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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
26th
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
7.0
Number of Reviews
87
Ranking in other categories
IT Service Management (ITSM) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is 1.1%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of JIRA Service Management is 7.4%, down from 11.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Help Desk Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
JIRA Service Management7.4%
IBM SmartCloud Control Desk1.1%
Other91.5%
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

"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 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."
"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 has been stable."
"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."
"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."
"SLA integrations, reports, and integration with other applications are the most valuable."
"The solution is very easy to work with."
"Its integration is most valuable. It is pretty open for integration."
"Provides excellent management features."
"Jira Service Management is flexible. It is easy to navigate without requiring extra learning. The user experience has been good."
"The visibility features are great."
"The platform is easy to use."
"It has improved our work in a number of ways. First, it has made everything much faster. Before Jira Service Management, it could take weeks to resolve a ticket."
"Apart from ticket management and workflow, the Kanban board is one of the helpful tools in Jira."
"Jira Service Management has a workflow feature you can configure for your specific requirements. It also lets you efficiently manage service requests with team members."
 

Cons

"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 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 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."
"It could use more facility or flexibility for reporting, and business intelligence in the tool."
"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."
"The reporting in relation to updating could be improved upon."
"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."
"An AI feature that enables automation and alerts for users can be an improvement."
"As a consultant, I have used the support. Some of the support I have received has been good and other times it could improve."
"The price is a point of contention for me. It does overall work out as a significant amount of money that will be spent over a shorter period of time."
"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."
"The documentation needs improving, it's difficult to find specific procedures."
"An improvement they could add is a better management dashboard. We only use the dashboard for the administration mode. We have a dashboard that reports the state of bugs or requirements. However, customers can only view requests that they made. We are not able to share a dashboard with our manager level customers to show them all of the requests in a quick dashboard."
"The customizations in Jira could be improved by being simplified. They are currently very complex."
"The initial setup of JIRA Service Management can be complex for new users. There is a lot of configuration."
 

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."
"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."
"We have paid $20,000 recently for a one-year license for our on-prem server."
"Licensing can become quite expensive."
"The price of JIRA Service Management could be reduced."
"I rate Service Management four out of 10 for affordability. The price could be better, especially for companies using more than one Atlassian product. It's suitable for SMBs that can afford it. I don't think there's another tool that's both better and cheaper. All help desk tools are relatively expensive."
"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."
"The pricing is very competitive and I think that it is okay."
"The cost has recently increased. It might be around $20 to $25 per user license."
"JSM's pricing is one of the best, starting at around $10 per user, per month, with volume discounts available."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Educational Organization
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise33
 

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: September 2025.
872,778 professionals have used our research since 2012.