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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

"It's fairly easy to use, from a UI standpoint."
"Right now, we are starting to be dependent on the CMDB a lot."
"It allows IT to handle users on a personal basis. It allows IT to have a name and a face, and we interact with the 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."
"Logging every action in Service Desk Manager (SDM)."
"The integration between the ticketing and knowledge is huge, because that is a best practice. The knowledge is great. It is simple but efficient, and it works.​"
"Scalability is very good. We have scaled to more users and more functionality."
"The view it provides into who's doing the work."
"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."
"There are not many enterprise asset management systems on the market and not many that have the categories that IBM Maximo has."
"We were able to scale perfectly.​"
"The large range of configurability of the product is great, since everyone has a different way of doing things."
"Work order management and scalability enables the businesses' needs to be met."
"It is configurable, where you can add extra fields to screens and to the database."
"The most valuable features are the ability to create work orders and preventative maintenance."
"They have a real strength of tracking the asset itself along with the condition of the asset, the maintenance of the asset and who has access to the asset, etc."
 

Cons

"The interface for the users is a bit old-fashioned and not user-friendly."
"The UI needs to be upgraded."
"The interface is pretty straightforward, but I think for some end-users a little more simplified user interface would help."
"The CA products integrate well together but I would like to see better integration with third-party solutions."
"I would like to see the API cleaned up."
"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."
"​Compared to some of the other products, I think we are bit behind​.​"
"​We would like to see them revamp, or rework, a lot of their configuration management database structures. We hear that is on the horizon."
"This solution could improve by integrating or embedding finances, charts of accounts, and invoicing."
"Initial setup is a longer process because Maximo is bigger and has more processes."
"It was very slow due to the lagging issues. So that was kind of frustrating, considering how slow it was while functioning."
"Although you can create notifications with Maximo, the configuration and options could be improved."
"There are always ways to improve and make things better."
"You can get lost using the application"
"Coding can be complex when customization is required."
"​Maximo is a big system, so the initial setup is complex."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is based on a subscription model."
"It is a bit expensive, but you definitely get what you pay for. It is worth it!"
"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."
"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."
"The solution is quite reasonable compared to other solutions in the market."
"I think pricing of this model is suitable for growing corporations."
"You pay for what you get. There are lots of options depending on how you would like to implement Maximo."
"The concurrent user license is much more effective in management and cost-wise, as it is more suitable for maintenance management."
"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."
"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."
"The price of IBM Maximo could reduce, it is expensive."
"$USD700 per agent user."
"Where available, concurrent licenses can be more cost efficient and provide more flexibility."
"Explore the possibility of using DB2. You will avoid the cost of SQL Server or Oracle licenses."
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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.