BMC Helix ITSM vs IBM SmartCloud Control Desk vs ServiceNow comparison

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

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91% willing to recommend

BMC Helix ITSM

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between BMC Helix ITSM, IBM SmartCloud Control Desk, and ServiceNow based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow, Atlassian, ManageEngine and others in Help Desk Software.

To learn more, read our detailed Help Desk Software Report (Updated: January 2026).

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Help Desk Software

January 2026

Helped 881,757 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:

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of BMC Helix ITSM is 5.0%, down from 10.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is 1.2%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow is 12.9%, down from 24.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Help Desk Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
ServiceNow	12.9%
BMC Helix ITSM	5.0%
IBM SmartCloud Control Desk	1.2%
Other	80.9%

Help Desk Software

Featured Reviews

KuldeepNayak

Senior Application Developer BMC at Balfour Beatty

Self-service portal significantly reduces resolution time and transforms service process with advanced features

We initially had a lot of tickets generated via the service desk through calls and emails. Now, we have almost moved out of email creations by introducing the DWP features on the Studio pages, with about 90% of the tickets coming in via our self-service portal. Recent upgrades offer different types of views for particular business lines, which was missing earlier. The new landing pages have allowed us to add banners, images, and internal videos, encouraging most customers to use these DWP self-service features. Resolution time has decreased significantly since implementing the self-service portal. Additionally, the availability of knowledge articles, chatbots, and the new Helix GPT feature has improved service processes.

Read full review

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.

Read full review

MichaelTang1

Manager of Security Engineering & Architecture at a outsourcing company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Seamless data integration and advanced automation improve service delivery efficiency

I think that nothing needs to be improved with the product; you just need the user to commit and spend appropriate time to overcome that learning curve. Once that is done, the product itself is pretty wonderful. I've seen a very nicely built interface with ServiceNow, and I've also seen the ugliest version that feels outdated. ServiceNow does allow that team to exist. They should modernize their fonts and their layout, the UI friendliness. They did introduce AI, chatbots, and AI on the back end, so that's wonderful and extremely useful if you train it. If you don't train it, it's pretty useless. Assessing the impact of ServiceNow's automation on service delivery times is complicated. The engineers who operate on ServiceNow find it isn't straightforward because the data set is accessible by everybody. The problem is that understanding how to manage that data set requires an enormous amount of engineering skill set to run the product. I would not hand the key to the customer; I would highly recommend that ServiceNow take control of that. Instead of offering support for the software, they should offer administrative support for the software. They should provide professional service or some kind of support system that allows us to use their product at a faster pace. I'm sure they offer something, but it's often outrageously expensive, or they rely on another company to resell their product and offer professional service. It makes no sense in my opinion, and they should offer the team at the front to help customize the product to fit each company's needs, as every company has different demands and forms of submitting a request that need adjustment over time.

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

"In BMC, you can do absolutely anything. You can customize, you can configure, and you can customize and develop pretty much anything."

"Smart Reporting makes it easy to create/publish views for tables, so our customers can easily create their own reports."

"Initial, out-the-box setup was easy with no problems."

"The valuable feature for me is that it's a tool that allows me to track processes right from the initial user request."

"The versatility and customizability of the product is what I like most."

"Our Change Management and Incident Management processes have been greatly improved."

"The most valuable features of BMC Helix ITSM are the collaboration, integrated with the help of another solution called Entity. We can do all the integration and receive an automatic ticket with the help of email. We are able to receive SMS alerts to clients and end users. Every step of the ticket is generated and we are able to resolve and close them. It's very helpful to have the ability to inform the user with detailed information."

"It's one of the top solutions on the market for ITSM capabilities."

More BMC Helix ITSM pros

"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."

"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 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."

"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."

"The solution has been stable."

"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."

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

More IBM SmartCloud Control Desk pros

"I like that it's always up and running."

"I have found the workflows and integration the most valuable in this solution."

"ServiceNow helps to improve IT incident handling in a more comprehensive way, and the latest version provides extensive information, including AI that allows us to program it in such a way that our L1 support can be eliminated."

"I prefer ServiceNow to the competition because of its ease of use, installation and configuration."

"I have found many features that are important and that are easier when compared to Remedy; for example, the Scripted REST APIs and the Flow Designer... The Client scripts are simpler when you compare with Remedy."

"ServiceNow is easy to use and has a user-friendly interface."

"The most valuable aspect of the solution is the possibility of the application development cap so that we can digitize workflows."

"I like that in ServiceNow creating workflows is simpler than that in HP Service Manager. Also, I really like the customization feature. It allows us to customize the service portal and permits us to do a lot of customization per business needs."

More ServiceNow pros

Cons

"I have customers that always would like to adapt and personalize BMC Helix ITSM more."

"Support could be more skilled. We are wasting too much of our time debugging."

"Some parts of the solutions are using the old interface."

