BMC FootPrints Service Core vs IBM SmartCloud Control Desk comparison

Why PeerSpot?

BMC Helix and IBM are both solutions in the Help Desk Software category. BMC Helix is ranked #29, while IBM is ranked #32. Additionally, 90% of BMC Helix users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 88% of IBM users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

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.

To learn more, read our detailed BMC FootPrints Service Core vs. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk Report (Updated: September 2026).

Buyer's Guide

BMC FootPrints Service Core vs. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

September 2026

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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

Automation Anywhere

Featured Reviews

Venkat Sivaprakash

Management Consultant at Accenture

Has significantly improved document-driven workflows and reduced processing time across finance and HR functions

Automation Anywhere has evolved significantly and upgraded itself to provide agentic AI and AI-based automation solutions for document automation. The product has matured considerably over time. We can create workflows that can call an API. We can include prompts in particular workflows for ChatGPT-related functions, connecting to an LLM and RAG to perform tasks. For document automation, modern features are available to train documents, ensuring high accuracy and repeatability over time. The system is very easy to use. I recently completed a course in document automation, typically designed for people involved in coding and technical aspects. Though I understand coding comprehensively, I don't do actual coding. The course was very accessible. Currently, extensive coding isn't necessary due to the hybrid model incorporating GenAI aspects, low-code, no-code capabilities, APIs, and numerous pre-built objects in Automation Anywhere. The features include GenAI-driven prompting methods and workflow creation capabilities. In these workflows, we can create decision boxes and call APIs without coding. We simply pull objects, drop them, connect them, and add minimal coding when needed. The most crucial aspect isn't coding but rather sizing the automation and fleshing out the details. Automation Co-pilot takes notes and performs automated analysis. It can extract details from videos, summarize conversations, and provide detailed information. During calls, it identifies instructions and performs tasks such as preparing reports and reconciliation. Automation Anywhere can also connect with Microsoft Co-pilot. Through Co-pilot, real-time operations can be executed, allowing direct interaction between vendors and automation through this component.

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reviewer1765752

System Engineer at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees

A flexible, comprehensive, integrated IT service and asset management platform with good technical support

We use BMC FootPrints Service Core to manage network issues, infrastructure issues, software issues, and ERP. We also use it to manage our facility. So, we do some work orders and also use it as an extra ticketing system Technical support is good. It would be better if it were more…

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Klemen Muhvič

Computer System Engineer at Informatika d.d.

Has centralization and asset management features, and a helpful and knowledgeable technical support team

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Since it is AI-powered, it automates our work; initially, we had many manual interventions, but now with the AI-powered capabilities, we are saving time and our productivity has increased."

"Object cloning is one of the main features that are using. We are very happy with it. as It has enabled us to capture a lot of things on screen and use them."

"One good thing in A2019 is that all products of Automation Anywhere, like IQBOT services, Meta Bot Designer, Discovery Bot, and Control room are all together in one product which is very effective for any business team."

"It is quite strong in the unattended space."

"The Automation Copilot is helpful. It will automatically give you all the solutions your bot requires. It's like a dictionary."

"The best feature is its ability to combine Automation Anywhere with AI to build intelligent bots."

"It is easy to install and use."

"We valued the ease of use, when we were thinking about scaling out to the business. The recording feature, while not a developer tool - it is a tool for a business user who may not possess the thought process of a developer - we valued that in our evaluation."

More Automation Anywhere pros

"It's extremely stable; we've got customers who are mobile telecommunication customers, hospitals, power companies, and an airport, and we can handle the volume with no interruptions where instability would really be unacceptable."

"The discovery feature is very flexible."

"Implemented system-wide process for approving and tracking "employee move" requests for over 15,000 employees."

"Having a one stop shop for linked assets and tickets has improved end user adoption and led to a reduction in phone/email tickets."

"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."

"We have found the reports and the lockdown on a ticket valuable, so only one person can update issues."

"Now all IT related issues, problems, changes and even projects are more controlled using Footprints."

"Technical support is good."

More BMC FootPrints Service Core pros

"Overall, it's a good product that I would recommend."

"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."

"In general, it's been pretty stable."

"The solution has been stable."

"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 solution is very easy to work with."

"SLA integrations, reports, and integration with other applications are the most valuable."

"Overall, it has helped us continuously improve our business processes."

More IBM SmartCloud Control Desk pros

Cons

"There could be improvement in the reporting and insights into the ROI. The ROI tool that shows the performance and the return on investment is not very accurate."

"The scheduling is a little difficult at times. Rather than setting up individual instances, it would be really nice if we had the ability to set repetitive jobs easily. Right now, if you want a job to run every 15 minutes, you have to schedule it a lot of times. I'd rather have the ability to just say 'run every 15 minutes.'"

"The IQ Bot is pretty immature, in regards to AI and machine learning. I would like them to add additional logic."

