Jira vs Zendesk

May 17, 2023 | Author: Michael Stromann
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Jira
JIRA provides issue tracking and project tracking for software development teams to improve code quality and the speed of development. Combining a clean, fast interface for capturing and organising issues with customisable workflows, OpenSocial dashboards and a pluggable integration framework, JIRA is the perfect fit at the centre of your development team.
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Zendesk
Zendesk is web-based help desk software with an elegant support ticket system & a self-service customer support platform. Agile, smart and convenient.
JIRA and Zendesk are both popular software solutions, but they serve different purposes within the realm of project management and customer support. JIRA is primarily a project management tool that enables teams to plan, track, and collaborate on software development projects. It offers features such as issue tracking, agile boards, release management, and advanced reporting. JIRA is commonly used by software development teams to manage their workflows and track the progress of tasks and projects. On the other hand, Zendesk is a customer support platform that focuses on managing and resolving customer inquiries and issues. It offers features such as ticket management, knowledge base, live chat, and customer self-service portal. Zendesk is widely used by customer support teams to efficiently handle customer interactions and provide timely assistance.

See also: Top 10 Issue Trackers
Jira vs Zendesk in our news:

2023. Atlassian brings an AI assistant to Jira and Confluence



Atlassian has introduced Atlassian Intelligence, an AI-powered 'virtual teammate' that utilizes the company's proprietary models and OpenAI's large language models to create customized teamwork graphs. This technology enables various functionalities, such as AI-generated summaries in Confluence and test plans in Jira Software, as well as the rewriting of responses to customers in Jira Service Management. Atlassian Intelligence provides users with a chatbox similar to Chat-GPT, which is deeply integrated into different products and allows for the referencing of specific documents. For instance, to generate a summary of action items from a recent meeting, users can link the document with the transcript and request the summary inside Confluence. The tool then generates a list of decisions and action items from the meeting.


2022. Zendesk is acquired for $10.2B



Zendesk made a significant decision in February when it rejected a $17 billion acquisition offer, confident in its higher valuation. However, the circumstances have changed, and today the company has been acquired by a consortium of private equity firms for $10.2 billion, considerably lower than the initial proposal. The evolving landscape of the SaaS market in recent months has placed Zendesk amidst a whirlwind of investor drama. In a recent development, the company opted to remain independent, causing a sharp decline in its stock price.


2022. Atlassian acquires Percept.AI



Atlassian has recently completed the acquisition of Percept.AI, an artificial intelligence (AI) company known for its automated virtual agent support solution—a chatbot that utilizes a proprietary AI engine for natural language understanding. The intention behind this acquisition is to integrate the advanced virtual agent technology into Jira Service Management, Atlassian's IT service management tool aimed at improving service delivery for both employees and customers. Percept.AI's platform, driven by data-driven proprietary technology, possesses the remarkable capability to continuously learn from customer interactions, while ensuring that every member of your team maintains full control over the AI agent's behavior and voice. This strategic move by Atlassian aims to enhance their service management offerings by leveraging AI-powered virtual agent capabilities.


2021. Zendesk acquires AI automation startup Cleverly to advance customer service



Zendesk has recently revealed its acquisition of Cleverly, an early-stage artificial intelligence startup. Cleverly offers an advanced product platform equipped with various AI-powered features. This includes a triage function that automatically assigns relevant tags to incoming service requests, facilitating efficient workflow categorization. Moreover, Cleverly provides AI-powered human augmentation through its agent assist capability, which assists customer service agents in delivering accurate responses to inquiries. Cleverly's technology seamlessly integrates with Zendesk and Salesforce, enabling enhanced customer support experiences for businesses leveraging these platforms.


2021. Atlassian launches Jira Work Management for every team



Atlassian has made an announcement regarding the introduction of a new edition of its project management tool, Jira, called Jira Work Management. The company has been actively expanding Jira's reach beyond its origins in software development teams. While Jira Service Management has successfully catered to IT teams, Jira Core has also made progress in this direction. However, Jira Work Management takes this a step further and is positioned to replace Jira Core. The objective behind Jira Work Management is to provide a version of Jira that empowers teams in various domains such as marketing, HR, finance, design, and more to efficiently manage their work. Moreover, if required, these teams can seamlessly connect their work with that of a company's development teams.


