Clarity SM Reviews

The tool itself is valuable as a result of all its features combined. Therefore, I have found that there is no feature more valuable than another.

The scalability of a product this size has provided us with the most improvement. Being able to use one product globally throughout our company to capture and report on all IT work being done has provided the most benefit.

Ease of support and upgrades need much improvement. We don't have a dedicated team to support this system, and we still need to rely to much on services to perform upgrades and major patches due to the complexity of the system. Also, their mobile application does not allow us to configure it the same way as the system is configured, so we cannot use it at all.

We've been using it for four and a half years.

We had many issues, especially in the first release we implemented (12.5). In later releases, the overall system stability has improved greatly, but there have been other stability issues with specific parts of the system functionality. They do seem to provide test patches that help with stability of those areas, but with each new release there are new specific functionality stability issues that need to be addressed.

We have had no issues scaling it globally throughout our company.

Support is great. The engineers should probably work a little closer with the support and services teams on new releases to better understand the overall issues. They need to understand the issues that older versions had to ensure they they willnot re-occur in the new release, as well to ensure that any new functionality does not create similar issues that will need to be addressed. I think that too many 'test' patches are provided specifically to one customer that aren't carried over to the new release which causes that customer to have to address that issue again with support in the new release, and again receive another 'test' patch. Introducing more configuration options for these would give customers the flexibility that is needed for these areas.

We also looked at BMC Remedy and GWI.

It's complex. Customers aren't really able to implement this system themselves, unless they are going to use everything out-of-the-box.

I don't see anyone other than large companies being able to afford this system.

We previously used a system that wasn't scalable to use globally, which is why we switched.

Most vendors will tell you that you don't need a full time dedicated person or team to support and administer their system, but you really do, especially if you are going to utilize everything it has to offer. This person should understand the code, since some supported changes are made at the form level by changing or adding to the code.

The most valuable features for me are the scalability of it, its ability to bring in everyone at one time, and all the data-related functionalities. It works with products that were not easy to pull in, whether it be the CIs or contact data. So that's really been helpful when we've had to make a lot of bulk changes, bulk uploads, and import/exports of data.

Customizing it is very, very difficult to do. Although I know we're supposed to stay away from the code, we've got a lot of things internally where we can't revamp the processes and we'd rather use the tool than have to create customized things. But when we want to customize something, we can't do it easily and it's not very intuitive.

I'd also like to see a Quick Request function.

It deploys just fine.

It's got a lot of weird, inconsistent behavior.

It's scaled to our needs.

I've used technical support quite often. To rate it, I have to break it down. As far as responsiveness goes, 7/10. Overall knowledgeability of the product, there have been some cases where it's taken three or four weeks for us to get a test fix out. There is no internal support with extraction there; so that one is none. I've had maybe our cases with extraction, and technical support has always had to play the middleman, and then wait until another person is available for assistance. So overall knowledgeability has some work to be done.

The most valuable feature to me seems to be that the system is fully customizable and the service types with events and macros, that allows you to define not only SLAs, but actions and notifications in time, during the ticket processing. Also, the unified self-service portal with mobile interface, the knowledge base, Web Screen Painter, and the fact that you don’t need to provide any new password when you are changing the role - you just select the role you want to apply and push the button).

There are some improvement that can be done. First of all, the interface is pretty old (although it looks ok). There some improvements needed in the support and security offered for mail servers. Also, the system should allow to add new action macros at the interface level, and not through workaround, and some more easy way manage the language support (an easier way to generate the translated interfaces, fewer files to be translated). The Web Screen Painter tool can be improved, since this is a very powerful tool.

I’m relatively new to CA Service Desk Manager, having started using it at the beginning of this year.

The product, once you have implemented in the right way is very stable. You can leave it there to do its job, and only perform administration tasks like creating users and changing minor things. You don’t need to restart it or perform other administrative tasks.

It is a very scalable product and multi-tenancy feature allows you to give secure access in a multi-organizational environment, or provide services with it.

I had no problems, so 10/10.

Technical support is good, and you have also a strong community. You can even consider some advice from the older product, Unicenter, so 9/10.

The initial setup is complex. CA Service Desk Manager has a complex architecture, and depending upon the features you choose to install, you need more than four machines, which is the minimum number recommended by CA. So, it is an effort, and the same for the business rules. A complex model means a bigger implementation effort, process automatization, means some other extra effort too.

Service Desk Manager price is not very high and the benefits are considerable. If you compare with other products, for the same money, you'll get a more flexible system, with a very nice licensing model (it is licensed per analyst that's processing the ticket, not per ticket or per user).

Yes, we have evaluated more products like IBM, Landesk, Microsoft, and Manage Engine.

You won’t regret implementing it. If you have a medium or a large amount of ticketing activity, you will see the true benefits this system is giving to your business. But, keep in mind that you will need a dedicated resource to maintain the flows as they are changing in your activity, the policies, and the system itself. This is because when you customize it, and things are changing, you need someone to implement these changes, and since the system is so flexible, also there are a lot of possibilities.

