IBM SmartCloud Control Desk vs OpenText Service Manager [EOL] comparison

IBM and OpenText are both solutions in the Help Desk Software category. Additionally, 88% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 79% of OpenText users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM SmartCloud Control Desk and OpenText Service Manager [EOL] based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow, Atlassian, Zendesk and others in Help Desk Software.

To learn more, read our detailed Help Desk Software Report (Updated: August 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Help Desk Software

August 2026

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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

Automation Anywhere

Featured Reviews

Venkat Sivaprakash

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.

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Klemen Muhvič

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.

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MEKKAB Raouf

Information Technology Service Manager & Technology Integration DevOps at Djezzy

Excellent pricing with great change management and service management capabilities

We started with version 9.3, and now we're on 9.6 with the full solution, including the CMS. They have lots of options. They propose a full solution for technology and IT service management. We are a telecom company. We are a leader in the market, and therefore, we need to have all details about our own environment and assets. So far, Micro Focus answers all our needs. I'd advise new users to go directly to the SMAX solution, the last, last version of Service Manager. If they are a technical company or information technology company with engineers and developers, they can use it on-premise. If they don't have such competence in the company, they can ask for the solution on the cloud. It is easily available on Microsoft, Amazon, or Google clouds. I'd rate the product nine out of ten.

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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

"I consider the verification station very useful because it allows you to quickly check if the data extracted are correct or if you need to change the process."

"I also very much like the integrating of this solution with other applications. We have some old web applications that we've been using, and we've been writing some of our own DLLs to integrate with it. It has worked really well."

"I like web automation and SAP application automation."

"We are making less mistakes and have more metrics available to understand what our problems are. Now, we can do root cause analysis and have less noise in the system during the process."

"It's a great product, timely support, and guidance."

"It's pretty simple and non-invasive."

"There are instances where use cases and opportunities have arisen as a result of having Automation Anywhere and RPA in place that have come about through very casual conversations and have actually resulted in increased revenue opportunities that we didn't realize."

"By using this solution for RPA, we can automate a lot of business processes, which helps achieve less time to market."

More Automation Anywhere pros

"Overall, it has helped us continuously improve our business processes."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

More IBM SmartCloud Control Desk pros

"Incident management is the most valuable because we're using it to manage tickets for an accounting system. With the reports that are available, it allows us to track and identify trends at the type and item level. It also helps us in managing the workload better than what we had in Remedy, which is what we were using before 2013."

"The interface is good, I like it, it's easy to use, it's intuitive and it does go to the mobile app for verification and approvals and it's easy to use on the mobile app."

"It is a rich content solution and a good and complete solution, along with a lot of functionality."

"It's pretty well-structured in modules."

"A valuable feature for us is that we have an ordered way to handle all the cases that we can handle with the infrastructure."

"Overall, HP will just give you a really great solution."

"We can have all our requests and incidents registered in one system."

"Technical support is excellent. They really bend over backwards for us."

More OpenText Service Manager [EOL] pros

Cons

"These guys need to build a good team."

"The accuracy in Web Recorder needs to be improved, defective outputs found most of the time (not sure if is a website side issue)."

"When a bot is in production, sometimes the keystrokes will not work. I am not sure why, and we have tried to contact technical support. They said that they don't have an answer for this. It happens in the the remote environment when we are deploying a bot into AWS machines. So, technical support said this happens in AWS machines sometimes: If the bot is running and the machine is locked, then at that time, the key strokes will not work. They have provided that solution, but we are trying to avoid keystrokes now."

"Although the UI and elements are user-friendly, it is still difficult for business users without experience to understand how to use Automation Anywhere."

"I suggest increasing assistance from support personnel."

"The areas that need improvement are the license management, user access permission, user role access management, and technical support."

"We've had a lot of issues with the installation and performance on a variety of computers, onshore and offshore. Our network bounds multiple domains, and we've had issues there, as well. So, we are looking forward to the web-based development versions."

"The implementation process is complex, as there is integration with other applications."

More Automation Anywhere cons

"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."

"Their technical support can also be improved in terms of response time."

"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."

"The solution lacks a graphical user interface."

"What needs improvement in IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is its graphical interface because it needs to be more user-friendly."

"Support has been the biggest problem for us."

More IBM SmartCloud Control Desk cons

"Service Manager would be improved with access to automation."

"It, still, has a bit of more of improvement possibilities in the codeless part. But, I can see that they are working on it, so that's quite good as well."

"I rate Micro Focus Service Manager four out of 10. I wouldn't recommend it."

"The interface could be better."

"I've heard that it's been fairly complex, but I haven't done it myself."

"Stability was a major issue in older versions of the product."

"Their end-user interface and technical support features could be improved."

"It's not user friendly (too complex), and it gives limited guidance documentation of how to filter all the logs detected."

More OpenText Service Manager [EOL] cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is reasonable and affordable. If you consider the tasks that we can get done using this, the pricing is reasonable and affordable."

"I find the license pricing to be competitive and reflective of the pricing models throughout the RPA space, and I believe there is a lot of value in continuing to maintain the free community edition platform."

"More than 40 to 50 percent of the IT budget will be for the cost of automation projects in the coming years since these projects enhance operations add value."

"Automation Anywhere is expensive."

"We are interested in saving manual engineer man-hours. So far, we have saved $100,000."

"They give us a good deal on the licensing because we bundle and customize things. If you ask to get a bulk business deal, you will receive more benefit. If you take other products from the suite, like IQ Bot, you can also receive a deal on the licensing."

"I am not sure about the costs, but two Bot Runners and four Bot Creators may cost approximately 1CR."

