The product is easy to install, setup and configure. For me the ease of installation and configuration was most valuable as my experience with earlier Oracle Identity Manager products was slightly tedious. Things might be different now with Oracle products though. Also, CA provided a long list of standard connectors which did not require too much of customization and it suited well with the customer.
For the customer, the product provided an easy to use GUI for user-account centralization and auto-maintenance of accounts on different end points (target systems). Much of the manual tasks such as sending mails for approval and requests were reduced greatly. The amount of helpdesk calls were greatly reduced due to self-service tasks provided by the product.
With the new age products such as Dell, Forgerock, and Ping, and the change in demands of the customer, CA needs to do a lot more. For example, Dell IM provides built-in features with governance in mind, although they also provide a separate product called IM with governance edition.
The GUI in CA is more complicated where a user might have to drill down more into the menu to find the real form. Also, during configuration for a new person it's a tough deal to drill into the menus to find the place to actually setup.
CA came up with SIGMA to be better on GUI and scalability, but it had a lot of issues and poor scalability in both versions. I lost one bid purely based more on the poorer GUI provided by CA, and due to the fact that SIGMA did not provide things which were asked by the customer and did not provide scope of much customization either, so I did not understand the use of the product. I am not aware if SIGMA is officially launched now or not.
I've used it for around three years.
Migrating and comparing objects using the add-on tool Config Xpress has its own challenges, we had some issues when we connected the two development and production environments and tried comparing. We used it the other way, i.e exporting the environment XML files which was indeed time consuming.
Overall, it's quite a stable product.
I would 3.5/5 as it was good, but with some slight delay.
I have used Oracle's product, and am currently also using Dell. My previous customer moved from Oracle to CA purely due to cost factor. With a simple requirement, I would still use CA, but with newer customer demands. CA has to come up with new features which other vendors provide and tune up the GUI.
It's a very straightforward process, very easy to use.
I have implemented it both with a vendor team and an in-house one as well. Implementation is straightforward, you just need to read the manuals provided by CA which says it all from installation and configuration to tuning.
I haven't actually dealt with the licensing costs etc. but i know it's cheaper than Oracle, but more expensive than Dell/Microsoft/Forgerock.
As with all products, this has its pros and cons please do a study of other products based on your requirements before deciding on a product.