IBM SmartCloud Control Desk vs JIRA Service Management vs ServiceNow comparison

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

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92% willing to recommend

JIRA Service Management

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM SmartCloud Control Desk, JIRA Service Management, 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: May 2025).

Help Desk Software

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Helped 855,347 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 June 2025, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is 0.8%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of JIRA Service Management is 9.0%, down from 12.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow is 22.5%, down from 26.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Help Desk Software

Featured Reviews

Jose Pedro Muñoz

Director of operations at Vetasi

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.

Read full review

Karim Yousef

GB, Development Practice - Technical Director at EJADA

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…

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Nikhil Gohil

Solution Engineer - Digital Platform | Mobile at British American Tobacco

Enables effective incident management and seamless workflow automation with valuable mobile accessibility

I haven't thought deeply about improvements for ServiceNow or what might be missing right now. There are so many modules and features in ServiceNow that I haven't explored them all, so it's hard to say what might be missing or should be improved. I suggest making the cost more affordable for smaller companies.

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

"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 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."

"The solution has been stable."

"The solution is very easy to work with."

"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."

"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."

More IBM SmartCloud Control Desk pros

"It's a good experience."

"The simplicity is good for our clients. The price is good."

"Two features I like about Jira are its ticketing system and its compatibility with Confluence. Also, the Knowledge Base is one of the more valuable features that would really benefit us."

"The query language and the ability to create views of the data are very useful."

"The customer portal with connection with our knowledge base has been most valuable."

"A good organizational tool."

"Everyone knows how to use it, so there's no need to teach new members."

"The automation feature in JIRA Service Management is beneficial, and that's yet to be available in ServiceNow. ServiceNow doesn't have the flexibility to automate processes."

More JIRA Service Management pros

"We have found the service easy to use, although, we have ended up customising a lot of parameters."

"The subsequent chain of tasks, I believe, is valuable."

"I don't have to look through a whole bunch of other incidents that aren't relevant to me. It's very useful in that sense."

"Your time-to-market, or TTM, becomes faster when you use ServiceNow. Even individuals that are not tech savvy can quickly change processes and workflows in it. This can make the organization as a whole more agile."

"The workflow makes things extremely efficient and it improves effectiveness."

"The flow designer feature of ServiceNow has had the biggest impact on our productivity because it has helped me reduce manual efforts by creating automation and robotics."

"I have found that sorting and grouping functions are particularly useful."

"Some of the valuable features I have found the solution to have are it can serve many different types of businesses, it has strong platform capabilities, provides application development, built-in predictive intelligence, and performance analytics reports."

More ServiceNow pros

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 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 solution lacks a graphical user interface."

"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 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."

"It could use more facility or flexibility for reporting, and business intelligence in the tool."

"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."

More IBM SmartCloud Control Desk cons

"JIRA protects the end-user, but for the configuration, more rules could be added to improve the workflow."

"This solution lacks features for project management."

"JSM's ability to handle large volumes of emails isn't great."

"The platform should be more user-friendly. JIRA's user interface needs training to understand and utilize."

"The interface could always be updated and improved."

"If JIRA were more of a substantial stand-alone product that covered more needs for project management, we wouldn't be using a suite of products."

"In the Turkish market, the biggest problem is that they are looking for a server type of solution, but when it comes to Jira Service Management, Atlassian is a remote type of license. There are just two different options, data center and cloud."

"An AI feature that enables automation and alerts for users can be an improvement."

More JIRA Service Management cons

"The installation and deployment of ServiceNow can be a bit challenging. One major issue I've encountered is that ServiceNow doesn't provide the same mobile responsiveness or features that we used to enjoy with other tools. For example, with Splunk, our response times were about five minutes, and we could manage alerts and incidents directly from our mobile devices."

"Like all other IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS subscription cloud providers, ServiceNow is constantly improving by building new capabilities to expand the breadth and depth of its offerings while increasing its activities with partners to build more capabilities."

"HR Service Management is one module that needs a lot of improvement because it's a pretty new module. It was introduced in the last two years. It's becoming more mature day by day, but there is a lot of scope for improvement in that module."

"Their user interface is old-fashioned and outdated, and it can be more friendly for the eye. They can improve the user experience."

"Where it could be improved is Discovery. This may sound odd since I just praised the value of ServiceNow Discovery, but improvements to its automatic detection, the breadth of devices, and the depth of devices covered, as well as keeping up with new technologies, are all essential."

"The contract module is quite rudimentary and doesn't support contract line items."

"There are Virtual Task Boards in the tool in the latest releases. There are many of them in the Scaled Agile Framework. There is some room there for improvement. It's really quite promising but, at the same time, it could be improved and I believe it will be improved soon."

"The setup was time-consuming and required a lot of internal resources."

More ServiceNow cons

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."

"For the people like us, the lower the price, the better. But when compared to other competitors, I think it's Jira's price is okay."

"The pricing is free for us because we are an associate partner for the product."

