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Who is aware of the new SWSD and is comparing it to WHD?

I just recently become aware of the announcement of SolarWinds Service Desk (SWSD).  For those of you who are currently on Web Help Desk, are you considering moving to SWSD?  Or at least evaluating SWSD?  I'd like to know your feedback based on what you know of SWSD so far.  I've posted the following questions in the SWSD forum as well:

  • How is SolarWinds Service Desk different from Web Help Desk?

  • Can SolarWinds provide a comparison matrix between the two offerings?

  • Is there potential to migrate from WHD to SWSD for those who are interested?  Or will SWSD have to be a whole new setup?

I did not see SWSD coming nor do I recall any sort of product pre-sales announcement or preview information by SolarWinds, I was only recently aware of the announcement. Am I out of touch or did some of you know SWSD was coming?

  • I hate to sound negative, but based on Solarwinds WHD support (lack thereof), lack of meaningful WHD development, and lack of Solarwinds support presence in this forum, I can't say I'm enticed to look at any Solarwinds products.

    For the time, we'll stick with WHD simply because it will be a major undertaking to switch to something else.

  • I can understand where you're coming from. When we initially introduced WHD into our organization almost four years ago, we had excellent support from the sales rep down to the sales engineer who helped with pre and post installation.  Their customer care model may have changed because I deal with one rep for renewals and I haven't heard from any rep about new or upcoming product offerings, which is probably why I never heard of SWSD.  My staff has been primarily dealing with their phone support these days but they seem to be spotty with their response times compared to when I was initially dealing with them.

    At first glance, this SWSD seems to be a cloud version of WHD, and would have to see if the price is right to considering moving to their cloud offering.  I would like to have much better reporting capabilities which I believe is lacking from WHD, particularly on the ticket reporting side of things (e.g. I can't pull tickets up like an inventory report, they come out as TSV or worse PDF files, I just need a report of ticket types, quantities and start-stop dates).

  • I agree with sticking with WHD. Although I am not a new customer to SolarWinds, WHD is a new product for us. We implemented WHD only at the beginning of last year; 2018.

    I hope WHD continues for years to come, but the announcement of 'SWHD' has me concerned, and apprehensive.

  • It must have been a secret, dark room announcement because I haven't seen any details and my Sales rep just reached out with the standard EOQ specials email and there was no mention. Happy to sell me more licenses for what I have though. As stale and generally limiting WHD is, I can't imagine going through the hell of migration to a similar product. Only reason I haven't moved on to ManageEngine or ServiceNow is lack of budget.

  • As I mentioned in the SWSD forum, my SW rep said this was fairly new to them as well.  Seems its development was kept in the dark, even within their own company, until recently.  I have some mixed feelings about this approach, but I will evaluate their offering of SWSD regardless.  We've been on WHD for about four years now, while sufficient for our needs, there are some additional features or reporting capability we would like to see, and don't know if they will continue evolving WHD to meet those needs or will only offer those through SWSD (i.e. their SaaS offering), which seems most software companies are moving towards these days.  Like you said bret, we haven't really moved on to the other service desk tools you mentioned which do have more robust capabilities than WHD due to financial constraints.

  • There was actually an announcement back in April: SolarWinds - SolarWinds Sets Its Sights on the ITSM Market through Acquisition of Samanage and Introduction of a SolarWi…

    But I also have concerns about the future of WHD. Whilst Samanage seems to have a good history of reviews, one of the main considerations when looking at a new system is the support that a vendor can provide. So for us, the new Service Desk product will be considered but we'll definitely be looking at other products too.