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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 (26th), IT Service Management (ITSM) (28th)
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%, down 1.2% compared to last year.
IBM Maximo, on the other hand, focuses on Enterprise Asset Management (EAM), holds 28.8% mindshare, up 26.5% 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

"The flexibility and being able to connect to multiple products are valuable. It allows to use it the way we want to use it versus the way it came out of the box."
"The solution's back-end architecture is very good for end users."
"Being able to specify event rules and SLAs that can help to automate some of the processes that people are doing manually is valuable."
"We can search open and closed cases to find what we have done in other incidents."
"We centralized our knowledge from various sources into one source of truth that is continually updated."
"It also provides the front end for the employees too. It's pretty basic, but it gives them the means to reach out to IT so they don't have to pick up the phones."
"Solution is scalable. It does work. We can modify it up better to make it the way we want it to work. We have implemented it for larger and smaller companies."
"We have decreased training and talk time, and all those good stats, just by reusing information, not reinventing it, every time we get a call."
"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."
"Has a powerful audit combination that helps achieve high accuracy."
"The incident management feature is good because it allows you to keep track of and classify issues."
"Work order management and scalability enables the businesses' needs to be met."
"The Preventive Maintenance feature, especially in its inspection routines and KPI abilities, is valuable."
"The most valuable feature is asset management maintenance as well as asset management overall."
"It can be particularly useful for power line operations, enabling linemen in the field to gather information and send it across the country as well as different parts of the world."
 

Cons

"Although I wasn't involved in the initial setup I have been involved with upgrades. They have been fairly complex. We've had some issues with upgrades where we had to roll back and get some things fixed. Some things that we ended up tracking back to not following directions right, but then other things we've run into issues."
"Ease of support and upgrades need much improvement."
"I would like to see the API cleaned up."
"The interface for the users is a bit old-fashioned and not user-friendly."
"The UI needs to be upgraded."
"The SDM administration and customisation needS deep information about architecture and vendor support continuously."
"There are some issues regarding the knowledge base and the configuration manager."
"Right now, you have to create the Scoreboards individually for roles or users. If they could separate that functionality, and create the scoreboards separately, and then just link scoreboards to roles and users - that way you could reuse the same ones - that would be a huge benefit. I know, because they're a nightmare to manage at times."
"You can get lost using the application"
"It's not user-friendly. It could use shortcuts for frequently requested services."
"On a scale of one to ten, where ten is easy and one is difficult, I rate the setup process a two since it is very complicated."
"The standard reports that shipped with the package need to be enriched with more advanced reports, especially for the Inventory Management sections."
"It's quite reliable, but new versions often are not too stable. They bring in enhancements but they break other stuff."
"Revision management of file attachments."
"​Maximo is a big system, so the initial setup is complex."
"This solution could improve by integrating or embedding finances, charts of accounts, and invoicing."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I don't see anyone other than large companies being able to afford this system."
"I think pricing of this model is suitable for growing corporations."
"It is a bit expensive, but you definitely get what you pay for. It is worth it!"
"The solution is quite reasonable compared to other solutions in the market."
"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."
"Pricing is simple, as it’s per concurrent analysts."
"The pricing is based on a subscription model."
"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."
"Explore the possibility of using DB2. You will avoid the cost of SQL Server or Oracle licenses."
"The concurrent user license is much more effective in management and cost-wise, as it is more suitable for maintenance management."
"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."
"Where available, concurrent licenses can be more cost efficient and provide more flexibility."
"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."
"I do not know about the price of the solution. However, this has been an expensive project overall."
"You pay for what you get. There are lots of options depending on how you would like to implement Maximo."
"$USD700 per agent user."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
29%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Energy/Utilities Company
9%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What do you like most about IBM Maximo?
It can be particularly useful for power line operations, enabling linemen in the field to gather information and send it across the country as well as different parts of the world.
What needs improvement with IBM Maximo?
Though I liked it a lot, I think it was lagging a lot. It was very slow due to the lagging issues. So that was kind of frustrating, considering how slow it was while functioning. The aforementioned...
What is your primary use case for IBM Maximo?
It can be particularly useful for power line operations, enabling linemen in the field to gather information and send it across the country as well as different parts of the world. With IBM Maximo,...
 

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, ManageEngine and others in IT Service Management (ITSM). Updated: April 2025.
849,963 professionals have used our research since 2012.