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SCSM vs SolarWinds Service Desk comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
6.9
Number of Reviews
661
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 (1st), AI Procurement & Supply Chain (1st)
SCSM
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (13th), IT Service Management (ITSM) (16th)
SolarWinds Service Desk
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
IT Service Management (ITSM) (15th)
 

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.
LuisSanchez3 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director Metropolitano de Gobierno Digital at a government with 10,001+ employees
Current setup enables smooth problem-solving but lacks comprehensive guidance and local support
More information about setup procedures and a more user-friendly front end would be beneficial. We need more information for setup processes. It is difficult to do the work independently, requiring us to hire external companies for maintenance hours to fix small issues that could be resolved faster in-house if we had better information. We have been looking for an upgrade version, but finding local service has been difficult. It has been challenging trying to get things done. Speaking with the Microsoft office, we found there are no local companies with substantial experience with SCSM. What we have now was installed five or six years ago. It has been difficult to change configurations and look for upgrades, even with all the manuals. Our office is considering moving away from SCSM and getting a service desk solution outside of Microsoft. For me, it has been a good tool to get help and solve internal problems in the office. It is a very good tool, but the difficulty in getting local service or more information is pushing us to look for another tool.
Vaibhav Patkar - PeerSpot reviewer
CISO at Orient Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
Improved service requests and network monitoring have increased efficiency but integration needs work
SolarWinds Service Desk is a recognized product across the world and a dependable product. Kaseya is somewhat dated, and SolarWinds Service Desk has better connectivity in terms of superior integration facilities compared to Kaseya. Additionally, SolarWinds Service Desk offers multiple options within the same tool, including ITSM as well as NOC and network monitoring capabilities. SolarWinds Service Desk has much greater acceptability in the market and a wide range of implementations and integrations with various tools and applications. Life becomes simpler when choosing a standard product, whereas Kaseya may not be as highly regarded in the market. SolarWinds Service Desk may have some flaws, but work is being done to address them. SolarWinds Service Desk is an affordable product. SolarWinds Service Desk is suitable for all customers ranging from small to enterprise. There are some small customers, and the primary usage is within the company itself, and then as customers require it, access can be provided to them.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the back-end process automation."
"We can see what the bots are doing when they are working."
"We spend less time preparing data."
"Implementation of Automation Anywhere (AA) allows us to automate business processes and has brought productivity gains, error reduction, and speed of execution in multiple HR and Finance operations."
"Automation Anywhere helped us to reduce the work time on data operations."
"This solution has decreased the time that our employees spend on manual processes."
"We are measuring ROI through quality: Reducing errors, saving time, and saving money."
"We offer them a cost and time-effective solution for repeated and time-consuming processes, which surely help a lot in terms of improving quality."
"I've used SCSM a lot, and its features are valuable."
"SCSM is easy to learn because all of the material, including training videos, can be found online."
"The solution's setup process is relatively straightforward due to the familiar deployment steps similar to other Microsoft solutions."
"This product has helped our organization by allowing people to connect with each other."
"Microsoft System Center Service Manager is a good product; it seems very easy and is better than most of the other solutions, which often have only a few features and cannot do what Microsoft can do."
"I like the reporting service, as SCSM has a good reporting service and analysis service for analysis requests."
"We use SCSM to manage all of our IT operations, including incident and service requests and problem management."
"Many more features than other comparable products."
"The solution is very stable."
"What I appreciate the most about the product is that, as per the name given, it brings better visibility to the client in terms of their infrastructure, application, and performance."
"SolarWinds Service Desk is a recognized product across the world and a dependable product."
 

