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IFS Cloud Platform vs VMware Service Manager [EOL] comparison

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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
6.8
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)
IFS Cloud Platform
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
CRM (29th), Customer Experience Management (12th), Field Service Management (2nd), Help Desk Software (22nd), ERP (20th), Activity Based Costing Software (10th), Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) (4th), Local Government CRM (12th), IT Asset Management (12th), IT Service Management (ITSM) (16th), License Management (3rd)
VMware Service Manager [EOL]
Average Rating
7.2
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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.
reviewer2268153 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Operations Engineer
Integrated planning has improved production scheduling and now reduces downtime and costs
The biggest friction point I have run into with IFS Cloud Platform is user adoption, which has been the biggest challenge, as different users in the organization need to get accustomed to the new processes after years of using spreadsheets and legacy systems, requiring training and a mindset shift, along with challenging data migration and process standardization. My advice to someone considering IFS Cloud Platform with a similar workflow is to spend sufficient time understanding and standardizing their business processes before implementing it, as the technology is very powerful, but the real value comes when processes, data, and teams are all aligned. I would rate my overall experience with IFS Cloud Platform as a 9 out of 10.
KL
Head Of Information Technology at ALAINE FORWARDING
It is stable and has useful features, but the automation feature needs improvement
All of the features are very suitable for us. It is also a stable solution Its automation feature needs improvement. They can include the vRealize Automation feature in this solution. I have been using VMware Service Manager for more than six years. It is stable. Its scalability is good, but…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"What I appreciate most about Automation Anywhere is its user interface, which is very friendly and simple when compared to UiPath and Power Automate, featuring drag-and-drop capabilities, control rooms for both cloud and on-premises, and the ability for business users to run bots with just half an hour of training."
"The organizations where we have implemented AA have seen tremendous benefits achieved in terms of time and cost-saving with the highest quality of deliverables."
"The Visual Studio integration is smooth and user-friendly."
"We can integration with other APIs, which is a good thing. This helps us with our database integration. For example, we have done an SAP integration, which is great, since SAP has a lot of manual work."
"The UI is very user-friendly, even for someone who doesn't have much coding knowledge."
"We brought onshore a lot of what we were doing offshore, saving our company close to $20 million."
"Business process automation has improved the efficiency and accuracy of processes and reduced manual efforts which can be utilized in value addition for the firm."
"The MetaBots are by far the most effective system within AA. Due to the fact that no scripting is required and only the passing of variables or values to get a definite result. IQ Bot with the ABBY OCR is a powerful component to do multiple extractions in the shortest possible timeframe in comparison to human execution of similarly identified tasks or operations."
"IFS Cloud Platform has impacted my organization by allowing our team to spend less time reconciling data and more time executing business operations, as resources are utilized more effectively, reducing waste and improving productivity, while also resulting in reduced downtime and lowered maintenance costs, allowing management to make informed decisions based on actual data rather than historical reports."
"The enterprise management solutions within the solution are very strong."
"Our ROI is 4.5 times our investment in 18 months."
"The platform is reliable and stable."
"The financial posting controls are quite handy. The user interface is really friendly, highly flexible, and pretty intuitive for end users."
"Some of the strengths are Enterprise Management Solutions and the series of Management solutions which is number one in Gartner's report and has been for the last five years."
"The most valuable feature is the distribution module."
"Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine or ten out of ten since it is an extremely scalable solution that can be used for various use cases with thousands of users."
"Simplicity and flexibility are its major plus points making it a leading industry solution for deploying cloud environments."
"The Service Desk module and the Workflow module, which is extremely powerful."
"All of the features are very suitable for us. It is also a stable solution."
"We have installed a physical server for failover; we need to configure cluster on everything, but with VMware, we do not need to cluster because we automatically get seven physical nodes failover and if one fails we have no issues."
"It provides us with improved maintenance cycles."
"It provides us the following: A better utilisation of the hardware, more flexibility, improved maintenance cycles, and a system overview."
 

