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Clarity SM vs IBM Maximo comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Clarity SM
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
107
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (24th), IT Service Management (ITSM) (26th)
IBM Maximo
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) (1st), Billing Software (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Clarity SM and IBM Maximo aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Clarity SM is designed for IT Service Management (ITSM) and holds a mindshare of 1.1%, up 1.1% compared to last year.
IBM Maximo, on the other hand, focuses on Enterprise Asset Management (EAM), holds 25.7% mindshare, down 27.0% since last year.
IT Service Management (ITSM)
Enterprise Asset Management (EAM)
 

Featured Reviews

Türker Kara - PeerSpot reviewer
Quite good back-end architecture for end users but the API is very, very bad
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…
Jose Pedro Muñoz - PeerSpot reviewer
A very strong and powerful tool in the market preferred by a variety of industries
I rate the technical support a seven out of ten. Three levels of support in IBM. The first one is a fixed level, while levels two and three are very good. Here, level one is not very good, as it takes time to go from level one to level two and from level two to level three. So, level one is of low capacity.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Being able to specify event rules and SLAs that can help to automate some of the processes that people are doing manually is valuable."
"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."
"The value for the clients is that you can save information in the application and get reports with that information."
"The view it provides into who's doing the work."
"It has helped us to organize a lot of our assets, so we have configuration items to attach to our change management. We can have tickets for change management and set them aside for an approval process."
"The fact that it aligns very well with ITIL. I think that's probably one of my favorite things about it, because it's following up a general best practice for service management."
"Self-service interface means people can check their own tickets."
"It has a good GUI interface."
"IBM Maximo is a very strong and powerful tool in the market…Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"Reliable, very configurable, and it's all integrated in the same database."
"We were doing all kinds of paperwork for every type of order and to maintain our assets but with the use of the IBM Maximo application, we can automate a lot of the processes."
"We were able to scale perfectly.​"
"We are very thankful to have IBM integrated with our own Legacy cloud-based system"
"Work order management and scalability enables the businesses' needs to be met."
"The most powerful features are the database and integration with CMDB."
"Its capabilities let us organize our work."
 

Cons

"More user experience in the look and feel of the application. ​"
"The user interface is just boring. I'd like to see a more interactive UI, from the end-user perspective, and from the analyst's perspective. I would like a product that looks like it was developed maybe in 2015, or at least 2012."
"It doesn't yet have the ability to integrate with other products."
"Just little technical tweaks here and there. Like more options. For example "Organization." We wanted that to be available inside the change order, as well as the ticket and the request. And that's not available."
"We need a mobile solution. We are not using any mobile functionality for the product, but we think that this necessary."
"Improvements would include simplification in the user interface, being more expandable, better documentation. The user interface is fairly cluttered, and we can update it the way we need to, but it just seems dated."
"The monitoring tool is in need of improvement."
"We went from 12.1 to 14, so there was a lot involved in it. The issues we had were migration issues, getting our information from one place to the next and making sure everything was as everyone needed."
"IBM Maximo can improve the financial support and financial application, to make it more similar to an ERP as opposed to an EAM. Overall they can improve the financial processes."
"It was very slow due to the lagging issues. So that was kind of frustrating, considering how slow it was while functioning."
"The solution is not stable. We can have one day when it is stable and another day it is not. Sometimes it crashes or becomes very slow, and there are times we are not even able to download all the databases. Without the database, we cannot work on that application. These are the small glitches, and stability issues we are facing."
"Areas for improvement would be the user interface and support for Arabic. They could also be more customer-oriented."
"It needs full-service visibility. There are a lot of things that are hard for users to find out. For example, the Service Catalog is not too friendly. You really have to know what you're looking for."
"The latest version is slow due to the power it requires."
"Coding can be complex when customization is required."
"Initial setup is a longer process because Maximo is bigger and has more processes."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is a bit expensive, but you definitely get what you pay for. It is worth it!"
"The pricing is based on a subscription model."
"I think pricing of this model is suitable for growing corporations."
"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."
"The solution is quite reasonable compared to other solutions in the market."
"Pricing is simple, as it’s per concurrent analysts."
"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."
"I don't see anyone other than large companies being able to afford this system."
"IBM has changed the licensing policy. As I understand now, they are going from a complex way of licensing to a more simple way of licensing."
"Where available, concurrent licenses can be more cost efficient and provide more flexibility."
"The price of IBM Maximo could reduce, it is expensive."
"The concurrent user license is much more effective in management and cost-wise, as it is more suitable for maintenance management."
"IBM Maximo offers a licensing application, and you have to comply with the license."
"You pay for what you get. There are lots of options depending on how you would like to implement Maximo."
"I do not know about the price of the solution. However, this has been an expensive project overall."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is low and ten is high, I rate the pricing a nine. The price is very high."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Performing Arts
8%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Government
11%
Energy/Utilities Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Also Known As

CA Service Desk Manager, Clarity Service Management, CA Service Management, Unicenter Service Desk, CA SDM, CA Service Catalog, CA Business Service Insight
Maximo
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Banco G&T Continental City of Perth, FEMSA, Fujitsu, Manpower, Muslim Commercial Bank - MCB, Punjab National Bank, Santa Clara County Social Services, Stefanini
Royal Boskalis Westminster N.V., DTE Energy, Swedish Match, Projetech, Fingrid, East Coast
Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow, Atlassian, BMC and others in IT Service Management (ITSM). Updated: June 2025.
861,390 professionals have used our research since 2012.