Cons

"They should do more on the cognitive side."
"The pricing is a little bit high compared with other tools."
"It is not able to use OCR effectively and has limited usability."
"However, the AI Sense Recorder is too slow, so they can enhance its features for easier user experience."
"Automation Anywhere should improve its OCR command, as it's my observation that I have faced data loss or improper data being extracted."
"The optical character recognition of various documents and templates, particularly when using the Arabic language, has room for improvement."
"I would like to see improvement in its scalability."
"Having better documentation that is more openly available would help. Often, it feels necessary to contact someone or search for documentation that is stored behind a login or in another location. It would be beneficial to have one centralized place for everything."
"The logs and reporting-related features of the product have certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"This is not a product that I recommend."
"It crashes our client's computers. Sometimes they get blue screens. It would be useful if SCSM could check the upgrades or patches before we implemented them to see if they are going to crash a client's system. Or, if it does install, and the client's system crashes, it would be good if the solution could revert back somehow."
"One of the disadvantages in this product is that the reporting module is not very easy. It requires SQL development skills, which not all customers or IT professionals have."
"I would like to have the ability to integrate with other systems from the back-end. I am using Orchestrator and it is a little bit difficult because there are too many constraints."
"Service Manager is not doing very well because, for example, there is no default web application and in order to use Service Manager we have to use the desktop console which is a disadvantage."
"It has not helped reduce the burden on IT resources."
"This solution has been difficult to deploy in some cases."
"The integration with other applications can use improvement because, for example, it was nearly impossible to integrate SolarWinds Service Desk with monday.com because we had to get an add-on from Zapier."
"The only additional features I would like to see in the future, to make it closer to perfection, are intelligent features that are currently being developed on the cloud platform and not on the on-premise model."
"The primary concern so far is the integration part because of the APIs; this is the main area of concern."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I would rate the cost of Automation Anywhere as a six out of ten, with ten being the most expensive."
"It costs up to $1,200 per license."
"It has good licensing costs which are average for the market."
"It saves on the quality of work, because the quality can be bad when somebody's doing it. If a bot does the work, it's faster and comes with good quality. These are two important things along with the cost saving in the long run. That's where the value is."
"Whatever investment, licensing, and resource costs together are put in for development and delivery, we are still at an ROI of 250 percent."
"No one is balking at the cost. They are market rates and will change, but no one is saying, "That is ridiculous or impossible." They are saying, "Show me the ROI and prove that the cost is accurate.""
"In terms of pricing, it's not at all cheap, and that's a concern. The licensing cost is very high. While I don't know the exact prices of other tools, Microsoft offers the lowest pricing for its RPA platform compared to UiPath and Automation Anywhere."
"We purchase on a bot basis. Our costs are approximately $5,000."
"The license for SCSM is cheap."
"The price of the solution could be better. My organization has an enterprise annual license with Microsoft which provides us support."
"The platform is competitively priced."
"The price should be lower."
"It comes free with the enterprise agreement that we have, but the expense really is in having to buy another product to sit on top of it to make it work properly. You wind up having to buy additional support and additional product with their own support and maintenance costs on top of that."
"I would rate the pricing as two out of five."
"It is an expensive solution."
"Licensing can be complex and confusing."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Construction Company
11%
Construction Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business157
Midsize Enterprise82
Large Enterprise558
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise14
No data available
 

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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SCSM?
I am not sure about the pricing as I do not have experience with it.
What needs improvement with SCSM?
More information about setup procedures and a more user-friendly front end would be beneficial. We need more informat...
What is your primary use case for SCSM?
In my job, I work for the city where we have an enterprise agreement with Microsoft. We have Office, Word, PowerPoint...
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Service Desk?
The primary concern so far is the integration part because of the APIs; this is the main area of concern. Currently, ...
What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Service Desk?
SolarWinds Service Desk is used for ITSM and network monitoring purposes. The major use cases being utilized are from...
What advice do you have for others considering SolarWinds Service Desk?
I think the pricing of SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability is now comparative and suited to our business model, whi...
 

Also Known As

Automation Anywhere, Testing Anywhere, Automation Anywhere Enterprise, Agentic Process Automation System (Now Certified for WorkSpaces)
System Center Service Manager
No data available
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Google, Linkedin, Cisco, Juniper Networks, DellEMC, Comcast, Mastercard, Quest Diagnostics
Fibabanka, UMC Health System
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about SCSM vs. SolarWinds Service Desk and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
910,437 professionals have used our research since 2012.