"This solution costs approximately $3,500 USD per license."

More Automation Anywhere 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."

"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."

"I would say that identify your requirements and pay for the support to implement and test those requirements, and then hope that you did a good job because the cost of their service is fairly expensive."

"HP Service Manager has moderate pricing."

"The license is not cheap."

"I pay for Service Manager on a yearly basis, and the price is reasonable - I would rate it five out of ten."

"Micro Focus Service Manager is a little cheaper than other options. You have to pay a monthly subscription fee."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Construction Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Outsourcing Company

10%

Performing Arts

14%

Construction Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Construction Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Outsourcing Company

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	157
Midsize Enterprise	81
Large Enterprise	558

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Large Enterprise	3

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	10
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	38

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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Compared 11% of the time

SCSM vs IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

Compared 9% of the time

Ivanti Neurons for ITSM vs IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

Compared 8% of the time

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Compared 18% of the time

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Compared 14% of the time

JIRA Service Management vs OpenText Service Manager [EOL]

Compared 13% of the time

SCSM vs OpenText Service Manager [EOL]

Compared 9% of the time

OpenText Service Management (SMAX) vs OpenText Service Manager [EOL]

Compared 8% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Automation Anywhere

August 2026

Download Automation Anywhere product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

August 2026

Download IBM SmartCloud Control Desk product report

Buyer's Guide

OpenText Service Manager [EOL]

July 2026

Download OpenText Service Manager [EOL] product report

Also Known As

Automation Anywhere, Testing Anywhere, Automation Anywhere Enterprise, Agentic Process Automation System (Now Certified for WorkSpaces)

SmartCloud Control Desk

Micro Focus Service Manager, HPE ITSM, HPE Service Manager

Interactive Demo

Automation Anywhere

Demo not available

IBM

Demo not available

OpenText

Overview

Automation Anywhere offers ease of use, robust system connectivity, and GenAI-driven document automation through a cloud-native platform, significantly enhancing productivity across multiple industries with advanced AI features.

Delivering a comprehensive suite of tools designed for easy integration and rapid deployment, Automation Anywhere drives efficiency by reducing costs and automating repetitive tasks. Its cloud-native platform supports broad industry adoption, including advanced AI features like process automation and Co-Pilot, streamlining complex workflows with minimal technical skills required. Users benefit from robust integration capabilities, which facilitate seamless interaction with multiple systems. However, there is room for improvement in areas such as user-friendliness for beginners, stability, flexible licensing, and enhanced OCR functionality. Organizations in sectors such as banking, finance, manufacturing, and healthcare gain from the improved operational efficiency and ROI Automation Anywhere offers.

What are the important features of Automation Anywhere?

Ease of Use: Simplifies automation tasks with a user-centric interface.
Robust Connectivity: Provides seamless integration with multiple systems.
GenAI-Driven Document Automation: Leverages AI to automate document management.
Process Automation & Co-Pilot: Enhances workflow automation with advanced AI.
Cloud-Native Platform: Enables rapid deployment and integration.

What benefits should be evaluated in reviews?

Time Savings: Automation drastically reduces manual processing time.
Cost Efficiency: Decreases overall operational costs by automating tasks.
Productivity Enhancement: Streamlines workflows with AI-driven tools.
Improved Integration: Enhances ability to work with multiple systems.
Scalability: Supports growth with a flexible cloud-native architecture.

In the insurance industry, Automation Anywhere is utilized for automating processes such as enrollment management and compliance checks. Its applications extend to supply chain management, financial transactions, and business performance monitoring across sectors like banking, finance, manufacturing, and healthcare, helping organizations to automate routine tasks, improve efficiency, and reduce costs.

Automation Anywhere

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk offers robust integration capabilities, effective SLA integrations, automated workflows, and comprehensive reporting. Its flexibility and centralized request management enhance service efficiency, making it ideal for detailed issue tracking and resolution in IT environments.

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is designed to streamline IT support, ticketing, and incident management. By integrating seamlessly with existing infrastructures, it centralizes service requests and IT asset management. Its automated processes ensure efficiency from initiation to resolution, reducing the chances of oversight. The platform's adaptability supports both on-premises and cloud deployments, making it suitable for industries like telecommunications and IT services. However, users often face challenges with support responsiveness, outdated interfaces, and difficulties with email integration, particularly affecting images and attachments.

What Are the Key Features of IBM SmartCloud Control Desk?

Integration Capabilities: Seamlessly integrates with various systems to enhance functionality.
SLA Integrations: Strong service level agreement management ensures SLAs are met.
Automated Workflow: Full automation of processes from start to resolution.
Robust Reporting: Comprehensive reporting tools for detailed insights.
Request Management: Centralized management of service requests and IT assets.

What Benefits and ROI Should Users Seek?

Efficiency: Streamlines operations with automated processes, increasing productivity.
Flexibility: Adapts to organizational changes for better service delivery.
Reliability: Backed by IBM's trusted brand reputation.
Scalability: Scales with demand for growing businesses.

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is widely implemented in telecommunications and IT services industries. Organizations utilize it for managing IT support, incident resolution, and system monitoring. Its ability to handle both internal and external requests effectively helps businesses streamline client communications and improve service management across different deployment models.

IBM

Service Manager on SaaS provides you with a cloud-based, industry leading IT Service Management solution.

OpenText

Sample Customers

Google, Linkedin, Cisco, Juniper Networks, DellEMC, Comcast, Mastercard, Quest Diagnostics

St Vincent's Health Australia, Kalibrate Pty. Ltd., Cognizant Technology

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Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow, Atlassian, Zendesk and others in Help Desk Software. Updated: August 2026.

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