Cons

"Some of the biggest improvements they can make are with the interface. It can be improved in terms of usability or searching for something. For example, icons are hard to find. Typically, you jump into the search box, but being able to go in and find things quickly with the eye could be very valuable."
"The Excel part needs improvement because we use it as a database. Right now, we are using UiPath for this feature, as that RPA tool allows us to sort, search, and filter in Excel databases."
"Most clients use systems which use old Java versions, trying to automate on these systems is really difficult since most features/commands are not supported."
"They are already working on this: The boom of generative AI, the next-gen technologies, including advanced AI and ML technologies, are in the roadmap. I would like to see more and more AI integration and a bit more analytics. That would be great."
"Also, we're seemingly plagued with certain technological issues or bugs."
"More and more innovation is going on, and they'll have to keep adding features to keep up with the market. They have generative AI on their platform, but that's a new part. They are working on it. It's not 100 percent foolproof, but eventually it will get better. They need to work on their AI capabilities."
"I used document automation about two years ago, however, it did not work as expected at that time, providing results around 70% to 80%. After that, we turned to third-party tools."
"The installation piece was sort of complicated because we are new to the business."
"IFS uses Crystal Report mostly, which isn't too user-friendly. Developing reports isn't easy and requires a lot of dev time. Since SAP bought it, Crystal Report has become more complicated to use on IFS. You have a dashboard for reporting that is good, but it's incomplete. Most of our clients use Power BI or some additional tooling for BI."
"The CRM was shaky and although this improves in Apps 10, there is room for improvement."
"IFS Applications is not robust enough to handle high-volume transactions, so it's not suitable for larger enterprises."
"There are some stability issues."
"The integration is a bit complex, and post-implementation support services need to be improved. They have a service center based out of Sri Lanka. The support aspect is good, but the response time is a little slower than we anticipated. In the next release, it would be better if Warehouse Management could be improvised. They have a product line that's a data warehouse management system, but it's still premature and requires a bit of enhancement."
"The user interface can be improved. When you're clicking through the screens, there are some icons or symbols that really need updating and would be more useful and noticeable if they are aesthetically pleasing."
"Customization needs to be improved."
"I have seen that one of the areas that my company has identified for improvement might be the rental management capabilities within the solution."
"It needs to improve user roles and access rights."
"Graphical User Interface looks a little bit old-school."
"Not a ten because the price is high."
"Its automation feature needs improvement. They can include the vRealize Automation feature in this solution."
"Still new in the market and a lot of its features are still not yet explored."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is expensive. I would rate Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten in terms of pricing."
"On average, a bot runner in Automation Anywhere can cost $5,000, while in Microsoft Power Automate, you can get most of the same functionality for $100."
"Time-wise: We have saved hundreds of thousands of hours."
"Additional costs will be for the machines and the number of machines that you are using. You can deploy virtually as well as on physical machines. In both the situations, you do need to allocate a certain budget for securing the machines and where the software will be installed and running. The machines cannot be used for anything else, because only a certain bot can run at a certain time. You need to be very particular about your scheduling of running the bots, and while the bot is running nobody can use the machine. You cannot have an agent working on a machine and the bot running in the background. It has to be completely dedicated. Then there are the network bandwidth requirements and space requirements, which are additional costs apart from the licensing and software costs. The developer is also going to charge you for their coding time too."
"We are not receiving the right information about their features, e.g. Automation Anywhere University, or anything that they are selling. They need to improve their documentation."
"While calculating the setup cost you should account for the server, virtual machines, product licenses, maintenance costs, and running costs."
"Complaints are generally about the cost of IQ Bot, which is higher than its competitors. The base model’s pricing is comparable to other platforms with attended, unattended, and IDP capabilities as well."
"This is a comprehensive automation offering with a scalable architecture and flexible pricing models."
"The product is reasonably priced."
"The pricing of the solution may appear to be expensive for smaller companies with only tens of users; however, for larger and mid-size industrial companies, IFS is able to win deals and the pricing is competitive in the market."
"Licensing is on an annual basis, with no additional costs."
"It is better to buy implementation services from IFS than from partners"
"I consider it to be a well-priced solution compared to other mid-range or high-end ERP solutions."
"IFS Applications are competitive in terms of pricing compared to other vendors, such as SAP, Oracle, and Epicor. They are generally cheaper, especially for licensing costs."
"There are varying license levels that you can purchase."
"The additional cost that comes with the solution includes the overhead of the people who are trying to fix the tool issues. These people are trying to reproduce the issue and report it to the technical support and testing with them which is huge. It is the cost of quality in the end."
"The price depends on different enterprises. As compared to Citrix, VMware is reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
9%
No data available
 

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 Business16
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise10
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 needs improvement with IFS Applications?
There are features that came up during implementation that we are not actually using today, such as field service man...
What is your primary use case for IFS Applications?
My main use case for IFS Cloud Platform is for production planning, where I typically use it for production schedulin...
What advice do you have for others considering IFS Applications?
The biggest friction point I have run into with IFS Cloud Platform is user adoption, which has been the biggest chall...
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Also Known As

Automation Anywhere, Testing Anywhere, Automation Anywhere Enterprise, Agentic Process Automation System (Now Certified for WorkSpaces)
IFS Applications, Assyst, IFS Cloud
No data available
 

Interactive Demo

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Google, Linkedin, Cisco, Juniper Networks, DellEMC, Comcast, Mastercard, Quest Diagnostics
China Airlines, Electrolux Group, Babcock, Cimcorp, Sky, Multiplex, Veolia. 
Seventy Seven Energy Inc., Symantec, KBC, Vodafone, Region Hovedstaden, Bank Audi, Hewlett-Packard, BT Global Services, Edogawa City Council, HDFC Bank Limited, Bank Al Bilad, ABN AMRO N.V. Singapore, Savvis, Abu Dhabi Ports Company, SAP AG, Fundaments, T-Systems
Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow, Lansweeper, Device42 and others in IT Asset Management. Updated: October 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.