Clarity SM Reviews

Our company uses the solution for system, program, service request, change, and knowledge-based management. 

We perform CMD authorizations and use a lot of integrations for our in-house or third-party applications. We also use Salesforce automations and Microsoft orchestrations. 

We have about 4,000 users at our bank with no immediate plans to increase usage. 

The solution's back-end architecture is very good for end users. 

The API is very, very bad so we developed our own.

The out-of-the-box UI is not very friendly for end users so we don't use it. 

I have been using the solution for 12 years. 

The solution is stable for our bank.

The solution is scalable to a point. Container architecture increases the scalability. 

We have not used technical support. 

The setup is straightforward. 

We initially implemented the solution with assistance from a consultant. We don't need assistance anymore because we have good knowledge and experience. 

We have about ten developers on staff. When we develop something like features or enhancements, we deploy them on Azure DevOps. Deployment takes about two days for the ITSM tools. 

The pricing is based on a subscription model. 

I rate the solution a seven out of ten. 

We used the solution for two purposes. When working for a banking client, we used it to report incidents and change order-related requests for internal banking employees. Currently, for clients in the telecom industry, we are using it from a service management perspective for end users.

The solution's most valuable feature is customization. It provides different components to customize the service desk manager whenever needed.

They should enhance the service desk manager's service point function to be more customizable. Presently, there are so many limitations in this particular UI. Thus, similar to the existing UI, they should provide a customization source for this new UI. It could turn out to be very good for the end-user experience.

I have been using the solution for six years.

It is the most stable product in the market. The advanced architecture of this product helps a lot.

The solution is very well scalable. At the moment, we have around 55000 users in our organization. We have about 700+ technical executives to assist the end users using the service desk manager. Apart from that, the rest are all end users.

I have contacted the technical team for many cases. I rate them as an eight, as when we ask for any customization or product-related inquiries, they do not provide any information. They usually offer us a direct link to technical documentation for any requirements.

Positive

The initial setup, as far as the stand-alone system is concerned, is straightforward. But for a distributed or advanced eligibility system, it is tricky. It has multiple components. That means various application servers are running at the same time. There can be numerous users standing by for background services as well. So, when we run one installation, it automatically gets identified by the other application instance. We need to install the application separately on the different servers and then do some configuration changes on the central server.

The solution is quite reasonable compared to other solutions in the market.

Our management chose Broadcom as it consists of a wide range of enterprise solution tools and is among the world's top five most efficient product providers. They keep fixing bugs in the application with each version as a part of security patching to deal with the latest security threats.

I recommend the solution to others as it has excellent features as far as customization is concerned. Apart from the out-of-the-box facilities, the product also provides a source for implementing external customizations and script-calling features to perform various operations through the APIs.

I rate the solution as a nine.

We are a partner with CA Technologies, and we've done major implementations of Clarity for around 40 to 50 different customers of various sizes. Some are small, while others have a massive infrastructure running multiple instances of the CA Service Desk. It's deployed exclusively on-premises, and that's one of the reasons CA is losing market share: It doesn't offer a cloud solution.

Our customers implement Clarity for incident, change, process, configuration, and problem management. The service catalog is another popular feature they use. Clarity offers process automation as well. You can make multiple dynamic workflows to compile or integrate those processes. 

Clarity is flexible to implement and integrate. It gives the developer or consultant a broad space to work and customize based on what the customers want. It adopts native languages as well. 

So far, the only complaint from customers has been Clarity's user experience. Unfortunately, clarity's UX cannot compare with most modern enterprise service desk solutions. In the last couple of years since Broadcom acquired CA, they've put less effort into developing CA's product line. They aren't coming up with new features or refining the user experience. 

Clarity's performance is solid. It's a highly stable solution.

Clarity tech support has gotten worse since Broadcom acquired CA Technologies. We're not getting the support we've come to expect as a large enterprise. Clarity's support needs to improve, or it's going to lose market share.

Generally speaking, Clarity's installation is relatively straightforward. Then again, it depends on how big the architecture is. If it's simple, implementation will take you a couple of hours. But if you have a vast infrastructure with multiple databases and application servers and want to enable the mobile app, it can get a bit complicated.

The amount of technical staff required also depends on the size of the implementation. If it's a small job, one consultant can handle it. But if it's a more extensive implementation with different process owners and stakeholders of the company taking part, then you need multiple consultants.

Clarity offers a perpetual license. Customers purchase the license once and then pay for maintenance. CA provides a subscription model as well. Both models are available for our customers.

