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IBM SmartCloud Control Desk vs SolarWinds Web Help Desk comparison

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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

Automation Anywhere
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
666
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (2nd), Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (2nd), Process Mining (1st), Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) (1st), Agentic Automation (1st), Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies (2nd), AI Legal & Compliance (1st), AI Finance & Accounting (2nd), AI Procurement & Supply Chain (1st)
IBM SmartCloud Control Desk
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (32nd)
SolarWinds Web Help Desk
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (30th)
 

Featured Reviews

Venkat Sivaprakash - PeerSpot reviewer
Management Consultant at Accenture
Has significantly improved document-driven workflows and reduced processing time across finance and HR functions
Automation Anywhere has evolved significantly and upgraded itself to provide agentic AI and AI-based automation solutions for document automation. The product has matured considerably over time. We can create workflows that can call an API. We can include prompts in particular workflows for ChatGPT-related functions, connecting to an LLM and RAG to perform tasks. For document automation, modern features are available to train documents, ensuring high accuracy and repeatability over time. The system is very easy to use. I recently completed a course in document automation, typically designed for people involved in coding and technical aspects. Though I understand coding comprehensively, I don't do actual coding. The course was very accessible. Currently, extensive coding isn't necessary due to the hybrid model incorporating GenAI aspects, low-code, no-code capabilities, APIs, and numerous pre-built objects in Automation Anywhere. The features include GenAI-driven prompting methods and workflow creation capabilities. In these workflows, we can create decision boxes and call APIs without coding. We simply pull objects, drop them, connect them, and add minimal coding when needed. The most crucial aspect isn't coding but rather sizing the automation and fleshing out the details. Automation Co-pilot takes notes and performs automated analysis. It can extract details from videos, summarize conversations, and provide detailed information. During calls, it identifies instructions and performs tasks such as preparing reports and reconciliation. Automation Anywhere can also connect with Microsoft Co-pilot. Through Co-pilot, real-time operations can be executed, allowing direct interaction between vendors and automation through this component.
KM
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.
GANESAN K - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Engineer at Safezone Secure Solutions Private Limited
Has supported daily operational workflows and improved approval management across departments
We actually do the reselling. We created a self-service portal for the customers, and this particular function does impact reducing IT staff workload overall. From technical standpoints, comparing SolarWinds Web Help Desk with TeamViewer, we need ease of configuration and ease of allocating, creating new fields or creating new layouts for many specific use cases. An organization can have a number of use cases when it comes to a ticketing tool. It's not a security solution; it's more of a service solution where you will be configuring the needed categories and needed fields for each department. On a scale of 1-10, I rate SolarWinds Web Help Desk an 8.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Customers also are looking for the kinds of solutions that help enable their workforces to be more effective."
"WLM & Device Pool, where multiple devices perform the same thing parallel and complete the tasks at the same time. The credential manager for security is one of the most valuable features for storing credentials and providing security between the developer usage and future maintenance where passwords expire every 90 days."
"Workflow automation has helped a lot with cost reduction, greater accuracy, and delivery speed."
"It improved on 40+ % of manual effort which was a pain point for project budget and Project team SMEs."
"One thing I appreciate about Automation Anywhere is that we do not need to run around with multiple platforms, because Automation Anywhere provides an end-to-end solution."
"Compared to other RPA solutions on the market I have worked with, AA surpasses its competitors by far."
"The solution is easy to learn and with it, it's easy to replicate knowledge."
"Document Automation is a game changer. Earlier, with IQ Bot, we achieved partial automation—around 80% of the process was automated. With GenAI and Google Vision OCR now integrated into Document Automation, end-to-end automation is achievable, even with unstructured documents."
"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 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."
"Overall, it has helped us continuously improve our business processes."
"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."
"In general, it's been pretty 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, so you have one big package and nothing is lost."
"The solution has been stable."
"Overall, it's a good product that I would recommend."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the assets management module."
"SolarWinds supports case and incident reporting. This includes logging incidents and tracking them efficiently. Additionally, it is compatible and approved by the ITIL foundation and standards, meeting world-class standards."
"A person who is not in IT, but has some good ITSM knowledge will be able to configure it directly on SolarWinds, and Manage Engine."
"It has a pretty good search function. If you do the advanced search, you can basically search for anything in any field. If I do a search on the request field and just put in some terms I'm searching for, I can usually find the ticket that I'm looking for."
"The solution scales well; currently is working for 60 help desk technicians (IT and non-IT) for over 2,000 users."
"The biggest advantage for SolarWinds Web Help Desk is the user interface; we were able to configure a different UI for administrators, employees, and HODs based on their hierarchy level."
"SolarWinds is a very good application that provides you with a detailed monitoring capability of your network and assets."
"It is easy to use."
 