"My main issue with Automation Anywhere might be the logging of bots and getting more detailed feedback of what my bot is doing, step by step. It is hard to track fine-tuning in larger codes."

"The product is good, no doubt about it, but we need the OCR for handwritten documents, the web-based solution, and the licensing has to be improved."

"The price is a little high and could be reduced."

"They could improve around continuous integration, e.g., Jenkins and GitHub, stating how you could use those products and integrating them into Automation Anywhere."

"It has been challenging integrating Automation Anywhere with other solutions, due to all of the controls, as we are a bank."

More Automation Anywhere cons

"We need more customizable reporting functionality."

"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."

"To improve the product for our usage, the pricing maybe could be a bit lower."

"Reporting could be improved along with the option to create more fine tuned reports and to create specific fields for each type of ticket."

"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."

"The pricing could be a little lower and the product should cover more iTel versions."

"Sometimes it is difficult to make the application do exactly what you need."

"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."

"Technical support can be slow in terms of resolving issues."

"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."

"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."

"The product is kind of clunky to use."

"The solution lacks a graphical user interface."

More IBM SmartCloud Control Desk cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have established a CoE and we take our bot opportunities based on their ROIs. The best ROI opportunity goes to development first. Our ROI opportunities are compliance, profitable growth, productivity enhancements, productivity gains, number of hours the productivity saved, and resources not available that the work can be done by the bot. However, the single most important criteria that we use to measure ROI is how much time does the bot cut down from an analyst's work, as this has the best ROI. E.g., if an analyst is spending a 100 hours of work that a bot can do in one hour, we calculate the 99 hours saved as ROI."

"If you are looking into Automation Anywhere, get the Community Edition and play with it."

"There are a lot of savings in terms of effort and time as well as costs. Automation Anywhere automates a lot of processes. It allows an organization to save the efforts of a lot people. It saves a lot of time because people can't work a whole day (24/7), but Automation Anywhere bots can."

"The licensing fees are approximately $10,000 USD for between five and ten users."

"If we talk about the automation RPA. it definitely has worked very well for us. I'm talking about giving good savings, about more than 180 FTE savings, after implementing more than 200 plus bots. It has worked well. As an organization, it has supported us very well, and also for our customers."

"We have purchased licenses, but are trying to obtain more bot programmer licenses."

"It's fine. However, I'm concerned with the credits in terms of the pricing for the AI models. It is understandable that the new ones are more expensive, but the base models, after doing the pricing conversion, cost about four to ten times as much as paying directly."

"Whatever investment, licensing, and resource costs together are put in for development and delivery, we are still at an ROI of 250 percent."

More Automation Anywhere pricing and cost advice

"Cost was on par with other service desk products, and well below Remedy, while still being a BMC product."

"Our costs are well over $250,000."

"This solution has good pricing."

"The licensing for FootPrints is a perpetual license with an annual support fee."

"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."

"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 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."

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915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Outsourcing Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Construction Company

20%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Outsourcing Company

Comms Service Provider

12%

Outsourcing Company

12%

Performing Arts

12%

Construction Company

11%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	161
Midsize Enterprise	85
Large Enterprise	561

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	5

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Large Enterprise	3

Questions from the Community

How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?

It depends on your use case. Is it simply to automate a couple of processes? Is it to augment a human team? AA is ver...

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How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?

From my experience using AA tool, it depends on the applications that you want to automate, because there some applic...

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How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?

It is a highly preferred RPA tool. You can check my Automation Anywhere Review to know more.

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Compared 12% of the time

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Compared 4% of the time

TOPdesk vs BMC FootPrints Service Core

Compared 4% of the time

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Compared 14% of the time

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Compared 12% of the time

Ameyo Fusion CX vs IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

Compared 10% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

More IBM SmartCloud Control Desk Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Automation Anywhere

October 2026

Download Automation Anywhere product report

Buyer's Guide

IT Service Management (ITSM)

September 2026

Download BMC FootPrints Service Core product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

September 2026

Download IBM SmartCloud Control Desk product report

Also Known As

Automation Anywhere, Testing Anywhere, Automation Anywhere Enterprise, Agentic Process Automation System (Now Certified for WorkSpaces)

FootPrints Service Core

SmartCloud Control Desk

Interactive Demo

Automation Anywhere

Demo not available

BMC Helix

Demo not available

IBM

Overview

Automation Anywhere offers ease of use, robust system connectivity, and GenAI-driven document automation through a cloud-native platform, significantly enhancing productivity across multiple industries with advanced AI features.