"The search feature and the dashboard could both be improved."

"Compared to ServiceNow, BMC Remedy is somewhat "closed." I can go to the ServiceNow website and learn everything there is to know about the product, and training is available. That really wasn't available with BMC Remedy."

"We have experienced outages, because some other customers did something on the same cluster that we share."

"Needs to make customizable/configurable article templates in the Knowledge Management."

"It needs to be more comfortable for the end-user."

More BMC Helix ITSM 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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More IBM SmartCloud Control Desk cons

"The user interface could be much improved, and the developer tools and sets can be improved greatly, they are lacking."

"I know that discovery tools are not meant to be simple, but somehow, if they could make it more simple and robust, that would be great."

"Making a mobile version would be helpful."

"The solution is lacking in the mobile application area that could be improved."

"Most people are discussing UIs, but I'm a developer. I would say 80-90% of the people would appreciate that, that's easy for them, but from a developer perspective, it's hard for me, because for me it's clunky"

"Currently, we are finding it a bit difficult to monitor the subscriptions that are being used. The reporting feature related to this can be improved. Its ITOM functionality can be improved. BMC does a better job than ServiceNow in terms of capturing utilization and other such things."

"The scalability needs improvement."

"Service mapping could be less complicated."

More ServiceNow cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are licenses to use this solution."

"It is not very expensive and not very cheap. It is somewhere in-between. Some of the features are more expensive. There are also additional costs. If you want to use most of the features, you need to pay more."

"It's a yearly subscription but there are a couple of customers who go for the monthly subscription."

"While purchasing, try to negotiate on per user licensing costs, associated maintenance, and purchase 20% more then what you think you should have. Bulk is always cheaper."

"Just make sure you really sit down and look at what you will be using per user, therefore you will not be surprised with a big bill. You do not want every user having every license, it really is not needed."

"The cost is relatively high, especially for the BMC Controller application. However, the expense is justified by the standard and reliable features it offers. This product's reputation in the market is strong, providing assurance in terms of data and other considerations."

"I rate the product price an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive. The solution is expensive."

"BMC is a little bit cheaper than ServiceNow, but BMC doesn't have the same capabilities in its entry-level product at the moment. The basic version does not have the DWP features that most of our customers are requesting."

More BMC Helix ITSM 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 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."

"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."

"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."

"The price of this solution is expensive."

"The platform offers a free trial, by providing a free developer instance once you sign up."

"It is an expensive platform."

"Initially, the licensing model ServiceNow came up with was very good. But now, from a licensing perspective, they are changing their model day by day. It is becoming a bit expensive for customers."

"I would say it is moderately expensive, ranging from six to seven on a scale of ten."

"ServiceNow pricing is an art, not a science. The deal depends on how commercially savvy you are, which does make it something that is quite difficult to get right. It is most definitely an opportunity area for ServiceNow to improve and have more visibility around pricing of the different products within the platform."

"The licensing cost is based on your partnership with ServiceNow and what you have selected for implementation. There is an annual license cost which is calculated based on your number of devices."

More ServiceNow pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Government

No data available

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	19
Midsize Enterprise	14
Large Enterprise	54

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Large Enterprise	3

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	55
Midsize Enterprise	35
Large Enterprise	166

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about BMC Helix ITSM?

If we consider major players like Ford or BMW, their core focus is manufacturing products like cars. To ensure smooth...

What needs improvement with BMC Helix ITSM?

Currently, we are not utilizing the AI functionality in BMC Helix ITSM as we are still in the roadmap and development...

What is your primary use case for BMC Helix ITSM?

We use BMC Helix ITSM for the complete end-to-end ITSM suite, mainly for ticketing and service management. BMC Helix ...

Which solution is better for developing non-ITSM applications: OutSystems or Service Now?

Ask a question

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The short answer is that OutSystems is far better for 2 main reasons. Firstly, with Service Now you are locked into t...

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 ...

What do you like most about ServiceNow?

The solution has a user-friendly interface.

JIRA Service Management vs BMC Helix ITSM

Comparisons

Compared 13% of the time

Agiloft ITSM ITIL Service Desk Suite vs BMC Helix ITSM

Compared 4% of the time

Zendesk vs BMC Helix ITSM

Compared 4% of the time

Freshservice vs BMC Helix ITSM

Compared 3% of the time

Aisera AI Service Desk vs BMC Helix ITSM

Compared 3% of the time

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SCSM vs IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

Compared 21% of the time

Ivanti Neurons for ITSM vs IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