2020. Atlassian acquires asset management company Mindville



Atlassian has made an announcement regarding its recent acquisition of Mindville, an enterprise asset management provider focused on Jira. This acquisition marks Atlassian's entry into a new market segment, as it adds asset management tools to its existing suite of services. Mindville Insights, the flagship product of Mindville, enables tracking of assets across various departments such as IT, HR, sales, legal, and facilities within a company. While the platform is asset-agnostic, it is expected that many companies within Atlassian's user base will utilize it primarily for tracking IT assets such as servers and laptops. In addition to physical assets, the service also supports automatic importing of cloud-based servers from providers like AWS, Azure, and GCP. The Mindville team has developed connectors to integrate with popular services like ServiceNow and Snow Software. Notable customers of Mindville include NASA, Spotify, and Samsung, among others.


2020. Zendesk’s latest tools designed to give fuller view of the customer



Two years ago, Zendesk, a well-known provider of help desk software, expanded into CRM with its acquisition of Base. Shortly after, the company introduced the Sunshine platform, enabling customers to develop applications on top of the Zendesk platform. Since then, Zendesk has been actively integrating the CRM tool into its platform, and today's announcement focuses on offering Zendesk users a more comprehensive understanding of their customers. With access to extensive data from customer interactions with the help desk, Zendesk can provide valuable insights into customer preferences and behaviors.


2018. Zendesk launched customer service app builder



Zendesk has introduced Zendesk Sunshine, a new platform designed for developing customer-centric applications utilizing Zendesk's toolset. This platform enables companies to create custom apps, primarily focused on customer experience and relationship management, which are hosted on AWS and have access to a wide range of AWS services. All applications built on the Sunshine platform rely on it for seamless information sharing. The primary goal of this approach is to empower Zendesk customers to leverage the data they collect within Zendesk as a natural outcome of their workflow. While initially targeted towards Zendesk customers, independent developers may also have the opportunity to work on the platform in the future. Zendesk Sunshine aims to enhance customer service capabilities by providing a flexible and scalable platform for building tailored applications and harnessing valuable data within the Zendesk ecosystem.


2018. Jira Cloud gets Trello-inspired redesign


Earlier this year, Atlassian introduced the latest iteration of its hosted project tracking tool, Jira Software. This release signifies a significant division between the hosted version of Jira, hosted on AWS, and the self-hosted server version, with Atlassian now focusing on distinct features for each. The new version of Jira boasts a fresh, Trello-inspired interface and introduces enhanced functionality that empowers teams with a more flexible workflow, reducing reliance on administrators and granting greater autonomy. One notable feature that Atlassian takes pride in is roadmaps, which enables teams to gain a comprehensive view of their projects. Similar to boards, modifying the roadmap is effortless as it simply involves dragging and reassigning larger work segments, referred to as "epics" in Agile terminology, to different dates.


2018. Atlassian launches Jira Ops for managing incidents



Atlassian has introduced a new edition of its flagship product, Jira, designed to enhance the efficiency and speed at which operations teams handle incidents. Jira Ops seamlessly integrates with various tools including OpsGenie, PagerDuty, xMatters, Statuspage, Slack, and others. While many teams already utilize these tools during service disruptions, Atlassian highlights the prevalent ad hoc approach employed by most companies in managing incidents. Jira Ops aims to serve as the cohesive element that ensures alignment and offers comprehensive visibility into ongoing incidents. With Jira Ops, when an incident occurs, users have a centralized location where they can access all relevant information. This includes details on who has been notified and alerted, the ability to notify additional individuals directly from the platform, and knowledge of the Slack channel dedicated to discussing the incident. Additionally, Atlassian has acquired OpsGenie for $295 million, further strengthening its incident management capabilities.

Author: Michael Stromann
Michael is an expert in IT Service Management, IT Security and software development. With his extensive experience as a software developer and active involvement in multiple ERP implementation projects, Michael brings a wealth of practical knowledge to his writings. Having previously worked at SAP, he has honed his expertise and gained a deep understanding of software development and implementation processes. Currently, as a freelance developer, Michael continues to contribute to the IT community by sharing his insights through guest articles published on several IT portals. You can contact Michael by email stromann@liventerprise.com