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IBM SmartCloud Control Desk vs Spiceworks 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
668
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)
Spiceworks
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (14th), IT Asset Management (11th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (47th)
 

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.
Rohit Samel - PeerSpot reviewer
Account Manager Enterprise Sales at Navdeep Technologies Pvt.Ltd
Cloud storage with no hardware needed and great comprehensive reports
The software is cloud-based, so I do not need to store any data locally. It is a fully software-based solution, eliminating the need for investment in hardware. We have the capability to create reports as needed. It is good software to use, as there were no incidents where I needed to contact technical support. Additionally, it is free software.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is an easy product. It is easier and less complex than any other RPA tool in the market. It is a popular product."
"What I appreciate the most about Automation Anywhere is that the tool is very robust."
"The Automation Anywhere automation tool is user-friendly, especially compared to UiPath and Blue Prism."
"Once we implemented the Automation Anywhere into my company, we freed up a lot of their time, so they could work on other processes."
"The way it integrates with subsystems is impressive. When automating business processes, there might be multiple systems in use. Automation Anywhere provides various ways to connect, such as by directly using backend APIs or using the frontend. This is incredibly useful."
"It is very user-friendly. The AI capability that nowadays I am seeing in Automation Anywhere is very good. They have plug-and-play AI solutions."
"Automation Anywhere is very easy to use; it's a low-code platform that a person who doesn't have any technical knowledge can use."
"Automation Anywhere greatly improved our processing time since robots can execute process steps faster than human resources do."
"The solution is very easy to work with."
"The solution has been stable."
"In the early stages of our company, all requests were done in notebooks, and none of it was centrally managed. But now we have a central tool which is an entry point for all requests that come in."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Spiceworks managed all tasks of the company on a daily routine, helping track priorities, knowledge base, and manage the incoming tickets from customers and inside projects, giving the employees one place to observe the correct state of the company productivity."
"Spiceworks gives you a very good but basic help desk platform that is easy to implement and use."
"It helps us to monitor our network activity real time, and it shows the actual map."
"It shows the users that are currently logged in, which is not something that Active Directory by default will ever let you know up front."
"The price, as it's free."
"Tickets by e-mail, with actions by hastag."
"Spiceworks offered everything we needed and more, and has improved response times to staff as well as providing an audit trail and growing database of information that can be referenced when similar problems arise."
"Helpdesk and inventory are both equally valuable, and they form the true core of the product."
 

Cons

"They could improve the learning curve."
"I would like the support to be faster. Their response time is one to two days. Their customer care could be faster."
"I would like centralized orchestration and better exception handling in the next release."
"AA sometimes poses compatibility problems with new web browser versions like Chrome."
"Unfortunately, this process was not used for a long time due to latency issues and a functionality gap."
"AA has many features but the issue is with the loss of overhead on computing resources. For example, if the bot is encrypted, the bot should decrypt it first then act accordingly. If there are issues with the logic in the bot, there will be a lot of computer memory overload. There should be an additional feature for cloud functionality."
"Automation Anywhere can improve the product in potential areas of improvement with respect to automation and AI."
"The OCR can be a little better because sometimes while scrapping, it leads to data loss."
"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. 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 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."
"The user interface is not very interesting."
"Support has been the biggest problem for us."
"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."
"Technical support can be slow in terms of resolving issues."
"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 network mapping could be improved. Putting together an actual bonafide network map would be really nice."
"The help desk ticketing system is functional but fairly basic."
"The main issue we had with the Spiceworks was always performance related."
"One of the biggest ways in which Spiceworks could improve is by developing better and more automated workflows."
"I am a bit emotionally triggered and pissed off because of it because it's wasting my time and it's not what I want."
"Deployment is easy but getting the full details on every networked component can be a challenge."
"Mac networking needs improving, as everything has to be manually entered in a Mac environment."
"The SNMP sniffer requires a lot of work to get right."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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.""
"The solution's pricing is pretty decent."
"The cost for scalability is much cheaper than developing a new system."
"It is somewhere in the middle. The price and value of Automation Anywhere are better than UiPath. The pricing is good globally. It could be a little bit cheaper, but it is good."
"Its usage is expensive for us because my user base is mostly in Manila and KL. The unit cost of labor is cheaper there than in the U.S. or Australia, which puts a bit more stress on how to get a positive ROI while continuing to use it."
"Their licensing processes are in par with most industry standards."
"They are already coming out with a community license, which is really good. That's something that I wish to have."
"We have saved time and money using this solution."
"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 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 might be about $300 annually for a bigger company. If you pay annually, it's better and cheaper."
"Seeing that it is a low-cost solution, I would advise you to go ahead with Spiceworks and experiment with it to see if you can get things working properly, especially if you currently don't have any existing service desk software in place."
"The product is free! Get it now."
"It's free."
"The tool is cheap."
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
May 31, 2015
Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor
I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Performing Arts
11%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Construction Company
10%
Construction Company
14%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business162
Midsize Enterprise86
Large Enterprise565
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business24
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise10
 

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.
Ask a question
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What needs improvement with Spiceworks?
I am unable to provide suggestions for improvement at this moment, however, I can provide feedback later. Currently, ...
What is your primary use case for Spiceworks?
If our customers need backup support, we can work with them and provide it. Whatever solution the customer requires, ...
What advice do you have for others considering Spiceworks?
It performs its intended functions. We may use it, but perhaps not for ourselves, but for our customers, potentially ...
 

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
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Google, Linkedin, Cisco, Juniper Networks, DellEMC, Comcast, Mastercard, Quest Diagnostics
St Vincent's Health Australia, Kalibrate Pty. Ltd., Cognizant Technology
Broward Center for the Performing Arts, Symantec, Webroot, EMC, Pertino
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM SmartCloud Control Desk vs. Spiceworks and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.