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Cherwell Service Management (discontinued) vs. Microsoft System Center

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)

    Score6.4 out of 10
    N/ACherwell Software was a full suite of service management tools competing with BMC Remedy, ServiceNow, and IBM SmartCloud. It was acquired by Ivanti, and has reached EOL.N/A

    Microsoft System Center

    Score8.4 out of 10
    N/AMicrosoft System Center is an enterprise-grade IT Operations Management (ITOM) suite designed for the centralized administration of data center infrastructure, virtualized environments, and hybrid cloud workloads. The platform provides unified management across heterogeneous environments, including support for Windows Server, Linux, and Azure Stack HCI. System Center is Microsoft's ITOM stack for organizations that maintain a significant on-premise footprint, vs the company's Azure-based…

    $1,323

    per month

    Pricing
    Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)Microsoft System Center
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Standard Edition
    $1323
    Datacenter Edition
    $3607
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)Microsoft System Center
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)Microsoft System Center
    Considered Both Products
    Discontinued Products
    Chose Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)
    Cherwell is the most customizable and powerful ITSM product without programing your own system from scratch. It has the most "heart" of any product I have used.
    Incentivized
    Chose Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)
    We went from a HP SM application with complex development and extensive cost. During our evaluations of the tools in the marketplace it became very clear that Cherwell Met or Exceeded all other applications for the functions we needed especially cost. We were very skeptical of …
    Incentivized
    Microsoft
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    94%
    Would buy again
    29 Answers
    91%
    Would buy again
    31 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    27 Answers
    97%
    Delivers good value for the price
    33 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    31 Answers
    91%
    Happy with the feature set
    31 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    19 Answers
    95%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    21 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    88%
    Implementation went as expected
    22 Answers
    97%
    Implementation went as expected
    28 Answers
    Features
    Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)Microsoft System Center
    Incident and problem management
    Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Cherwell Service Management (discontinued) and Microsoft System Center
    Feature
    Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)
    10.0
    53 Ratings
    20% above category average
    Microsoft System Center
    -
    Ratings
    Organize and prioritize service tickets10.052 Ratings00 Ratings
    Expert directory10.041 Ratings00 Ratings
    Service restoration10.035 Ratings00 Ratings
    Self-service tools10.051 Ratings00 Ratings
    Subscription-based notifications10.038 Ratings00 Ratings
    ITSM collaboration and documentation10.048 Ratings00 Ratings
    ITSM reports and dashboards10.051 Ratings00 Ratings
    ITSM asset management
    Comparison of ITSM asset management features of Cherwell Service Management (discontinued) and Microsoft System Center
    Feature
    Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)
    10.0
    44 Ratings
    21% above category average
    Microsoft System Center
    -
    Ratings
    Configuration mangement10.042 Ratings00 Ratings
    Asset management dashboard10.041 Ratings00 Ratings
    Policy and contract enforcement10.031 Ratings00 Ratings
    Change management
    Comparison of Change management features of Cherwell Service Management (discontinued) and Microsoft System Center
    Feature
    Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)
    10.0
    50 Ratings
    17% above category average
    Microsoft System Center
    -
    Ratings
    Change requests repository10.048 Ratings00 Ratings
    Change calendar10.044 Ratings00 Ratings
    Service-level management10.045 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)Microsoft System Center
    Small Businesses
    Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
    Score9 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
    Score9.2 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Enterprises
    Ivanti ITSM
    Score6.4 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)Microsoft System Center
    Likelihood to Recommend
    10.0
    (57 ratings)
    9.3
    (58 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    10.0
    (13 ratings)
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    8.9
    (5 ratings)
    8.4
    (5 ratings)
    Availability
    8.2
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    6.4
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.7
    (16 ratings)
    9.0
    (14 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    8.9
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Online Training
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    9.1
    (3 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Configurability
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Professional Services
    7.3
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    6.4
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)Microsoft System Center
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Discontinued Products
    Well suited in an IT environment where you have limited staff. It can be managed by one administrator. Reliability of the SaaS environment has been excellent. Flexibility in developing automated workflows to open, manage, and close Incidents. Change Management due to ability to modify OOB to meet the needs of our staff. Contract Management allowing us to be notified when a contract or license is up for renewal and setting reminders. Integrations are not easy to create and manage.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    For companies with more than 10 Windows devices and needing to standardize the OS, AV, access, share resources, and install software. SCCM is the way to go. This software is unnecessary if the business is all remote users and not in an office-type setting. There are cloud offerings or none to accomplish what a business needs.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Discontinued Products
    • Cherwell's email handling automation works flawlessly. The only time that I have ever needed to reset the automation service that drives it is when my own server that houses the small connecting agent has some kind of problem and disconnects us from our hosted Cherwell instance. It just works. Emails to a certain address always result in a new ticket or update to an existing ticket.
    • Cherwell is literally 100% customization in so many ways that it would be pointless to try to enumerate them. There is a very sizable list of already-created customizations (called "mApps") that you can download and apply to your instance. If you don't like them you can roll them back in seconds. But you can add and configure entire modules using one of these pre-defined, completely free, add-on packages. It's so easy to add features this way that I check the list of available mApps every month or so just to see what functionality I can add.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • Allows the grouping of devices by user.
    • Allows controlling updates being deployed to user devices.
    • Allows for the repurposing of machines by being able to load new or updated software on machines that already are in the system.
    • Allows us the ability to wipe a machine clean and restore it back to the configuration that was assigned the machine.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Discontinued Products