Some of workflows became centralised and the complexity of approval cycles decreased via this tool. In general, it has helped us to implement some ITIL practices easily. 

• Logging every action in Service Desk Manager (SDM).
• Unique ticket number for every case (incident, request, problem, change, etc.) and tracking cases with ticket numbers.
• Out-of-the-box functions
• ITIL compatibility

• Reporting side 
• Workflow engine 
• Knowledge base 
• SLA calculation and customisation

The SDM administration and customisation need deep information about architecture and vendor support continuously. Therefore, the quality of support service is very key.

For PAM and BO, it is very hard to create and manage reports, dashboards, or workflows. These topics cause difficulties on application usage for analysts and end users. 

Some processes stop from time-to-time and require a restart. Also, sometimesexporting lists (incident, request, change, etc.) to Excel does not work and requires a restart.

No issues.

Based on what we have gotten from our local technical partner and vendor, I would rate them as a three (from 10). It can be said that the most important thing is selection of your vendor. CA tools can be very useful when you have the right vendors on board, otherwise it becomes a disaster for your organisation.

We have been using this product for eight years and nobody remembers the reason for the switch, however we are going to switch this product due to lack of technical support and legacy structure for the version which we were using. 

Initial setup was complex, because components (SDM, BO, and PAM) were on different servers and a lot of configuration was needed during the setup. 

The product has several licensing models. In our corporation, we are using a concurrent licensing model and there is no cap for the license due to licensing model being ethical. I think pricing of this model is suitable for growing corporations.

Not applicable.

Find a local partner, one that has full competence on this product, or take extensive training for your technical crew about the product from global vendor. Understand the strengths and weaknesses of product and evaluate these with your needs. If it needs more customisation, think twice. 

However, there is a huge difference between the reviewed version and the recent version of this product. The newer version is far better than the reviewed version. Do not forget that this review has been given for version 12.9. (This review has been shared while version 14.x has been in market.)

The following modules are the most valuable:

• Incident
• Request
• Knowledge
• Change Order

Quick capture of ticket info lends itself to easy resolution and/or assignment to other groups.

Reporting and integration to SCCM need improvement.

Service Desk Manager doesn’t integrate to SCCM out of the box. If you’re looking to use SCCM as your source of truth for servers or desktops and to populate a federated CMDB (using Service Desk manager), you’re looking at building a connector manually or buying another tool to do that. In our organization, we’re customizing code to do this in batch mode. Not ideal, but what we have to do. CA had recommended integrating with other tools of theirs that we have but the technology teams are centralized on SCCM. So that’s that one.

Reporting, we’ve had to buy Ivanti Xtraction to do all our dashboard and reporting. Boxi reports really fall short and we don’t use any reports out of the box. Be that as it may, we’re heavily metrics focused, so we’ve had to take that on separately to work with outside tools. Not ideal, but reality.

I have used this solution for thirteen years.

Service Desk Manager doesn’t integrate to SCCM out of the box. If you’re looking to use SCCM as your source of truth for servers or desktops and to populate a federated CMDB (using Service Desk manager), you’re looking at building a connector manually or buying another tool to do that. In our organization, we’re customizing code to do this in batch mode. Not ideal, but what we have to do. CA had recommended integrating with other tools of theirs that we have but the technology teams are centralized on SCCM. So that’s that one.

Reporting, we’ve had to buy Ivanti Xtraction to do all our dashboard and reporting. Boxi reports really fall short and we don’t use any reports out of the box. Be that as it may, we’re heavily metrics focused, so we’ve had to take that on separately to work with outside tools. Not ideal, but reality.

We have not had stability issues.

We have not had scalability issues.

Technical support is moderate.

Remedy was the previous solution at my current organization. It was not easy to support or migrate to new versions and was cost prohibitive.

Minimal training is required to get everyone up to speed and using the system.

Negotiate with the vendor.

We evaluated ServiceNow. It costs a fortune and required too much management.

Develop a process first, then apply the tool and minimize customizations.

From our perspective, and taking into account that we have a lot of CA products for IT service delivery, the most valuable feature is interconnectivity with other products such as CA Clarity, CA IT Asset Manager, CA Spectrum, CA UIM, CA APM, etc.

• All incidents, requirements, changes and problems are documented in one database.
• It is easy to follow, control and generate reports.
• There is a synergy with other products for incident management, monitoring (infrastructure and applications), asset inventory, etc.

Taking into account the new version 17.0 that CA Technologies has released, issues in terms of the flexibility, ease-of-use, service catalogue improvements, etc. were resolved.

I have used CA Service Desk Manager for three and a half years. Previously, we used the IBM Tivoli Service Desk suite for five years.

No major issues that affect the stability were faced. In the beginning, the issues used to be in the first stages.

We had no scalability issues.

The support provided is very good to excellent.

We were using the IBM Tivoli Service Desk suite solution for many years.

The setup was of the intermediate level in complexity, but there is no need to worry about that.

We experienced no major delays in terms of the migration, configuration and setup tasks.

Taking into account of the strong relation that we have with CA Technologies, and so many others products that we have implemented, price was not an issue.

We looked at IBM and BMC solutions.