Compared to other modern IDSM tools, I rate Clarity six out of 10. My advice to people thinking about implementing Clarity is to first take stock of their budget. Second, they should consider what processes they're looking for. Third, they need to think about whether they want a cloud platform or on-prem. 

If they plan to go on-prem, Clarity is one of the best solutions. If they want a cloud solution, Clarity isn't right for them. They can try out some other tools. If they have a big budget, Service Now is a good option. If they are in the mid-range, they should go for something like JIRA or 4Me. While 4Me is a newer solution, it has some appealing features.

We are using Clarity SM mainly for managing IT tickets, such as incident requests, problems, and changes. There is a cloud version available, but we are not ready for this yet.

The most valuable fractures of Clarity SM are its ease of use and security. I have been highly satisfied. We've been able to integrate it with email and an SMS gateway for the purposes of notifications. That works very well.

I have been using Clarity SM for approximately 20 years.

The stability of Clarity SM is very stable.

Clarity SM is highly scalable.

We have approximately 400 analysts that log on to the system and make use of it. This includes both sides, from the customer and the service provider. We now have what we call self-service, it is for people who interact with the system for purposes of logging tickets using self-service. We have approximately 1,700 people using the self-service interface.

We are looking forward to onboarding more clients. We only have two clients but we would like one more.

I have used ServiceNow and BMC Helix previously.

The initial setup of Clarity SM is an area where Broadcom has improved. The previous versions had big problems but with the recent versions, it's very easy to start off the setup. Most of the tasks during the setup are automated, there's not much that you have to do to go through the initial setup. There are a lot of other utilities that you can use to draw data from other sources and import it into the system. Automation of tasks has made it much easier to do the initial deployment of the system.

The deployment of Clarity SM meets all of our expectations. 

We have a team of three that does the implementation and maintenance. There are two of us internally in the company and one additional person from outside that is from CA Technologies who has been assisting us to configure and other aspects.

There is a subscripted needed to use Clarity SM. The price of the solution could be less expensive. ServiceNow is less expensive and BMC Helix is priced similar to Clarity SM.

I would recommend this solution to others. They have improved the solution over the years and there are lots of new features coming out.

I rate Clarity SM an eight out of ten.

We use it for our incident request processes and also our change-over processes as well as our problem processes. It's our main CMDB.

It's a very flexible platform. 

You can customize your own things and your own processes. You can easily extend the natural processes and you can customize what you need to. 

It's easy and it's not affected by upgrades. 

The initial setup is pretty straightforward.

The user interface is a little bit old and not so mainstream. Nowadays every person is used to an interface that is more user-friendly and this one is not so user-friendly maybe due to the fact that, if you need to let people customize everything, sometimes you lose out on a clean user experience. When you can configure the interface, including all the buttons, all the things, it's hard to keep things streamlined. From my point of view, if you gain a lot of flexibility, you lose a little bit of the overall user experience.

We'd like to have a better overall user experience. 

The workflow design could be better. They have another product with better workflow designs and I would like to see them merge these products together. 

The costs associated with the product are a bit high.

The first level of customer service isn't very knowledgeable. 

They could use a better service portal. 

I've used the solution for more than ten years at this point. 

The stability is quite good. That said, when you start doing so much customization and so much code on your own, you could degrade a little bit of the performance. However, we don't have any performance issues. We have maybe 100 persons using it daily and we don't have any issues.

There might be 20 people who use the solution directly. We have 100 people who use it daily.

The solution is scalable as you can add more front-end servers or more back-end servers. It's an easy process and it's not a complex thing to do it.

Sometimes when we have some problems we have to open a ticket and escalate to the vendor, and also sometimes we use the partner and describe the issue to the partner.

The first lines of support are sometimes not so good. We need to take time to escalate the problem to the second-line or third-line of support. In the 10 years we've used the product, we haven't really had a big problem. That said, sometimes when I open a ticket for small things, sometimes the first line of support is just not great and handling the issue. They could be a bit better and more knowledgeable. 

The initial setup is simple and not so complex. Of course, you have a lot of configurations as all the processes themselves are complex, however, if you use the out-of-the-box features like the SLA and workflows it's more or less easy to implement. 

Sometimes the partner provides maintenance services and sometimes we handle the maintenance ourselves. Usually, we do the maintenance by ourselves. For example, if we need to do an upgrade to a new version, if we have the knowledge, we do it by ourselves, however, most of the time, we prefer to use a partner when it's something big or at least when it's something that we don't know for sure how best to handle things.

Usually, we use some people who help us. Most of the time it's not the vendor itself. Usually, it is the partner as we are a public company and we have some restrictions when we are buying things. Therefore, we sometimes cannot buy directly from the vendor and we buy the product or service through a partner. The partner is one that is in our country and close to us. They would have the same resources the vendor has in order to do the best implementation.