Delivering a comprehensive suite of tools designed for easy integration and rapid deployment, Automation Anywhere drives efficiency by reducing costs and automating repetitive tasks. Its cloud-native platform supports broad industry adoption, including advanced AI features like process automation and Co-Pilot, streamlining complex workflows with minimal technical skills required. Users benefit from robust integration capabilities, which facilitate seamless interaction with multiple systems. However, there is room for improvement in areas such as user-friendliness for beginners, stability, flexible licensing, and enhanced OCR functionality. Organizations in sectors such as banking, finance, manufacturing, and healthcare gain from the improved operational efficiency and ROI Automation Anywhere offers.

What are the important features of Automation Anywhere?

Ease of Use: Simplifies automation tasks with a user-centric interface.
Robust Connectivity: Provides seamless integration with multiple systems.
GenAI-Driven Document Automation: Leverages AI to automate document management.
Process Automation & Co-Pilot: Enhances workflow automation with advanced AI.
Cloud-Native Platform: Enables rapid deployment and integration.

What benefits should be evaluated in reviews?

Time Savings: Automation drastically reduces manual processing time.
Cost Efficiency: Decreases overall operational costs by automating tasks.
Productivity Enhancement: Streamlines workflows with AI-driven tools.
Improved Integration: Enhances ability to work with multiple systems.
Scalability: Supports growth with a flexible cloud-native architecture.

In the insurance industry, Automation Anywhere is utilized for automating processes such as enrollment management and compliance checks. Its applications extend to supply chain management, financial transactions, and business performance monitoring across sectors like banking, finance, manufacturing, and healthcare, helping organizations to automate routine tasks, improve efficiency, and reduce costs.

Automation Anywhere

BMC FootPrints Service Core is a comprehensive tool that aids in incident, problem, and change management while offering customizable views and integration options.

Valued for its customizable home views and flexible database relations, BMC FootPrints Service Core excels in stability and responsive technical support. With capabilities for email automation, survey integration, and report creation, it enhances IT service management and business process efficiency. The solution supports ticket status updates with minimal downtime and accommodates multiple administrators across workspaces. Pink Elephant certification and smart IT features broaden its appeal for IT departments.

What are the key features of BMC FootPrints Service Core?

Incident Management: Tracks and resolves service desk tickets efficiently.
Problem Management: Identifies and mitigates underlying issues to prevent recurrence.
Change Management: Helps assess and handle changes seamlessly in the environment.
Customizable Views: Offers tailored dashboards for user-specific information.
Email Automation: Facilitates swift communication and response handling.

What benefits or ROI should users look for in reviews?

Stable Performance: Ensures reliable operation for consistent IT services.
Responsive Support: Provides timely technical assistance to resolve issues.
Administrative Flexibility: Allows versatile control across different workspaces.

In industries like IT services and HR, BMC FootPrints Service Core supports managing service desk tickets, tracking assets, and resolving issues in network, infrastructure, and software areas. Its functionalities also extend to HR issue tracking, service requests, and contract management, facilitating both on-premises deployments and ITIL process implementations such as Service Request and Service Catalog Management.

BMC Helix

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk offers robust integration capabilities, effective SLA integrations, automated workflows, and comprehensive reporting. Its flexibility and centralized request management enhance service efficiency, making it ideal for detailed issue tracking and resolution in IT environments.

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is designed to streamline IT support, ticketing, and incident management. By integrating seamlessly with existing infrastructures, it centralizes service requests and IT asset management. Its automated processes ensure efficiency from initiation to resolution, reducing the chances of oversight. The platform's adaptability supports both on-premises and cloud deployments, making it suitable for industries like telecommunications and IT services. However, users often face challenges with support responsiveness, outdated interfaces, and difficulties with email integration, particularly affecting images and attachments.

What Are the Key Features of IBM SmartCloud Control Desk?

Integration Capabilities: Seamlessly integrates with various systems to enhance functionality.
SLA Integrations: Strong service level agreement management ensures SLAs are met.
Automated Workflow: Full automation of processes from start to resolution.
Robust Reporting: Comprehensive reporting tools for detailed insights.
Request Management: Centralized management of service requests and IT assets.

What Benefits and ROI Should Users Seek?

Efficiency: Streamlines operations with automated processes, increasing productivity.
Flexibility: Adapts to organizational changes for better service delivery.
Reliability: Backed by IBM's trusted brand reputation.
Scalability: Scales with demand for growing businesses.

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is widely implemented in telecommunications and IT services industries. Organizations utilize it for managing IT support, incident resolution, and system monitoring. Its ability to handle both internal and external requests effectively helps businesses streamline client communications and improve service management across different deployment models.

IBM

Sample Customers

Google, Linkedin, Cisco, Juniper Networks, DellEMC, Comcast, Mastercard, Quest Diagnostics

Cast & Crew

St Vincent's Health Australia, Kalibrate Pty. Ltd., Cognizant Technology

Buyer's Guide

BMC FootPrints Service Core vs. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

September 2026

Free Report: BMC FootPrints Service Core vs. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

Find out what your peers are saying about BMC FootPrints Service Core vs. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.

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