Clarity SM vs IBM SmartCloud Control Desk comparison

Broadcom and IBM are both solutions in the Help Desk Software category. Broadcom is ranked #25, while IBM is ranked #28. Broadcom holds a 1.4% mindshare in HDS, compared to IBM’s 1.3% mindshare. Additionally, 85% of Broadcom users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 88% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Clarity SM

Read 107 Clarity SM reviews

1,652 Views
1,256 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

Read 9 IBM SmartCloud Control Desk reviews

659 Views
652 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

Clarity SM

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 1, 2024

Clarity SM and IBM SmartCloud Control Desk are leading solutions in the IT Service Management category. Clarity SM has an edge in customization and ease of use, while IBM excels in integration and asset management.

Features: Clarity SM offers robust flexibility with full SLM reporting, extensive customization, and integration options. Users appreciate its ticket management, scalability, and the unified portal. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk provides strong incident and service request management, IT asset tracking, and integration capabilities. It is praised for its cohesive integration features and asset management strengths.

Room for Improvement: Clarity SM struggles with scalability and stability. Its user experience and documentation need updates, and integration often requires significant investment. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is criticized for an outdated user interface lacking modern design and ease of customization. Users report it being cumbersome, with technical support described as slow to respond, affecting user satisfaction.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Clarity SM offers on-premises and public cloud deployments, with mixed reviews on customer and technical support. Users report inconsistent support quality. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is mainly on-premises, with dissatisfaction over customer service and technical support delays, with long resolution times unless issues are escalated.

Pricing and ROI: Clarity SM is seen as expensive, potentially prohibitive for small businesses, but its concurrent licensing model is cost-effective for larger firms. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk follows a per-user licensing model, which can be costly, but offers comprehensive features without extra fees for users reporting issues. It provides a solid ROI for medium to large enterprises despite higher upfront costs.

To learn more, read our detailed Clarity SM vs. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Clarity SM vs. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

December 2025

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Helped 881,114 peers since 2012

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

Ranking in Help Desk Software

25th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

107

Ranking in other categories

IT Service Management (ITSM) (23rd)

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

Ranking in Help Desk Software

28th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of Clarity SM is 1.4%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is 1.3%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Help Desk Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Clarity SM	1.4%
IBM SmartCloud Control Desk	1.3%
Other	97.3%

Help Desk Software

Featured Reviews

Türker Kara

Application & Software Architect at Turkiye Finans Participation Bank

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…

Read full review

Klemen Muhvič

Computer System Engineer at Informatika d.d.

Has centralization and asset management features, and a helpful and knowledgeable technical support team

What needs improvement in IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is its graphical interface because it needs to be more user-friendly. IBM is a big company, but this solution is a little bit outdated. The most common comment I get from customers is that IBM SmartCloud Control Desk looks old and needs a refresh. Its frontend needs a little bit of work. The solution needs to be more modern. In the programming world, you see a lot of new technologies, but this particular solution is still on Java. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk isn't like web-based service request tools, and that's an area for improvement. What I'd like to see in the next version of the solution is a more upscale technology. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk has small issues with document links and attachments, and those could bother you when you're using it for a long time. A more user-friendly GUI is also another improvement I'd like to see in the next version of the solution, plus a better user experience, and it would be great if IBM could resolve the current issues I've noticed in IBM SmartCloud Control Desk.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"There is a lot of flexibility in the system. There has not yet been a case where we've had people come to us and say, "Hey, can you guys do this?" and we can't. Some of it is obviously a little bit more complicated at times, but the flexibility in the system provides a lot."

"The database and the power that is driven behind the database."

"We can search open and closed cases to find what we have done in other incidents."

"You can customize it and make it work to the client's needs."

"It has given us the ability to automate a lot of tasks, things we couldn't do before."

"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."

"It gives us one central location to know, not only who is contacting us, but what they're contacting us for, what application they're contacting us for."

"The view it provides into who's doing the work."

More Clarity SM pros

"In the early stages of our company, all requests were done in notebooks, and none of it was centrally managed. But now we have a central tool which is an entry point for all requests that come in."

"The most valuable are its flexibility and agility. It's quick to change it, to adapt it to your needs. That's the most important for us."

"The brand name is the most valuable aspect of this solution for me. It's IBM. It's a global company that supports this product, it's not something open source or something like that."

"What I like about the Control Desk is that everything is centralized. You have all the requests in one place, you know which ones are for whom and who is working on them."

"The solution has been stable."

"SLA integrations, reports, and integration with other applications are the most valuable."

"The workflow capability is useful. It's not a manual helpdesk operation. It's fully automated, even when an alarm has occurred. It covers the complete cycle of initiation to resolving the events. This is its most strong feature that is easily integrable with a monitoring solution. It creates tickets, and the workflow feature is the most important one."

"The solution is very easy to work with."

More IBM SmartCloud Control Desk pros

Cons

"If I had to choose, it would be more around the user interface than the mobile experience."

"The CA products integrate well together but I would like to see better integration with third-party solutions."

"The API is very, very bad so we developed our own."

"More user experience in the look and feel of the application. "

"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."