Cons

"A standardized improvement area for any RPA tool is making it more user-friendly. This can be done by allowing users to give instructions in their language. For example, one should be able to say in his or her language to automate the login page of the XYZ application. It should be able to create a flow based on the information or screenshots that the user provides."
"Automation Anywhere has newly integrated the Generative AI feature. It should be more customizable. Currently, we can change certain parameters, but we would like to have the ability to do modifications within the LLM for better outputs."
"The only thing I would advocate for is making Automation Anywhere's developer environment Mac-enabled because many of our graduate students are coming out of school with Macs. Everything else in the Automation Anywhere world is built for Windows."
"We experienced continuous bot disconnections in our environment."
"The focus on usability and user experience is bang on. Addressing several personas and making it easy for every persona to adopt and embrace is the spot on focus. That's an area that has a lot more room to improve. In the absence of that, the skills and expertise in the industry are going to struggle and if you need broader adoption, which has maximum potential, the persona-based user experience is a focus and I'd say Automation Anywhere is already working on."
"I would like to leverage the AI component without the requirement to know a coding language, such as Python."
"We have had issues with stability in the past, and there should be a function that helps you to find out what is wrong with your environment that is causing the automation to fail."
"To improve the product, one aspect that Automation Anywhere can work on is archiving legacy data effectively. Currently, data older than current versions remains on the server, slowing the system down."
"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 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 user interface is not very interesting."
"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."
"What needs improvement in IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is its graphical interface because it needs to be more user-friendly."
"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."
"The program seems buggy to me. Not infrequently, when I click to add a Note, the Notes section disappears instead of opening a box to add a Note."
"We would like to see automation included in the next release. We would like to eliminate the L1, and L2 support, by at least 80%. To do this, we need automation with AI (Artificial Intelligence) in combination with ML (Machine Learning)."
"This is a good solution, but the GUI is really old-fashion and needs to be updated."
"The interface feels clunky to me compared to some other systems that I've used. I used ManageEngine Service Desk prior to this at my previous job and that had stuff like categories that we use that I don't see in SolarWinds."
"However, it's a little outdated compared to newer products that include protection and detection."
"The working part, the deployment part, and the configuration part was a little bit complex."
"Dashboards need some amount of work to be done. Ease of customization is desired."
"The technical team is not competent, or available, and they do not know the product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's an ideal pricing model to customize the components based on everyone's needs."
"They recently launched a Community Edition, which is okay, but they should have done this a long time ago."
"The licensing cost of Automation Anywhere is better than UiPath and Blue Prism."
"We're paying a monthly subscription fee for the bot and for services. There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fee."
"I advise others that even as of right now, the setup cost and licensing cost to automate bots on Automation Anywhere is steep but it is worth the investment!"
"It is not cheap, but we are able to get an ROI."
"When you compare the cost of Automation Anywhere with UiPath and Blue Prism, those others are much less. Licensing-wise, UiPath wins the deal."
"The pricing is reasonable and one can achieve ROI faster when compared to other tools."
"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."
"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."
"When you compare with ManageEngine and ServiceNow, SolarWinds is reasonable."
"They charge by the technician. It costs $117 per technician per year."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Performing Arts
12%
Construction Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Construction Company
9%
Retailer
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business161
Midsize Enterprise85
Large Enterprise561
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
It depends on your use case. Is it simply to automate a couple of processes? Is it to augment a human team? AA is ver...
How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
From my experience using AA tool, it depends on the applications that you want to automate, because there some applic...
How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
It is a highly preferred RPA tool. You can check my Automation Anywhere Review to know more.
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What needs improvement with SolarWinds Web Help Desk?
Areas of improvement can be enhanced regarding configuration. We had the deployment metrics and usability, ease of us...
What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Web Help Desk?
For Zoho, we did OP Manager, Audit Security, AD Security and Asset Management, Patch Management. These things we are ...
What advice do you have for others considering SolarWinds Web Help Desk?
We actually do the reselling. We created a self-service portal for the customers, and this particular function does i...
 

Also Known As

Automation Anywhere, Testing Anywhere, Automation Anywhere Enterprise, Agentic Process Automation System (Now Certified for WorkSpaces)
SmartCloud Control Desk
No data available
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Google, Linkedin, Cisco, Juniper Networks, DellEMC, Comcast, Mastercard, Quest Diagnostics
St Vincent's Health Australia, Kalibrate Pty. Ltd., Cognizant Technology
Instacart
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM SmartCloud Control Desk vs. SolarWinds Web Help Desk and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.