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Clarity SM vs SolarWinds Service Desk comparison

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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

Automation Anywhere
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
660
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (2nd), Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (2nd), Process Mining (1st), Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) (1st), Agentic Automation (1st), Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies (2nd), AI Legal & Compliance (1st), AI Finance & Accounting (1st), AI Procurement & Supply Chain (1st)
Clarity SM
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
107
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (17th), IT Service Management (ITSM) (20th)
SolarWinds Service Desk
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
IT Service Management (ITSM) (15th)
 

Featured Reviews

Venkat Sivaprakash - PeerSpot reviewer
Management Consultant at Accenture
Has significantly improved document-driven workflows and reduced processing time across finance and HR functions
Automation Anywhere has evolved significantly and upgraded itself to provide agentic AI and AI-based automation solutions for document automation. The product has matured considerably over time. We can create workflows that can call an API. We can include prompts in particular workflows for ChatGPT-related functions, connecting to an LLM and RAG to perform tasks. For document automation, modern features are available to train documents, ensuring high accuracy and repeatability over time. The system is very easy to use. I recently completed a course in document automation, typically designed for people involved in coding and technical aspects. Though I understand coding comprehensively, I don't do actual coding. The course was very accessible. Currently, extensive coding isn't necessary due to the hybrid model incorporating GenAI aspects, low-code, no-code capabilities, APIs, and numerous pre-built objects in Automation Anywhere. The features include GenAI-driven prompting methods and workflow creation capabilities. In these workflows, we can create decision boxes and call APIs without coding. We simply pull objects, drop them, connect them, and add minimal coding when needed. The most crucial aspect isn't coding but rather sizing the automation and fleshing out the details. Automation Co-pilot takes notes and performs automated analysis. It can extract details from videos, summarize conversations, and provide detailed information. During calls, it identifies instructions and performs tasks such as preparing reports and reconciliation. Automation Anywhere can also connect with Microsoft Co-pilot. Through Co-pilot, real-time operations can be executed, allowing direct interaction between vendors and automation through this component.
Türker Kara - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
Vaibhav Patkar - PeerSpot reviewer
CISO at Orient Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
Improved service requests and network monitoring have increased efficiency but integration needs work
SolarWinds Service Desk is a recognized product across the world and a dependable product. Kaseya is somewhat dated, and SolarWinds Service Desk has better connectivity in terms of superior integration facilities compared to Kaseya. Additionally, SolarWinds Service Desk offers multiple options within the same tool, including ITSM as well as NOC and network monitoring capabilities. SolarWinds Service Desk has much greater acceptability in the market and a wide range of implementations and integrations with various tools and applications. Life becomes simpler when choosing a standard product, whereas Kaseya may not be as highly regarded in the market. SolarWinds Service Desk may have some flaws, but work is being done to address them. SolarWinds Service Desk is an affordable product. SolarWinds Service Desk is suitable for all customers ranging from small to enterprise. There are some small customers, and the primary usage is within the company itself, and then as customers require it, access can be provided to them.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Automation Anywhere RPA has enabled a lot of our employees to have their valuable time freed up to do other things, ranging from the Treasury department, the Revenue department, General and Cost Accounting."
"The integrations with the OCR engines in Automation Anywhere are quite powerful, and they have helped us in many projects."
"A project that we automated: A person used to spend about eight to twelve hours every week to finish the process. The bot finishes it in half an hour. Now, the person just reviews it, then passes along the information. This has helped our organization because originally EMEA and APAC would not receive the files the same day that they were processed. But because the bot only takes a half an hour, everyone can now receive the files on the same day."
"IQ Bot is the most valuable integrated feature of Automation Anywhere."
"The use cases we're working on and the deterministic automations implemented so far have given us a great productivity boost in various functional areas across the globe, which has significantly helped the organization, and as we evolve towards more agentic and AI features from Automation Anywhere, these will further assist us in achieving end-to-end process automation rather than just peripheral automations."
"Automating a tedious manual process has helped to reduce manual work and the time taken to process the records."
"Automation Anywhere's most valuable features include its end-to-end capabilities within a single platform. It offers desktop automation, unattended automation, a recorder for tasks, and advanced IDP capability, which means that I can handle everything from basic cutting and pasting to advanced use cases. With Automation Anywhere, I don't need multiple other tools to automate end-to-end processes. I only need one additional chatbot tool, assuming conversational AI is part of the solution. If I don't have chatbots, all the capabilities are built into the platform."
"Be it a Windows application, a web application, or a legacy tool, Automation Anywhere is able to achieve automation on these technologies seamlessly."
"Perfect, one of the most stable solutions ever."
"The view it provides into who's doing the work."
"The scoreboard allows me to check for high-priority tickets, check status of tickets I created and search for tickets with keyword searches among other plusses."
"CA Service Desk is built around the ITIL methodology and would help to improve all organizational processes starting from incidents/problems/request, knowledge management, CMDB, etc."
"We are benefiting by being able to put time to what our technicians are doing."
"We are better able to manage and keep track of SLAs with end users, analysts work more efficiently based on the ticket priority, and we can better manage IT assets and contract licenses through CMDB."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to integrate many processes – like change management, incident management, problem management, CMDB, all of them – in the same tool."
"From a quick resolution point of view, the fact that xFlow has got the self-service that's linked to knowledge management means people are also able to solve their own problems without necessarily requiring tickets through the entire life cycle of second line support, and that has helped a lot."
"SolarWinds Service Desk is a recognized product across the world and a dependable product."
"The solution is very stable."
"What I appreciate the most about the product is that, as per the name given, it brings better visibility to the client in terms of their infrastructure, application, and performance."
 