Compared 18% of the time

Ameyo Fusion CX vs IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

Compared 15% of the time

Zendesk vs IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

Compared 13% of the time

ConnectWise PSA vs IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

Compared 12% of the time

More IBM SmartCloud Control Desk Competitors

IBM Maximo vs ServiceNow

Compared 5% of the time

JIRA Service Management vs ServiceNow

Compared 4% of the time

Zendesk vs ServiceNow

Compared 4% of the time

Pega Platform vs ServiceNow

Compared 4% of the time

Freshservice vs ServiceNow

Compared 3% of the time

More ServiceNow Competitors

Product Reports

Download BMC Helix ITSM product report

BMC Helix ITSM

February 2026

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

January 2026

Download IBM SmartCloud Control Desk product report

Download ServiceNow product report

January 2026

Also Known As

Remedy ITSM, Remedy, Helix Remedy, BMC Helix IT Service Management

SmartCloud Control Desk

No data available

Overview

BMC Helix ITSM is a cutting-edge IT service management platform that leads the service management industry. It is built natively for mobile with an intuitive, beautiful, people-centric user experience that makes your whole organization more productive. This platform leverages artificial intelligence to automate and streamline various service management processes. In doing so, it will ultimately make your organization more efficient. This simple-to-use platform is capable of handling even your organization’s most advanced management requirements.

BMC Helix ITSM is a predictive platform that does not simply wait for problems to occur. The advanced analytics software aims to improve your organization’s efficiency by spotting weak areas and then proposing solutions. This platform can improve your resource deployment efficiency by as much as 45% .This is why it is trusted by corporations across a variety of industries.

Key Features

Some of BMC Helix ITSM’s key features include:

Solves service issues in a way that makes you more efficient. BMC Helix ITSM employs advanced analytic software that searches for areas where your organization can drive efficiencies to provide the best possible service.
Groups issues that recur in a way that streamlines both analysis and incident management. It uses artificial intelligence to identify and solve groups of incidents in real time. The AI automates these processes, which can prove both tedious and time-consuming.
Securely and seamlessly provides services across multi-cloud environments with “a single pane of glass” interface. This allows you to be highly flexible. You can configure your services in a number of different ways without having to worry that your multi-cloud environment won’t be able to support your service management.
The ability to view all of your management data in a way that provides you with clear insights into your system’s management. BMC Helix ITSM enables you to create custom reports and dashboards. This makes it possible for you to see any and all significant trends in your operations and services data.

Reviews from Real Users

BMC Helix ITSM’s software stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two of these are the robust activity tracking features and the lightweight nature of the solution.

A PeerSpot user who is a technical Program Manager and Site Lead at a computer software company notes the nature of Helix’s task tracking when they write, “The most valuable features I have found are the activity logs. Additionally, the other features where you are able to continuously address issues and are able to annotate notes inside to convey them to the customer. The customer can read the notes and are able to know where you are in the procedures and process of fixing the problem for them. It has a good interactive piece for dialogue with customers where you do not have to interact with them personally, but they can do it on their own just by going into that activity log. This is great for the customer to have the ability to find out how things are being progressively taken care of.”

Another PeerSpot user, who is a Practice Director of Global Infrastructure Services at a computer software company, notes, “Many other tools are similar. I've used these tools and find that they meet my requirements. Helix is more lightweight than these tools. It's a traditional tool that was developed more than 10 years ago. Ease of use is the operative word.”

BMC Helix

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

ServiceNow is a cloud-based task-management platform that specializes in IT operations management (ITOM), IT services management (ITSM), and IT business management (ITBM). ServiceNow allows users to manage their teams, projects, and customer interactions using a variety of different plugins and apps with which it easily integrates.

ServiceNow offers prebuilt applications to support any process, as well as a framework and tools that allow you to build your own.

ServiceNow’s service management solutions include change, request, incident, problem, and cost management, as well as HR, IT, field service, and facilities management solutions. They also cover business management solutions such as vendor performance management, financial management, performance analytics and project portfolio suite, as well as governance, risk, and compliance.

“The Smarter Way to Workflow”

ServiceNow’s activities, processes, and tasks are overseen as part of a comprehensive managed workflow that supports such features as real-time collaboration, communication, and resource sharing. ServiceNow’s suite of products allow for operation using serverless computing, and include the categories of Business Apps, Customer Service, HR, IT, and Security.

ServiceNow can be used to support most workflows because of the wide range of tools it offers. These include on-suite ticketing tools, predictive modeling to manage workflows, and benchmarking for the tracking of progress. ServiceNow can assist with artificial intelligence and machine learning processes and can be used to organize the cases of a help/service desk as well as for instance management and problem management. It also smoothly integrates with many legacy systems.

ServiceNow offers service management software for industries including:

Cloud services
Education
Financial services
Government
Healthcare
Manufacturing
Telecommunications

Reviews from Real Users

PeerSpot users prefer ServiceNow to its competitors because of its scalability, stability, and ease of use. It helps everyone in the company to be on the same page by creating a single source of record across all departments. One user stated that “I’ve definitely used over 20 project management solutions, but they can't be compared with ServiceNow.” Another said that “ServiceNow is an industry leader in multiple areas and provides an excellent ROI.”