Item: SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD)
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are using Solarwinds Service Desk across our whole corporation, this includes approximately 750 users. Solarwinds Service Desk is the first stop for any issues or requests our users have. We log every issue or request fr tracking and auditing purposes. It is used to follow an employee and thier equipment from the hiring process through the termination process. We also use it to track all of our software and hardware assets.

Pros and Cons

Solarwinds Service Desk is so customizable. Pretty much anything you can think of you can do with it. The interface and what you can do with it is very powerful.
Solarwinds Service Desk has lots of integrations with other systems and they are constantly adding more.
Solarwinds Service Desk has very strong reporting capabilities. Because of everything it indexes, you can report against literally anything.

Solarwinds Service Desk can have a steep learning curve. We came from an older help desk system that was not as feature-rich so we struggled to understand all of the features at first.
Even though Solarwinds Service Desk is very flexible there are still areas that we wish we had more control over. Things like renaming fields or rearranging certain layouts can be challenging.
Implementing Solarwinds Service Desk can be a daunting task. The hours they provide for help with the initial configuration is definitely not enough, you'll need more.

Return on Investment

Solarwinds Service Desk has helped greatly speed up the time to resolve my users' incidents. By designing forms to allow my users to enter mode details, it cuts down on the back and forth.
Solarwinds Service Desks knowledge base and search capabilities give my users the ability to solve some of their own issues and have helped to cut down on the number of incidents created.
Solarwinds Service Desk has helped us get better control of our assets. Who's using what, where they are, and how old they are.

Alternatives Considered

We came from using the Kace management appliance and let me tell you, it's come a long way but it still doesn't come close to Solarwinds Service Desk. The Kace appliance is not as feature-rich or as flexible. Before choosing Solarwinds Service Desk we also evaluated ServiceNow, Jira, ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus, and a couple more. ServiceNow was just priced way out of the range of any other product. All of the products had their pluses and minuses but at the end of the day, already being a SolarWinds customer, and how powerful Solarwinds Service Desk is sold us.

Support Rating

I have had nothing but positive experiences with the Solarwinds Service Desk support staff. They are always quick to help answer any questions we may have. Usually, any issues we have are our own misunderstanding and not a problem with the product. The Solarwinds Service Desk implementation team was also great, very helpful.

Key Insights

Do you think SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD) delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD)'s feature set?

Yes

Did SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD) live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD) go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD) again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Cisco Webex Meetings, VMware Horizon (formerly VMware View), ControlUp

Likelihood to Recommend

Solarwinds Service Desk is miles above our old service desk system. The searching capabilities make it easy to find what you are looking for and the more you use it and the more data you feed it, the better it gets. It definitely is a learning system and the more you and your users work with it the more you'll get out of it. If your users are not tech-savvy, they may need some additional training on the system. But my advice is to keep the forms and workflows simple, at least what is end user-facing. You can always allow the technicians to add additional information in the background.

Solarwinds Service Desk was the right choice for our service desktop needs

Overall Satisfaction with Solarwinds Service Desk (formerly Samanage)