IBM SmartCloud Control Desk vs ServiceNow vs SymphonyAI IT Service Management comparison

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IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM SmartCloud Control Desk, ServiceNow, and SymphonyAI IT Service Management 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: June 2025).

Help Desk Software

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Helped 860,632 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 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 ServiceNow is 21.3%, down from 26.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SymphonyAI IT Service Management is 1.6%, up from 1.0% 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.

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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.

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Abhishek Bhosle

IT Specialist at Tata AIA

Good ticketing tool but limitations with integration

We use ManageEngine, but it's still pretty new and under development. We used SummitAI for about four years before switching to ManageEngine. There are specific features that were missing in SummitAI that we're hoping to find in ManageEngine. We were informed that ManageEngine was a new ticketing tool with modern and advanced analytics, which would be a better fit than SummitAI with its older engine. Firstly, ManageEngine allows detailed asset inventory per user. I, as a user, can store authentication details like which laptop and mobile I use, for all employees. Secondly, ManageEngine can handle patching, Windows updates, and pushing applications from the server to desktops. Finally, ManageEngine lets us do remote access directly through the tool.

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

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

"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."

"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 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."

"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 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."

More IBM SmartCloud Control Desk pros

"I think the technical support is pretty good. They can be a little bit slow sometimes, but overall I think they're good."

"It's a straightforward and effective approach that minimizes the need for extensive explanations."

"I would rate ServiceNow nine out of ten."

"I really like ServiceNow and all of the features. The way incident management is built is very helpful. You have a lot of options to optimize it, customize it, and automate it. You also have a lot of options for reporting. There are plenty of possibilities to do preference management within your customer CMDB file. These are very useful features, which I missed in BMC Remedy ITSM. ServiceNow is the best ticketing tool I have used so far."

"If you stick to the out-of-the-box solution, it's an easy setup."

"It uses a common base of data and allows different types of records to pull from that same base of data."

"The solution has a user-friendly interface."

"The flow designer for application development is the most valuable. The newest version of flow designer allows us to develop applications quite fast. We can have custom and mobile applications. It has an interface for mobiles, and it also has a good reputation."

More ServiceNow pros

"The product has the best features for ITSM."

"The most valuable feature is remote access. People are working from home, and we can take remote access through it."

"SummitAI IT Management Suite's chat box feature has reduced our service discount, and because it's intelligent, the responses that go out to the users have improved, and the resolutions are much faster."

"It was easy to access and fast. Our experience using it solely as a ticketing tool. We used fetch reports from the tool, particularly with regard to SLA tracking for our partners."

Cons

"The solution lacks a graphical user interface."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

More IBM SmartCloud Control Desk cons

"The standard UI is very restricted. It doesn't look as good, compared to Remedy. Building your own UI requires some additional coding..."

"For me, there's a real opportunity, especially within the IT Service Management suite, to give a much better overall view of the workflow that individuals have across the different applications. At the moment, a lot of information is quite siloed in the different tables in ServiceNow."

"ServiceNow's customization is not too agile in those cases; it takes a little bit of time."

"We can't update bulk tickets using a simple query language. Jira lets us update hundreds of tickets with one command. In ServiceNow, you need to select each task separately to close them. The dashboards could also be more user-friendly. Monday.com has better dashboards."

"The scalability needs improvement."

"Change Management is the area I have found that this tool can be improved because there are so many fields which are missing, such as urgency of the customer request and how the priority is defined. These are some of the areas in which I found that BMC Remedy is much better than ServiceNow."

"Time to respond from support could definitely be better, as the global support timing sometimes causes delays in interactions."

"When it comes to reference fields, there are some limitations where you aren't able to use them, like in relationship queries. In Remedy, when you click a menu, you get options directly, whereas here, if you use a reference field, it points you to a different form. So the UI experience totally changes for the end user."

More ServiceNow cons

"There could be flexibility in terms of customization."

"SummitAI IT Management Suite's project management and operational management features could be improved."

"Integration was a major limitation with SummitAI."

"I would like them to add software inventory in the next release. We don't have that right now."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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 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 solution is priced for medium to enterprises sized businesses. However, it is expensive compared to competitors."

"The product cost is higher than that of other vendors."

"I know that it's not too bad because people continue to use it and they are happy to renew up their contract."

"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."

"The setup cost is high compared to others, especially when the scope is not fixed."

"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."

"It is an expensive platform."

More ServiceNow pricing and cost advice

"SummitAI IT Management Suite's pricing is a bit expensive."

"We have a regular license."

"The product's cost is average."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Educational Organization

14%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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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.

What do you like most about SummitAI IT Management Suite?

It was easy to access and fast. Our experience using it solely as a ticketing tool. We used fetch reports from the to...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SummitAI IT Management Suite?

The product's cost is average. It used to be inexpensive, but now they have added many functionalities. Still, it is ...

What needs improvement with SummitAI IT Management Suite?

Integration was a major limitation with SummitAI. Features we need are available in ManageEngine, making it a better ...

SCSM vs IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

Comparisons

Compared 34% of the time

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BMC Helix ITSM vs ServiceNow

Compared 7% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

Microsoft Dynamics CRM vs ServiceNow

Compared 5% of the time

IBM Maximo vs ServiceNow

Compared 5% of the time

Microsoft Power Apps vs ServiceNow

Compared 5% of the time

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ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus vs SymphonyAI IT Service Management

Compared 18% of the time

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Product Reports

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

Download IBM SmartCloud Control Desk product report

Download ServiceNow product report

IT Service Management (ITSM)

Download SymphonyAI IT Service Management product report

Also Known As

SmartCloud Control Desk

No data available

Summus IT Management Suite

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

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.”