"The cost of this solution is too high, which is why we're leaving."

"We talk a lot about the idea that Service Desk Manager should be more "service" oriented, not just ticket oriented."

"The SDM administration and customisation needS deep information about architecture and vendor support continuously."

More Clarity SM cons

"The user interface is not very interesting. If you look at other products like JIRA and ServiceNow, they have made it much easier for the end-users. Maybe not ServiceNow, but JIRA is quite flexible. From a presentation point of view, IBM should make more user-friendly interfaces."

"The main issue that we hear from our customers is that the self-service user interface is a little bit old, possibly due to the fact that IBM is such a large enterprise company. People say that they think they're in the year 2004, because you can very clearly see that the technology is lagging behind modern trends."

"What needs improvement in IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is its graphical interface because it needs to be more user-friendly. IBM is a big company, but this solution is a little bit outdated. The most common comment I get from customers is that IBM SmartCloud Control Desk looks old and needs a refresh. Its frontend needs a little bit of work. The solution needs to be more modern. In the programming world, you see a lot of new technologies, but this particular solution is still on Java. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk isn't like web-based service request tools, and that's an area for improvement. What I'd like to see in the next version of the solution is a more upscale technology. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk has small issues with document links and attachments, and those could bother you when you're using it for a long time. A more user-friendly GUI is also another improvement I'd like to see in the next version of the solution, plus a better user experience, and it would be great if IBM could resolve the current issues I've noticed in IBM SmartCloud Control Desk."

"Overall the user experience, as opposed to the system and databases, could be improved. It does work as it should and it's good, but they should invest more in the user interfaces to be less data oriented and more appealing for the user."

"Support has been the biggest problem for us. I understand that because we use the product of a global company, some changes are not quick to deploy."

"The solution lacks a graphical user interface."

"It could use more facility or flexibility for reporting, and business intelligence in the tool."

"The time calculations can be improved. While working on reports, it was taking the time only in seconds, which was hard for me to work out. While creating some dialogs in the service portal, you have to use certain data types in some fields. It was very tricky to make them work. I was testing a certain type of input, and it didn't work. It didn't show me the domain that the fields have to show. I had to make the change to the database, and only then it worked. It was a tricky thing to make them work with the dialogs. Their technical support can also be improved in terms of response time."

More IBM SmartCloud Control Desk cons

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."

"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 pricing is based on a subscription model."

"Pricing is simple, as it’s per concurrent analysts."

"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."

"The solution is quite reasonable compared to other solutions in the market."

"It's basically for a big company because of the costs. A small company can't afford the licensing cost. For medium and large companies, it's the best product. The price of the license is on the higher side compared to others."

"The license for IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is paid yearly and is on a per-user basis. You buy the product and pay for its license yearly. IBM is changing the licensing structure, but for now, it's a yearly license. There's no additional cost. It's just the license that you need to pay for to use IBM SmartCloud Control Desk."

"The licensing we have for IBM Control Desk is on a yearly basis. They have a concurrent license and an administrative license. And with these, you get all the products. There aren't any additional fees for extra add-ons or anything like that."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Media Company

10%

Performing Arts

10%

Manufacturing Company

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	20
Midsize Enterprise	15
Large Enterprise	66

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Large Enterprise	3

Comparisons

JIRA Service Management vs Clarity SM

Compared 22% of the time

ServiceNow vs Clarity SM

Compared 12% of the time

Vision Helpdesk vs Clarity SM

Compared 8% of the time

SymphonyAI IT Service Management vs Clarity SM

Compared 6% of the time

SCSM vs Clarity SM

Compared 6% of the time

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SCSM vs IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

Compared 24% of the time

Ivanti Neurons for ITSM vs IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

Compared 19% of the time

Ameyo Fusion CX vs IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

Compared 15% of the time

Zendesk vs IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

Compared 15% of the time

ServiceNow vs IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

Compared 14% of the time

More IBM SmartCloud Control Desk Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Clarity SM

January 2026

Download Clarity SM product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

January 2026

Download IBM SmartCloud Control Desk product report

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

SmartCloud Control Desk

Overview

Service desk capabilities, an integral part of the CA Service Management solution, can enable you to deliver efficiencies in IT service management to business consumers, power users and decision makers. Mobility and collaborative self-service capabilities provide a modern user experience for accessing services and performing tasks, which can help drive user adoption, satisfaction and productivity.

Learn More: https://www.ca.com/us/products...

Broadcom

IBM Control Desk on Cloud offer an access to a user friendly self-service, automated service management, and seamlessly-integrated, best-practice based service desk capabilities. IBM Control Desk provides the IT service management (ITSM) needed to simplify support of users and infrastructure. It also offers a unified IT asset and service management software provides a common control center for managing business processes for both digital and physical assets and enables control, governance and compliance to applications, endpoints and assets to protect critical data and prevent outages. Control Desk is IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL)-compliant, accessible through mobile devices and integrates with social media and development tools.

IBM

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

St Vincent's Health Australia, Kalibrate Pty. Ltd., Cognizant Technology

Buyer's Guide

Clarity SM vs. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

December 2025

Free Report: Clarity SM vs. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

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