Nowadays, the solution is not so cheap, If can be a bit expensive. When we did some research last year, we noted the pricing was near the top and on the more expensive side. 

We're just customers and end-users.

I'm not sure which version of the solution we're using. Usually, every year we upgrade. However, not the latest one. Still, it's not so far from the latest version.

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten.

We use the solution primarily for call logging and checking, but we also use it with other products that are related to CA. It's mainly for monitoring and event management from the infrastructure management perspective which integrates or interfaces into CA SDM for ticket logging. We also use it to check the SLA using what is referred to as the embedded service desk. We're about to introduce service catalog. It's one of the CA products that integrate nicely with it so we'll be using the new features of self-service and the xFlow engine. I'm an ITSM specialist and we have a partnership with Clarity SM. 

From a cost perspective, we don't have a very big service desk. We have many service agents because there's a facility that allows people to log onto the system and raise their own tickets. It saves people from having to wait for the service desk. From the company perspective, it saves us resources in the service desk. From a cost perspective, it counts. The fact that xFlow has got the self-service that's linked to knowledge management, means people are also able to solve their own problems without necessarily requiring tickets through the entire life cycle of second line support. From a quick resolution point of view, that has helped a lot.

I like the self-service interface and the fact that people can raise and check their own tickets without necessarily having to call the service desk. They can check progress on their tickets and also have input in the life cycle of the tickets. That's one feature that I think I like most.

We are running a high availability deployment now and I like the architecture because it makes it easy from a maintenance point of view. You hardly have any downtime because of high availability. You just move your servers across to a secondary or primary environment, do your maintenance and bring it back without users even noticing. The nice thing is the feed into the inventory and discovery solutions that work so well. You keep your discovery data somewhere and you verify it before you bring it over to CA SDM. 

We would love to see it integrating with other products like Splunk for log collection, integration to SMS facilities. It requires some effort for developers to get some of the things working because there aren't readily available APIs to interface with those. I'd really like to see Clarity more open to other products for purposes of integration.

I've been using this solution for the past 15 years, before it was renamed Clarity. 

We had some stability issues with earlier versions. Everything now runs on Windows and Microsoft products so it's much more stable. 

The scalability is quite good. We are able to easily accommodate hundreds of analysts that that use the system simultaneously without any performance issues. You can increase it to thousands of users and easily incorporate other clients into the platform without really having to do a lot of work. 

Our environment currently has about 450 analysts and 30,000 self-service employees. That means 30,000 people logging onto the system. In terms of USA, the number of employees that could be logged in at the same time at any given time could be around 500. But in total, we are servicing about 30,000 people who are using their self-service facility. The system has been able to handle that load without problems. 

We plan to onboard all the new clients in their new CA Service Desk solution and we plan to increase usage in the future. 

They have 24-hour support and we have access to support from several countries around the world including South Africa. We know some of the support people because we've had a relationship with CA support for many, many years. They're what we call sustained engineering support. That's the kind of support that requires looking into the code of the application. Most of the issues are mainly troubleshooting issues around technical aspects here and there. We'll know when we go live if there's a problem. 

In terms of initial setup, if it's a totally new deployment and starting from scratch, it would have been much easier. We are basically migrating from an old platform to a new platform. For that reason, it takes a bit longer. It's straightforward if it's a new deployment, but not that straightforward if you want to take into consideration building it from other sources.

In terms of timeline for a new deployment, three months is enough. But, it has taken us more than that to get to where we are now. I think we've been six months on the project and we haven't gone live yet. We're about 80% there. We used CA services for the deployment. 

I'm not so involved on the commercial side of things but I believe the cost could be improved. I'm not sure if it's a currency exchange rate issue but we are in Africa so it's quite expensive.

Although we are also running BMC Remedy and still have some clients hosted on it, I don't have much insight into it. I'm told that the latest version is run on a cloud platform, just like the CA SDM. I believe the BMC deployment is very quick, much quicker than the CA SDM deployment. That's a plus from a deployment point of view. In terms of functionality, it looks like the functionality is pretty much the same across the two products.

Out of all the service desk solutions I know, the one I know the best is CA SDM so I may be biased. I know there are many other options like ServiceNow and ManageEngine. I use Clarity and I would recommend it because it does add value to the business.

I would rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

Our primary use case is for ticketing. I'm a senior engineer.  

The UI is very user-friendly. 

There are some issues regarding the knowledge base and the configuration manager.

