The workflow engine that standardizes and globalizes the process steps. It drives people through the process by standardization and automation."
"Technical support is pretty good."
"A valuable feature for us is that we have an ordered way to handle all the cases that we can handle with the infrastructure."
"It's mostly so reliable and has a lot of functionality. We're using a lot of HPE tools and we can do a lot with it. So, its functionality is the most valuable feature."
"We can have all our requests and incidents registered in one system."
"The solution is simple to set up."
"Easy to integrate with third-party applications."
"The Idea Portal and the PPM platform are most valuable. Their out-of-the-box dashboards and reporting are fantastic. I use them almost on a weekly basis. I have developed a couple of PMO dashboards for reporting. It is user-friendly. Everything is done through a navigation bar, and it makes things a lot easier that way."
"The solution has a user-friendly interface."
"It provides internal clients with greater transparency about their projects and deliverables."
"SPM and ITSM features are the most helpful."
"The Workflow feature is the most valuable."
"The most valuable feature is the flexibility of development for customization."
"If you stick to the out-of-the-box solution, it's an easy setup."
 

Cons

"The product's technical support services need improvement."
"Service Manager would be improved with access to automation."
"The user interface is very clunky. It's only now beginning to be a web-based interface, but for now it's still very clunky."
"There should be some front desk provided or some options to let our users serve themselves, because we have about 5000 servers and 400 applications."
"The solution does not interface well with other products and is difficult to implement."
"Service Manager is at the end of its life. The architecture, performance, and look are all way behind."
"We aren't able to take emails that come in and turn them into tickets, especially when it comes to attachments. When an email has an attachment, like a screenshot, it is a very cumbersome process, and it does not work very well. I shouldn't have been paying technicians to cut and paste attachments from an email into the ticketing system. It should do that automatically. Other solutions are able to do that. This is something that needs to be improved. Test manager and knowledge management areas are probably amongst the worst parts of this solution. We try to use this solution for knowledge management, but it is not user-friendly. Therefore, it has limited ROI as you need to spend time to try and fully capitalize on the knowledge management system."
"Customization can be difficult at times because scripting is often required."
"There are a few things that it needs to improve, like automation of most things out-of-the-box. For example, when it comes to cloud management, we are still going with manual intervention. Instead of that, if we had an out-of-the-box feature available, that would be great."
"In an upcoming release, there should be more administration tools."
"Service mapping could be less complicated."
"It would be nice if we could, with some specific access rights, move histories from one squad to another, as they generate dependencies or duplicate or flag them."
"The Express edition does not allow the option for scripting."
"The major area for improvement for our needs would be monitoring the metrics of the times to acknowledge and resolve issues and escalations."
"There is room for improvement in price."
"There is a need for bug or error tracking in ServiceNow."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I pay for Service Manager on a yearly basis, and the price is reasonable - I would rate it five out of ten."
"Micro Focus Service Manager is a little cheaper than other options. You have to pay a monthly subscription fee."
"HP Service Manager has moderate pricing."
"I would say that identify your requirements and pay for the support to implement and test those requirements, and then hope that you did a good job because the cost of their service is fairly expensive."
"The license is not cheap."
"I know that it's not too bad because people continue to use it and they are happy to renew up their contract."
"It has a higher cost compared to local/regional solutions."
"Isn't pricing always too much? We really do chafe at the ITIL licensing. ITOM is also pretty expensive."
"The product cost is higher than that of other vendors."
"The setup cost is high compared to others, especially when the scope is not fixed."
"It is very expensive because it is a big organization. You have to pay for additional things."
"While the option exists to pay for a monthly license, we are dealing with large enterprises and these typically involve multi-year licenses of ten or five years, at a minimum."
"It is an expensive platform."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
24%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Government
9%
Educational Organization
28%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Micro Focus Service Manager?
The product's technical support services need improvement.
What is your primary use case for Micro Focus Service Manager?
We use the product for infrastructure, profile, and incident management.
Which solution is better for developing non-ITSM applications: OutSystems or Service Now?
The short answer is that OutSystems is far better for 2 main reasons. Firstly, with Service Now you are locked into that platform for good. The business model is to lock in and then keep pumping th...
Would you choose ServiceNow over Microsoft PowerApps?
Hi Netanya, I will choose ServiceNow because ServiceNow is a very good tool compared to Microsoft PowerApp. Because ServiceNow has a very strong module (Performance Analysis) reporting which will ...
What do you like most about ServiceNow?
The solution has a user-friendly interface.
 

Comparisons

No data available
 

Also Known As

Micro Focus Service Manager, HPE ITSM, HPE Service Manager
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

resultspositive, Globicon
AAA, AstraZeneca, Becton, Dickinson and Company, Broadcom, Christus Health, Epicor, Equinix, GE Capital, Intuit, KPMG, Loyola Marymount University, OshKosh, Quantas, RedHat, Royal Bank of Scotland, Swiss Re, U.S. Department of Energy, Safeway, Yale University, and Zillow    
Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow, Atlassian, ManageEngine and others in IT Service Management (ITSM). Updated: February 2025.
839,422 professionals have used our research since 2012.