Enterprise UC is only as productive as the systems that keep it steady. When meetings drop, audio glitches, or support tickets spiral – employee experience takes the hit first.
That is why buyers keep circling two big matchups: ServiceNow vs Atlassian in IT service management, and a Cisco vs Juniper connectivity comparison for the networks that carry calls, meetings, and messaging.
Remember: These are all high-quality vendors, and the “right” option depends on your environment, your scale, and which problems you need to solve first.
Continue your learning journey here:
- The 5 Verticals Where Service Management & Connectivity Are Having A Big Impact
- The Need-to-Read Industry Reports on Service Management & Connectivity
- Are You Ready For an Infrastructure Upgrade? How to Prepare for ITSM & Connectivity Adoption
ServiceNow vs Atlassian: AI-Enabled ITSM Comparison for UC-Heavy Enterprises
IT service management (ITSM) is the discipline and tooling used to run internal IT like a service: logging issues, routing them, fixing them, and learning from them.
In a UC context, that often means “keep Teams, Webex, calling, and endpoints working without drama.”
Where ServiceNow Tends to Shine
ServiceNow has positioned itself as an enterprise workflow platform that goes far beyond ticketing. This matters if you want to standardize processes across IT, HR, facilities, and security.
On the AI side, ServiceNow’s Now Assist tool focuses on speeding up incident resolution and provides context-rich responses for streamlined workflows. The Tier 1 vendor is quick to remind prospective buyers that it was named a Leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for AI Applications in ITSM.
Practical UC Upside: If UC issues are frequent and business-critical, ServiceNow can help formalize escalation, ownership, and comms. For example, major incident workflows can make it clearer who updates impacted teams, when, and how.
Common Trade-offs to Plan For: Bigger platforms often mean more configuration, governance, and change management to avoid “custom sprawl.” If your goal is fast time-to-value, buyers usually want a clear scope and phased rollout.
Where Atlassian Tends to Shine
Atlassian’s pitch is a more flexible, team-friendly service management approach that fits well with organizations already living in Jira and Confluence.
Jira Service Management explicitly supports core ITSM practices like incidents, problems, change, request, and configuration management.
On the AI front, Atlassian highlights virtual service agents and AI features designed to deflect repetitive requests and answer questions inside tools employees already use, including Slack and Microsoft Teams.
Practical UC Upside: Atlassian can provide real value strong when IT and engineering teams need shared workflows. That matters for UC when “the fix” crosses networks, endpoints, and apps. A single queue and shared context reduces handoff friction.
Common Trade-offs to Plan For: if you need a very broad enterprise-wide workflow platform (beyond IT), you may need more integration and process design work to get the same end-to-end standardization.
A Vendor-Neutral Summary
If you are evaluating the biggest service workflow platforms, ask which statement feels more like your reality:
- “We need one enterprise workflow backbone.” ServiceNow often aligns with that direction.
- “We need fast, flexible ITSM that fits our Jira world.” Atlassian often aligns with that direction.
If you want a sanity check beyond marketing, Gartner Peer Insights shows both products with large volumes of verified reviews, including:
“It’s been more than a year since we migrated from our ITSM system to Jira Service Management and it’s one of the best decisions we have made.”
“I have had an overwhelmingly positive experience with ServiceNow…we primarily utilize it as an ITSM tool for managing all aspects of ticketing, both internal and external customer tickets.”
Check out more of these verified reviews here.
Cisco vs Juniper – Connectivity Comparison: UC Network Performance Vendors in the Real World
Connectivity is the foundation under UC. Real-time voice and video are highly sensitive to delay and instability. If the network is inconsistent, UC feels “broken” even when the UC app is fine.
That is why buyers compare vendors not just on speed, but on visibility, assurance, and how quickly teams can troubleshoot. Here are the two leading UC network performance vendors:
Curious how service management & connectivity creates value in retail, healthcare, or manufacturing industries? Take a look at our vertical-specific roundup of exciting use cases.
Where Cisco Tends to Shine
Cisco’s advantage is breadth. Many enterprises already run Cisco switching, routing, WiFi, and collaboration endpoints, and want one integrated approach to managing performance.
Cisco’s ThousandEyes positioning is “visibility and control from user to cloud,” helping enterprises to pinpoint whether issues are happening on the network path, at a side, or toward cloud edges.
Cisco also publishes best-practice guidance for optimizing its network services for UC platforms like Teams, as well the endpoints in workplace collaboration spaces.
Common Trade-offs to Plan For: With a large portfolio, buyers need to be clear which parts they actually need (SD-WAN, assurance, endpoint monitoring, Wi-Fi, etc.) so they do not overbuy.
Where Juniper Tends to Shine
Juniper Networks (now part of HPE), has set its focus on “AI-native networking”. This comes with a strong emphasis on experience and automated troubleshooting.
In a UC context, Juniper’s Mist integration with Microsoft Teams is very explicit: it gathers call quality data like packet loss, latency, and jitter, and correlates that with wired, wireless, and WAN insights to help pinpoint root cause.
Juniper also positions WAN Assurance and application insights around how latency, jitter, and packet loss impact end-user experience.
Common Trade-offs to Plan For: Juniper can be a valuable aid when looking at how the network is managed (more automation, simpler operations, clearer performance insights). But buyers should plan how it will integrate with existing monitoring and security tooling, how easily teams can standardize configs across sites, and whether the vendor’s support model matches your internal resourcing.
A Vendor-Neutral Summary
For enterprise UC network performance vendors, these prompts usually clarify direction:
- If your top pain is “we cannot see what is happening to Teams calls,” consider which observability tools would best suit your current IT infrastructure.
- If your top pain is “too many tools,” Cisco’s breadth can reduce tool sprawl, while Juniper’s AI operations story may reduce manual troubleshooting time.
FAQs
How do ServiceNow and Atlassian compare on ITSM?
- ServiceNow is typically positioned as a broad enterprise workflow platform with ITSM and AI tooling like Now Assist. Atlassian is often positioned as a flexible ITSM platform tightly aligned to Jira workflows and AI-powered virtual agents.
Is Cisco or Juniper better for enterprise connectivity?
- It depends on your environment and priorities. Cisco often appeals to buyers who want an end-to-end portfolio plus internet and cloud visibility (including Teams monitoring), while Juniper often appeals to buyers who prioritize AI-driven assurance and deep Teams call correlation across wired, wireless, and WAN.
Where can I go for more buyer-centric insights on Service Management & Connectivity?
- Visit UC Today’s Ultimate Guide to Service Management & Connectivity, which explores the need-to-knows across every stage of the buyer journey.