Cons

"New versions keep coming up. The challenge for us is to have the downtime to do the migrations. This could be improved upon. We would like fewer version changes and upgrades happening to the application. While the downtime is not that much, depending on the business processes, there are times few critical processes are running on a daily or hourly basis. We would expect the downtime to be even less for them."
"We've had some technical difficulties connecting, but that's more on our environment and how we have the machines and everything set up. It's not specific to Automation Anywhere. However, it's pricier than some of the other tools."
"My experience has been that if the person who codes the bot is not very well-trained, then they might create unstable bots. So, it's not the platform. It is just how somebody has coded the bots which can bring lot of instability to them. I recommend that when you are using a coder that the person well-trained and have a good amount of experience already working on bots. They shouldn't be newbie or beginner who comes in to code because that will impact the quality of the code itself."
"Replacing the list of search options with voice commands for each item would be great."
"We would like to have a better debugging facility."
"Regarding the UI, once you're on some of the screens there are fixed dialogues, they are a set size, so there's a lot of horizontal scrolls and vertical scrolls. If I want to do something that is purely business-related and is somewhat complex to write or is nuanced, I sometimes have trouble implementing that inside of the Automation Anywhere script."
"They should make the product smarter. The bot we use right now is kind of fundamentally basic loop-based. We really want to see a little bit more advanced capability, that way we can undertake more comprehensive tasks."
"The cost of this solution can be improved."
"We just upgraded about a year and half ago and it was painful. We had the testing of the dev environment, and then testing of the production environment, so it was two weekends out of my life. And stuff broke."
"Where it does get bogged down, or it does encounter an error, is that a lot of times we're unable to track the error through the error log mechanism, and we then have to figure it out for ourselves."
"The setup was complex. Out-of-the-box was definitely a difficult configuration because a lot of manual configuration needs to be done."
"More user experience in the look and feel of the application. ​"
"Sometimes I feel that maybe there must be a way to improve it where it's kind of simplified in a way where it's more usable. I think sometimes it's too much for someone to use, or someone gets lost, or someone complains about having too many things in there."
"Technical support is 7/10."
"The interface for the users is a bit old-fashioned and not user-friendly."
"We would like to see improvements mainly without the Service Desk."
"The only additional features I would like to see in the future, to make it closer to perfection, are intelligent features that are currently being developed on the cloud platform and not on the on-premise model."
"The primary concern so far is the integration part because of the APIs; this is the main area of concern."
"The integration with other applications can use improvement because, for example, it was nearly impossible to integrate SolarWinds Service Desk with monday.com because we had to get an add-on from Zapier."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We just did a round of price comparison on a global scale and found it's so hard to compare the license prices. But, Automation Anywhere, in general, is on the same price level as the other vendors, a bit lower in some cases."
"They give us a good deal on the licensing because we bundle and customize things. If you ask to get a bulk business deal, you will receive more benefit. If you take other products from the suite, like IQ Bot, you can also receive a deal on the licensing."
"The price of this product is good."
"The enterprise version is expensive for small businesses and individual users."
"The licensing needs to be made simpler or shortened."
"Automation Anywhere University is pretty good. They make it available free for everyone."
"As our team size increases, we may get some more licenses for the tool."
"It has good licensing costs which are average for the market."
"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."
"The solution is quite reasonable compared to other solutions in the market."
"I don't see anyone other than large companies being able to afford this system."
"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!"
"I think pricing of this model is suitable for growing corporations."
"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."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Construction Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Construction Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Healthcare Company
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business157
Midsize Enterprise82
Large Enterprise558
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise66
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
It depends on your use case. Is it simply to automate a couple of processes? Is it to augment a human team? AA is ver...
How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
From my experience using AA tool, it depends on the applications that you want to automate, because there some applic...
How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
It is a highly preferred RPA tool. You can check my Automation Anywhere Review to know more.
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What needs improvement with SolarWinds Service Desk?
The primary concern so far is the integration part because of the APIs; this is the main area of concern. Currently, ...
What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Service Desk?
SolarWinds Service Desk is used for ITSM and network monitoring purposes. The major use cases being utilized are from...
What advice do you have for others considering SolarWinds Service Desk?
I think the pricing of SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability is now comparative and suited to our business model, whi...
 

Also Known As

Automation Anywhere, Testing Anywhere, Automation Anywhere Enterprise, Agentic Process Automation System (Now Certified for WorkSpaces)
CA Service Desk Manager, Clarity Service Management, CA Service Management, Unicenter Service Desk, CA SDM, CA Service Catalog, CA Business Service Insight
No data available
 

Interactive Demo

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Google, Linkedin, Cisco, Juniper Networks, DellEMC, Comcast, Mastercard, Quest Diagnostics
Banco G&T Continental City of Perth, FEMSA, Fujitsu, Manpower, Muslim Commercial Bank - MCB, Punjab National Bank, Santa Clara County Social Services, Stefanini
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Find out what your peers are saying about Clarity SM vs. SolarWinds Service Desk and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.