    • Cherwell lacks modern UI capabilities such as responsive forms and CSS styling for web portals.
    • Built-in reporting engine is hard to use and resource intensive to run.
    • No patching model for small platform fixes, must upgrade to receive platform code changes.
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • The product could improve in the area of having better mechanisms in place with how the SCEP client is deployed/installed from the server on the management side. We have run into this firsthand with the client not installing on an endpoint, and then having to take the time to investigate why it was not installing.
    • A second improvement that can be made is to keep trying to improve the products detection rate for finding malware/viruses. The case can be made that there are some products out there that do a better job at this and have a higher detection rate.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Discontinued Products
    Cherwell is still the best tool for the job in the market. Even though Ivanti bought them and are trying to convince everyone to move over to Neurons for ITSM, they have stated Cherwell will remain supported indefinitely and have a roadmap for future Cherwell development. Unfortunately, ISM is not as flexible as Cherwell (and the UX is atrocious), hence why many people are sticking with Cherwell (and why many Cherwell customers never purchased ISM originally)
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    Microsoft System Center Operations Manager is tightly integrated to Microsoft Windows servers os monitoring with great product support.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Discontinued Products
    I enjoy the layout and configuration of our Cherwell Service Management instance. It did take me a bit to get used to, as with any new ticketing system, but now that I understand the system more, I thoroughly enjoy it! There are just so many options and the UI is very intuitive.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    It is not user-friendly for the most part. With IT infrastructure, sometimes it cannot handle excess requests. Every few months, you will need an upgrade in terms of server resources to keep up with incoming alerts and requests. This does not happen all of the time, but it does happen when there are too many requests.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Discontinued Products
    Almost always available, with exception for a handful of outages due to infrastructure related issues
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    Discontinued Products
    The browser client is mostly acceptable in terms of performance, but still lacks parity with the rich client. The rich client is not very performant at all. It's built on old architecture and relies heavily on a fast internet connection, good caching and database indexing. There are several unwritten rules with form design (and form arrangement) which most users are not aware of, but can severely impact performance in the rich client. This is where the flexibility of Cherwell can come back to bite you if you step outside the boundaries of these unwritten rules
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Discontinued Products
    We generally have a good time with Cherwell support, however, there are the few niche cases where I have to explain how Cherwell works to the customer support agent on the other end. A little more product education for tier 1 support could go a long way in helping expedite support requests from SaaS customers.
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    There is a fair amount of documentation out there to help you when you have questions or run into issues with this product as well as tutorials on some of the more common tasks. Between the documentation and the overall ease of use we haven't had to deal with direct Microsoft support for this product.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    In-Person Training
    Discontinued Products
    I didn't partake in the in-person training, but it was available. I preferred the online method instead, which was a great experience. It was nice to have someone available to bounce questions off of and demonstrate how certain functions worked.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Online Training
    Discontinued Products
    The training was great! We got together to review the system, its UI, and how to perform basic functions. Then there was plenty of time to ask questions and test out the system while there was someone available to assist.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    Discontinued Products
    Implementation is a breeze. Each time I've implemented it, we had an outsourced vendor overseeing it & assisting where needed. However, Cherwell OOTB is ready to go, and configuring it for LDAP/SAML, etc. for authentication and user-imports is really straight forward. The infrastructure needed for Cherwell is extremely simple too - and installing the server & database takes no more than 20 mins
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    Easy to install with intuitive interactive interface during the installation process a and integration to MS SQL was smooth
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Discontinued Products
    Much more customizable than other products, especially when ran in a self-hosted environment. Cherwell [Service Management] allows for greater flexibility of custom development and integrations to allow for automating tasks that traditional ITSM apps are not well suited for. Cherwell [Service Management] gives you the freedom to develop your own objects with minimal licensing costs.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    We previously used a mix of FOG and Clonezilla to image machines. The biggest issues with these products is that changing one piece of the image required you to rebuild the entire image itself. These pieces of software also did not allow you to manage applications and Windows Updates, causing IT to have to constantly touch machines after they were imaged and update or manage them with a much more hands on approach.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    Discontinued Products
    We have had great contracts with Cherwell and love the concurrent licensing model
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Scalability
    Discontinued Products
    We have never had any major show-stopper issues with Cherwell itself - more so with the infrastructure it sits on. Moving from in-house cloud (on Cherwell's side), to AWS then to Azure has caused multiple problems over the years (some still on-going), however the product has remained fairly stable
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Professional Services
    Discontinued Products
    As mentioned, they were always great to work with (minus the project management side). My only feedback would be to push back on requirements that don't make sense
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Discontinued Products
    • As with any standard ticketing system, it helped decrease the time before first contact with clients.
    • Our department was always concerned with keeping a low budget, and it was cheaper than most.
    • My supervisor could easily tell how many resources were being put into each employee, so we had more visibility of our team's capabilities at a given time if we needed to take on something complex.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • It has allowed the enterprise to standardize on a single platform for monitoring.
    • Easier troubleshooting of issues with Microsoft platforms.
    • Greater visibility of issues across platforms when applications are hosted in a mixed environment.
    • Additional costs for monitoring systems that are not directly supported with additional packs (iSeries, Linux on Power).
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots