Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Clarity SM vs IBM SmartCloud Control Desk comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 1, 2024

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
24th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
107
Ranking in other categories
IT Service Management (ITSM) (26th)
IBM SmartCloud Control Desk
Ranking in Help Desk Software
26th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of Clarity SM is 1.2%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is 0.9%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Help Desk Software
 

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
Helps standardize our workflow, track client tickets, and it's very flexible
Initially we used HPE Service Desk. Then, Remedy (IBM SmartCloud Control Desk) version 5. When selecting a vendor, the most important thing for us is the flexibility of the tool. It must be very flexible to change the workflow or to add new workflows for the clients. It must have stability and scalability as well.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Ability to write macros, which can in turn trigger some condition or could be conditioned to basically trigger notifications, the workflow desk, or web calls. It is huge benefit to customize it."
"The database and the power that is driven behind the database."
"It has all our configurations. All our infrastructure configurations are on a single pane of glass to view, allowing for one single point of information."
"It has a good GUI interface."
"It helps when you have an incident or performing a problem change management process."
"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."
"It is easy to tell what needs fixing and the priority of things."
"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.​"
"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 solution is very easy to work with."
"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 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."
"The solution has been stable."
"A feature I found most valuable in IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is the service request. Another feature I like most about the solution is IT asset management, which tells you who owns a specific asset in the company and from which date."
"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."
 

Cons

"We need a mobile solution. We are not using any mobile functionality for the product, but we think that this necessary."
"​Compared to some of the other products, I think we are bit behind​.​"
"The interface for the users is a bit old-fashioned and not user-friendly."
"There are some issues regarding the knowledge base and the configuration manager."
"The monitoring tool is in need of improvement."
"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."
"When I am reviewing an incident, sometimes there is too much information on the same screen and it is difficult to discern what is of value."
"If I had to choose, it would be more around the user interface than the mobile experience."
"The solution lacks a graphical user interface."
"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."
"It could use more facility or flexibility for reporting, and business intelligence in the tool."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"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 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 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."
"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."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Help Desk Software solutions are best for your needs.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Performing Arts
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
No data available
 

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
SmartCloud Control Desk
 

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
St Vincent's Health Australia, Kalibrate Pty. Ltd., Cognizant Technology
Find out what your peers are saying about Clarity SM vs. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.