"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."

"We have an annual license with JIRA Service Management, but it is billed monthly."

"JIRA Service Management's pricing is pretty decent compared to competitors. I rate the pricing an eight to nine on a scale of one to ten."

"Jira Service Management has affordable license fees. It's $12 a month per person."

"The cost has recently increased. It might be around $20 to $25 per user license."

"I would suggest to always buy licenses through an Atlassian partner, so you can also rely on their expertise."

More JIRA Service Management pricing and cost advice

"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."

"The price is okay for us. It's reasonable."

"There are licensing fees."

"The mandatory minimum is US$ 20,000 for licensing."

"ServiceNow is a leader and its pricing is quite good, quite competitive... Sometimes some plugins are not priced reasonably but, generally, the platform itself, its modules, are priced reasonably."

"Some time ago it was expensive, but large companies have special contracts. It's enterprise prices, and we're talking about millions per year."

"The price could be a little lower for the solution. Many of my customers have issues with the licensing process, they have to make it easier and straightforward."

"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."

More ServiceNow pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Computer Software Company

19%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Educational Organization

24%

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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What is your favorite Help Desk Software and why?

JIRA Due to its agility.

What do you like most about JIRA Service Management?

JIRA Service Management is a very user-friendly solution.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for JIRA Service Management?

The price is actually reasonable.

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 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.

SCSM vs IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

Comparisons

Compared 45% of the time

More IBM SmartCloud Control Desk Competitors

ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus vs JIRA Service Management

Compared 14% of the time

BMC Helix ITSM vs JIRA Service Management

Compared 10% of the time

PagerDuty Operations Cloud vs JIRA Service Management

Compared 5% of the time

IBM Maximo vs JIRA Service Management

Compared 5% of the time

HaloITSM vs JIRA Service Management

Compared 5% of the time

More JIRA Service Management Competitors

BMC Helix ITSM vs ServiceNow

Compared 7% of the time

Pega Platform vs ServiceNow

Compared 6% of the time

Microsoft Power Apps vs ServiceNow

Compared 6% of the time

IBM Maximo vs ServiceNow

Compared 5% of the time

BMC Remedy vs ServiceNow

Compared 2% of the time

More ServiceNow Competitors

Product Reports

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

Download IBM SmartCloud Control Desk product report

JIRA Service Management

Download JIRA Service Management product report

Download ServiceNow product report

Also Known As

SmartCloud Control Desk

JIRA Service Desk

No data available

Overview

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

JIRA Service Management is Atlassian’s IT service management (ITSM) solution. It unlocks all teams at high velocity by:

1. Accelerating the flow of work between IT teams, development teams, and business teams

2. Empowering teams to deliver their service more quickly

3. Bringing visibility to their work

Built on JIRA, JIRA Service Management enables best practices across request, incident, problem, change, knowledge, asset, and configuration management so that teams can streamline collaboration between themselves. More than 30,000 customers of all sizes rely on JIRA Service Management to deliver service.

JIRA Service Management Features

JIRA Service Management has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Request management: Allows businesses to manage work across teams with one platform so employees and customers get the help they need quickly.
Problem management: To minimize the impact of incidents, this feature groups incidents, fast-tracks root cause analysis, and records workarounds.
Change management: IT teams are empowered by richer contextual information around changes from software development tools. This helps them minimize risk and make better decisions.
Asset management: Manage inventory efficiently, track lifecycles and ownership, and reduce costs.
Configuration management: Attain visibility into the infrastructure that supports critical services and applications. Understand service dependencies to minimize risk.
Incident management: The solution brings development and IT teams together to rapidly respond to, resolve, and learn from incidents.
Knowledge management: While fostering team collaboration, the solution enables self-service, deflection of more requests, and management of knowledge articles.

JIRA Service Management Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing JIRA Service Management. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

The solution empowers all teams across IT, development, and business with intuitive, flexible workflows.

Work is made visible through the open and collaborative JIRA platform.
Connect IT and development on a single platform to accelerate workflow.
Gain significant ROI with competitive pricing on useful features.
Benefit from faster time to value by implementing a full ITSM solution in just a few months.
Lower total cost of ownership without expensive ongoing maintenance and upgrades.
Enjoy a broad ecosystem of more than 4,000 best-in-class apps and integrations.

Reviews from Real Users

JIRA Service Management stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Some of these include its stability, its easy customization, and its seamless integration with other solutions. PeerSpot users take note of the advantages of these features in their reviews:

Abhishek S., a Program Lead at PureSoftware, writes of the solution, “You can scale the solution whether it is deployed to the cloud or the data center. While we might have up to 5,200 people using the solution, we do not require that many licenses, as only those dealing with the tickets are required to be licensed.”

Andrew B., a Technical Engineer at a consultancy firm, notes, “One of the valuable features is that an automatic response or action can be taken on tickets. We can have certain responses for tickets that contain keywords or are logged and tagged with certain labels.”

Atlassian

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.”