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.