It is important to have all the procedures well-documented, have a sponsor for this project and have good relations with CA and a partner. They will help you to define and implement this solution.

The completeness of information on each ticket is one of the most valuable feature of this solution. We are able to gather information either directly from the product interface or from data extraction. Any reports that our analyst users request are available in some fashion.

It is often the center point of reference on discussions of either outages in other applications or planned modifications in hardware or software.

There is nothing major in this product that needs improvement; maybe more documentation is needed for database relationships.

Although, the documentation in the Administration references, is very detailed and complete with respect to the internal/external table names, field definitions and relationships, it is difficult to determine database table inter-relationships, without examining and tracing paths. A person needs to start with a major table, and follow each reference field to the next table.

It would be beneficial, if there were diagrams with basic table interconnections within the major areas, such as Contacts, tables relating to Change Orders and the same for Incidents/Problems. This way, it would be much easier for the support specialists, who are just learning the system, to know where to find ancillary information related to the main tables.

I have used this solution for five years; probably even longer on the previous version, before my time.

I have hardly ever encountered any stability issues. There are very few instances of unplanned outages – at the most 1-2 per year.

We have not had the need for scaling it. This product was configured in a way that we could use it for many years.

CA technical support is outstanding. They are very responsive and always have an answer.

Previously, we used an older version of the CA product that was no longer officially supported.

Since we were not upgrading but installing a new instance, the setup was very complex. We had to define all the configuration items and establish user update routines specific to our installation. However, there were CA support individuals on-site who were very instrumental in a successful installation.

Personally, we did not evaluate any other solutions. We were upgrading an existing product.

You need to plan ahead and talk with the CA installation support in order to define as many of the user areas as possible, prior to beginning the setup. This can help you have an easier method in setting up areas such as ticket categories and workflow steps. Otherwise, there could be a delay in installation while these are defined.

I handle primarily the back end of the tool. A lot of the benefits that we've seen have been the ease of use, the implementation of it, the actual transition because we had an existing product prior too and we're moving from our vendor product to ITSM. At the time, we were very concerned about how long it was going to take us to actually do the upgrade and it actually turned out to be not a long and arduous process as we thought it was going to be.

The biggest things that we've noticed has been the actual performance of the tool. In Maximo we had a lag and again, it's more or less because it was a shared tool were as we have a dedicated tool now. When we went to the tool that we're now using, SDM, we noticed that the performance was so much more increased than it was in the past. People were noticing pages would maybe take like 10 seconds to come up. It was almost instantaneous as soon as they'd click submit. That's the biggest hurdle that we had to overcome was just to demonstrate how much more of an increase time to resolve an issue we can give our customers

Room for improvement I would say from a back end perspective, I would say they need to streamline a lot of the code that they're using. I think it's very bloated, I think it has a lot of extra things that it doesn't really need. Things like for example, USS and Liferay. I mean, it's a great implementation and I think it can be used together if it was done appropriately but we haven't really seen much of a benefit in the way the tool works for our needs. For other companies I'm sure they've managed to implement the two and find a way to work with it but we've haven't had that kind of luck. I would say in those terms of getting a lot of the stuff in the backend, from my perspective, is to take a lot of the stuff out, look what they actually need, streamline the product, and then push it out forward.

We've had a few outages and a few bugs we've discovered. We've identified them and we've brought it up to CA's attention. They actually were very quick to get us a resolution towards that. We did have to work with our sales team to make sure we did have the right individuals in place but once we did that, we reached out, we did get a fast resolution.

The scalability of the solution has been very good. We think that it could definitely grow with our organization, it's just a matter of dedicating the resources needed to actually get that accomplished. When we first started developing the tool and putting it out there, we didn't actually scale it appropriately where we needed to. For companies looking forward, the biggest hurdle I think they need to do is actually look at how much they plan to use of the tool initially and also gauge in the future how much they think they're going to grow and not over estimate or at the same time, underestimate the usage of it.

There was a couple actual legitimate issues that we had. We started of with 14-1 and we were one of the first customers to implement that so there was definitely going to be some growing pains and some things the we discovered. Once we brought it up to CA's attention, we've had like a mixed bag at first and I think that's probably because the tool was so new and there was not many people on the service side that were really, really intimately familiar with it as they were with the past tools. We were constantly getting the, "Hey, we know version 12-7 or 12 whatever. I think it should still work like that in this new version." Once we started getting into it and it matured a little bit over a couple of months the support got a lot better.

When we first did our development and implementation we didn't scale appropriately so we were not dedicating enough resources to the tool. All those bugs and issues we've been discovering initially were partly self-inflicted wounds that we had to overcome. Once we then worked with CA and said, "Well, it's not really so much of a bug or a problem, it's because you only got one core dedicated to this and you can't do much with just one core." Once we started getting our ducks in a row and start saying, "Well, how much do we really want to dedicate to the tool and how much do we want to see ourselves in the future." Once we started getting those aligned into our business needs things started to work a lot better.

Rating: I would definitely say it's an eight. I'm not going to be super positive and super negative but it's an 8/10.