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IBM SmartCloud Control Desk vs Serviceaide ChangeGear comparison

IBM and Serviceaide are both solutions in the Help Desk Software category. IBM is ranked #27, while Serviceaide is ranked #34. IBM holds a 0.9% mindshare in HDS, compared to Serviceaide’s 0.6% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 85% of Serviceaide users who would recommend it.
IBM SmartCloud Control Desk
Read 9 IBM SmartCloud Control Desk reviews
  • 404 Views
  • 49 Comparison Views
88% willing to recommend
Serviceaide ChangeGear
Read 14 Serviceaide ChangeGear reviews
  • 268 Views
  • 35 Comparison Views
85% willing to recommend
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 1, 2024

Serviceaide ChangeGear and IBM SmartCloud Control Desk compete in the IT service management category. Serviceaide ChangeGear holds the upper hand in customer support, while IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is favored for its extensive features, fitting for larger enterprises.

Features: Serviceaide ChangeGear is known for its easy-to-use design and efficient workflows focused on incident, problem, and change management. It emphasizes streamlined processes and simplicity. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk stands out with a broad feature set that includes asset and configuration management, making it suitable for organizations needing a complete service management suite.

Room for Improvement: Serviceaide ChangeGear could expand its feature set to cater to larger enterprises and improve integration capabilities with other systems. Enhanced reporting and analytics could also be valuable. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk may benefit from simplifying its deployment process, improving the responsiveness of its customer service, and reducing the complexity of its interface for ease of use.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Serviceaide ChangeGear is praised for its straightforward deployment and responsive customer service, facilitating quick setup and support. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk offers a robust deployment model, requiring more time for full integration, accompanied by comprehensive support services that may be less responsive than desired.

Pricing and ROI: Serviceaide ChangeGear is attractive for budget-conscious businesses with lower setup costs, enabling a quicker return on investment. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk involves higher initial costs, but its extensive features can provide significant long-term value, appealing to enterprises looking for advanced capabilities that justify the expense.

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To learn more, read our detailed IBM SmartCloud Control Desk vs. Serviceaide ChangeGear Report (Updated: June 2025).
Buyer's Guide
IBM SmartCloud Control Desk vs. Serviceaide ChangeGear
June 2025
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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

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk
Ranking in Help Desk Software
27th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Serviceaide ChangeGear
Ranking in Help Desk Software
34th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
IT Service Management (ITSM) (33rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is 0.9%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Serviceaide ChangeGear is 0.6%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
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.
Read full review
UA
A fairly stable solution that’s highly mature, but has a poor user interface
The solution does not align as modern service solutions do. Seamless integration is no available among the processes. Their service management application needs a lot of work. It’s in a really bad state right now. They brought on a new interface that clumped all the processes and features of the solution into one. Still, it’s not really compatible with other solutions. Because of this, its rating has dropped in Gardner. The solution needs to improve its reporting features. The user interface needs a lot of improvements. The product needs to implement a cloud platform solution, which is lacking so far. Their workflow engine is still segregated. It’s not embedded. If you need to do some workflow approvals, you cannot do them directly on the service desk. You have to go into Outlook and do an approval or you have to go in through another screen to handle the approval because the workflow engine they have is a separate product.
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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

"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."
"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."
"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."
"The solution is very easy to work with."
"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."
"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."
More IBM SmartCloud Control Desk pros
"The solution is a highly mature product. Because of this, it can stand up to any other product on the market."
 

Cons

"It could use more facility or flexibility for reporting, and business intelligence in the tool."
"The solution lacks a graphical user interface."
"The reporting in relation to updating could be improved upon."
"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."
"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."
"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 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."
More IBM SmartCloud Control Desk cons
"The solution needs to improve its reporting features. The user interface needs a lot of improvements."
 

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 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."
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860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Comparisons

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Compared 35% of the time
Zendesk vs IBM SmartCloud Control Desk Logo
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Compared 30% of the time
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ServiceNow vs Serviceaide ChangeGear Logo
ServiceNow vs Serviceaide ChangeGear
Compared 100% of the time
More Serviceaide ChangeGear Competitors
 

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
IBM SmartCloud Control Desk
June 2025
IBM SmartCloud Control Desk reportDownload IBM SmartCloud Control Desk product report
Buyer's Guide
IT Service Management (ITSM)
June 2025
Serviceaide ChangeGear reportDownload Serviceaide ChangeGear product report
 

Also Known As

SmartCloud Control Desk
Serviceaide ISM (Intelligent Service Management), Nimsoft Service Desk, CA Cloud Service Management , ChangeGear
 

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

ChangeGear, a leader in the GigaOm ITSM Radar Report, presents a cutting-edge AI-based service management platform that transforms user experience and enhances decision-making. Offering a business-friendly interface, ChangeGear is customizable with drag-n-drop editing, ensuring adaptability to diverse user needs. The AI-driven platform accelerates decision-making processes with real-time recommendations and intelligent predictions, boosting staff efficiency. Advanced automation, including workflow automation and business process automation, streamlines operations, freeing staff from manual tasks. Recognized for its agility and speed, ChangeGear stands out in change management, asset management, and service desk solutions. For industries navigating compliance challenges, ChangeGear's robust change management and auditing capabilities provide a comprehensive solution. 

Serviceaide
 

Sample Customers

St Vincent's Health Australia, Kalibrate Pty. Ltd., Cognizant Technology
Oakwood Systems Group
Buyer's Guide
IBM SmartCloud Control Desk vs. Serviceaide ChangeGear
June 2025
Free Report: IBM SmartCloud Control Desk vs. Serviceaide ChangeGear
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM SmartCloud Control Desk vs. Serviceaide ChangeGear and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
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