TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

CA Service Management, with CA Service Desk Manager vs. SolarWinds Observability

Save this comparison

Save this comparison

Add Product

Recommended Comparisons

    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    CA Service Management

    Score5.4 out of 10
    N/ACA Service Management, including CA Desk Manager, is a fully-featured ITSM platform, now from Broadcom. It competes with BMC Remedy, ServiceNow, FrontRange ITSM, Cherwell Service Management etc. It is based on technology acquired by CA in 2010 with Nimsoft, and is now supported by Broadcom since the 2018 acquisition.N/A

    SolarWinds Observability

    Score8 out of 10
    N/ASolarWinds® Hybrid Cloud Observability aims to provide a comprehensive, integrated, and full-stack solution designed to optimize performance, improve availability, and reduce remediation time by correlating data from across the IT ecosystem, including networks, servers, applications, databases, and more.

    $5

    per month node

    Pricing
    CA Service ManagementSolarWinds Observability
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Essentials
    $5
    per month per node
    Advanced
    $9
    per month per node
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    CA Service ManagementSolarWinds Observability
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details—Pricing is set per node, per month, and billing is annual. The prices listed are base prices that could increase depending on your environment. Please speak to a representative to get a quote.
    More Pricing Information
    Features
    CA Service ManagementSolarWinds Observability
    Incident and problem management
    Comparison of Incident and problem management features of CA Service Management, with CA Service Desk Manager and SolarWinds Observability
    Feature
    CA Service Management, with CA Service Desk Manager
    8.6
    6 Ratings
    5% above category average
    SolarWinds Observability
    -
    Ratings
    Organize and prioritize service tickets9.76 Ratings00 Ratings
    Expert directory8.75 Ratings00 Ratings
    Service restoration8.46 Ratings00 Ratings
    Self-service tools8.66 Ratings00 Ratings
    Subscription-based notifications7.96 Ratings00 Ratings
    ITSM collaboration and documentation9.76 Ratings00 Ratings
    ITSM reports and dashboards7.55 Ratings00 Ratings
    ITSM asset management
    Comparison of ITSM asset management features of CA Service Management, with CA Service Desk Manager and SolarWinds Observability
    Feature
    CA Service Management, with CA Service Desk Manager
    9.2
    6 Ratings
    13% above category average
    SolarWinds Observability
    -
    Ratings
    Configuration mangement9.76 Ratings00 Ratings
    Asset management dashboard10.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Policy and contract enforcement8.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Change management
    Comparison of Change management features of CA Service Management, with CA Service Desk Manager and SolarWinds Observability
    Feature
    CA Service Management, with CA Service Desk Manager
    9.1
    6 Ratings
    7% above category average
    SolarWinds Observability
    -
    Ratings
    Change requests repository9.06 Ratings00 Ratings
    Change calendar8.64 Ratings00 Ratings
    Service-level management9.55 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    CA Service ManagementSolarWinds Observability
    Small Businesses
    Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
    Score9 out of 10
    Amazon CloudWatch
    Score7.8 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
    Score9.2 out of 10
    LogicMonitor
    Score8.9 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Ivanti ITSM
    Score6.4 out of 10
    ManageEngine Site24x7
    Score10 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    CA Service ManagementSolarWinds Observability
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (12 ratings)
    9.0
    (4 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    4.1
    (6 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    CA Service ManagementSolarWinds Observability
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Broadcom
    It is a suitable tool for a large organization with extensive user needs. It is not for a small shop as it may be over-engineered for smaller organizations that don't have teams that can manage a solution of this size. It does have some significant hardware and configuration needs, but that should not deter customers from deploying it in-house. I've seen it deployed in the cloud as well as in-house; the downside to deploying it as a hosted solution is you're forever at the mercy of the vendor for customizations, and they cost an arm and a leg. The simplest things take a long time and cost much more money than necessary, so you can't truly get a custom solution and end up with mostly vanilla services (unless you have very deep pockets.)
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    - For small teams serving big organizations - it's a really simple tool to install and set up relatively quickly. - the new installer is also great - I don't have to understand what modules need to be installed; it's all streamlined. - The HCO Licensing allows you to run the Additional polling engines at a scale where the previous licensing model didn't. We can deploy APEs in locations now, which would not have been worth the investment in previously as there weren't enough devices in that location/region to spend the $$$$ on an APE License.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Broadcom
    • A large community where, if help is needed, is usually very helpful and quick to respond.
    • Various sites with good information on various issues. If you have a problem, there's a good chance some else already had it and documented it.
    • Fairly easy installation of the product if recommendations are followed and prep-work is done.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    • Automated dependency mapping is a big hit.
    • High availability is extremely simple to implement.
    • Simple to use and drill into issues.
    • Analysis of growth patterns driving the recommendation engine.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Broadcom
    • The right-click feature is disabled in this application and users are unable to copy and paste with mouse or touchpad.
    • The application also freezes quite a bit and a user will have to quite often close and reopen browser to get it functioning properly.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    • Can be complex to setup
    • Is strongest with network resources
    • Assumes a fairly large amount of base knowledge
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Broadcom
    While the concepts of Service Desk and EITM were solid. The user interface, tool capabilities, and integrations fell behind the rest of the industry. Too often it seemed like CA bought and rebranded products without fully integrated them with their other products. It was a coat of paint, without the parts under the hood being updated. The overhead for administration was too high and the reporting capabilities were absolutely amongst the worst I've seen.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    Broadcom
    No answers on this topic
    SolarWinds
    - decent ease of use - good training materials - good documentation - acceptable level of expected knowledge
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Broadcom
    We are too integrated with CA Service Desk Manager to disassociate anytime soon. We found the more we used the product the more we needed to customize it in order to better integrate with our business processes. There are other alternatives that have many built-in features that had we have foreseen our future requirements... would have chosen ServiceNow or Remedy as our "go-to" ticketing product.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    Solarwinds has the best overlap of the two others I've mentioned - the other two tools (Datadog and Dynatrace) are great in their own way but Solarwinds is just good at everything; if I had to pick one tool of the above, it would be Solarwinds for the compatibility and ease of use, the other tools are more focused on being great at certain things while Solarwinds is the jack of all trades.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Broadcom
    • Having CA Service Desk Manager within the company has increased the satisfaction of customer service from 68% to 95%. Teams are getting better customer survey scores and making better efforts to meet their SLAs.
    • CA Mobile app has provided agility and collaboration among IT Users and Customers.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    • one license requiring 1 PO to be raised
    • sharing costs between departments for monitoring under one platform using APEs
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    SolarWinds Observability Screenshots

    Screenshot of ITOM Executive DashboardScreenshot of Observability MapsScreenshot of Performance Analysis DashboardScreenshot of Application Alerting DashboardScreenshot of Network Path Analysis