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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

"This product has so many adjustment possibilities for many different clients."
"As of late, I really like the BI functions."
"Our users access it via the web. We have external and internal sources, and we're now introducing the mobile app portion so our computer engineers can respond to tickets remotely."
"We can search open and closed cases to find what we have done in other incidents."
"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."
"Scalability is very good. We have scaled to more users and more functionality."
"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."
"Modules of integrated ITIL managers."
"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."
"I have found Work Order management the most valuable feature. Additionally, it is a very robust and powerful solution."
"Its capabilities let us organize our work."
"There are not many enterprise asset management systems on the market and not many that have the categories that IBM Maximo has."
"​Maximo is very stable. We really do not have problem with stability.​"
"We are very thankful to have IBM integrated with our own Legacy cloud-based system"
"We were able to scale perfectly.​"
 

Cons

"The cost of this solution is too high, which is why we're leaving."
"I would also like to see a simpler reporting tool. They went from one fairly robust, very complex, reporting tool - it was great - and then they went to another one that was also fairly complex and robust. That's a great tool for people who are report writers, but for the average person who just wants to get a quick little report, it's like handing somebody a chainsaw because they have to break some toothpicks in half."
"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."
"The monitoring tool is in need of improvement."
"They need to improve the High Availability, and the native integration between CA Service Desk Manager, CA Process Automation, CA Service Catalog and CA Unified Self-Service."
"If I had to choose, it would be more around the user interface than the mobile experience."
"On permissions, there are options to do groups and options to do roles. What is practical, you have to pick one or the other, for both read and write permissions."
"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."
"The mobile solution has a lot of room for improvement, especially in geopositioning capabilities, tracking capabilities, and configuration capabilities, in order to let the tech operate online and offline.​"
"It's not user-friendly. It could use shortcuts for frequently requested services."
"IBM is a big company and they have a lot of products. Level One, the first level of tech support, is the one that is used to stop the tsunami. For everyone, it's always work to get past that."
"There are always ways to improve and make things better."
"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."
"Areas for improvement would be the user interface and support for Arabic. They could also be more customer-oriented."
"The interface is not very easy or user-friendly and is in need of improvement."
"The standard reports that shipped with the package need to be enriched with more advanced reports, especially for the Inventory Management sections."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"The solution is quite reasonable compared to other solutions in the market."
"It is a bit expensive, but you definitely get what you pay for. It is worth it!"
"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."
"IBM Maximo offers a licensing application, and you have to comply with the license."
"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."
"I do not know about the price of the solution. However, this has been an expensive project overall."
"​Explore internal processes in order to evaluate the correct number of users in each Maximo module, then evaluate the different offers of pricing and licensing.​"
"The price of IBM Maximo could reduce, it is expensive."
"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."
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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.
861,170 professionals have used our research since 2012.