I've been using this solution for eight years. 

The solution is stable and used on a daily basis. We have around 400 users. 

The technical support responds quickly and provides a good service. 

Positive

The licensing cost is comparable to other solutions on the market. 

I rate this solution seven out of 10. 

Our primary use case for Clarity is to manage portfolios and projects, and to manage the software. 

The most valuable feature are the time sheets, it's a very powerful tool.

The report solutions are a little short and that could be improved. It's possible that part of the issue is the customization because we had the tool customized for our clients. Clarity is also quite an expensive solution and it would be helpful if the cost was reduced. 

I've been using this solution for eight years. 

The initial setup was complex, it's possible that the integrations between this tool and other tools like Quality Center, ALM may have made the setup more difficult. 

I would rate this solution a seven out of 10. 

We are a solution provider and this is one of the systems that we implement for our clients.

This solution covers most of the IT lifecycle. The emphasis is mainly on incident management, change management, program management, and request fulfillment. We also have the System Management patch for network monitoring. 

As of late, I really like the BI functions. 

The CA products integrate well together but I would like to see better integration with third-party solutions. An example of this is with AIOps, where I prefer Splunk over CASDM, so I would have like to see it opened up so that the integration is straightforward. We like the customer to be able to choose.

I find that there are many modules that offer similar functionality and I would like to see these consolidated. Perhaps it is because CA was acquired by Broadcom and they are still developing, with the intention to bring everything together but as it is now, the vendor has many products that do the same thing.

I have been using CA Service Desk Manager since version 5.5, starting about 15 years ago.

Speaking of stability, there was one version, 12.5, that gave us a lot of pain. However, I think that it was due to our architecture. Out of the box, I think that this is a stable solution.

If properly deployed, I think that the CA Service Desk Manager is scalable. We had our own lessons to learn from the way we did things in the previous versions but with our latest deployment, it has been quite well and scalable.

Two of our enterprise clients have between 900 and 1,000 users.

In my company, we have both CASDM and BMC Helix ITSM, and I have worked with both of them. I find the BMC solution easier to deploy than CASDM. Some of my colleagues regularly support BMC and it seems that their deployment is much quicker.

Our BMC solution is much smaller and it does not cover all of the areas, especially in the systems management space, the AIOps, reporting, and aggregation. BMC does have this functionality but we didn't acquire everything. I expect that eventually, all of our clients will be using CASDM. 

Because there are so many different modules, the initial setup is not that straightforward. There are a lot of things that you need to do to get things to work together, although I'm used to that sort of iterative process. Sometimes, when I look at how other solutions such as BMC are deployed, I find them much easier.

CASDM can take months to deploy, especially if you have data that you've got to take from your previous versions. You may have a lot to do.

We are currently two versions behind but we are in a project to upgrade to the latest version, 17.2. It is appealing to me because I will have access to the AIOps modules. I am also interested in moving to the cloud-based solution because it is easier to deploy. There are better technologies available in the cloud, it is easier to manage, and there is a high availability aspect. I think that it would be much better but we are often restricted by the customer, who cannot always have data on the cloud. For example, two of our customers are state-owned enterprises and their data cannot be on the cloud for any reason.

My advice to anybody who is implementing this solution is to use the cloud-based deployment, rather than host it on-premises.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We are primarily using this solution for incident requests. We track our CI CMDB change requests. We are using Service Desk Manager in a wide scope that is not in a single location but across Europe.

The most valuable features are the requests and incident tracking.

When I am reviewing an incident, sometimes there is too much information on the same screen and it is difficult to discern what is of value. The agents generate information that is not important for me and it means that I have to scroll down to the bottom of the issue in order to find what I am looking for. In this regard, the interface is not always clear.

I would like to see charts and more graphical information available in the reporting. As it is now, we have incident data that is put into Power BI so that we can visualize it. We do this because it is easier to read graphical information. It would be nice if this solution had a simple wizard that could generate visualizations based on the data. As it is now, there are lots of reports, but from my perspective, the reporting is a little bit too complex.

I have been working with CA Service Desk Manager for three or four years.

I am not aware of any issues in terms of stability, so I would say that there are no large or obvious bugs.

From my perspective, it is no problem to add on to this solution. I would say that it is very scalable. We have about 1,600 people who actively use it.

I have not had contact with technical support.

We are also using ServiceNow and our developers are using JIRA.

In my opinion, JIRA Service Desk is more oriented to developing software and it covers the topics surrounding that job.

Our setup was performed quite some time ago by a third-party.

My advice to anybody who is implementing this solution is to be patient. It is going to take effort and time to properly deploy.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.