Hornbill Supportworks ITSM vs. IBM DevOps Code ClearCase

The concept of the solution is a good one and in theory, Hornbill Supportworks ITSM is good for incoming inquiries/tickets management. The inquiries can be automatically captured by a user submitting a request, and an email notification is sent to both the Helpdesk team and the customer. The inquiries are then tracked, alerting the team when the SLA is about to be/has been breached. Once the inquiry has been resolved, it notifies all relevant parties, as well as time-stamps the action.

Incentivized

IBM Rational ClearCase might be better suited for a smaller / simpler code base. Larger code bases really slow it down... but then again there are better alternatives out there for source control

Incentivized

• Manages a large amount of data without slowdown or issues.
• Reliable platform for incident and problem management.
• API usage for linking to other systems is basic but useable.

Incentivized

• Rational ClearCase is excellent for handling versioning and branching. No other tool I've used has the depth that ClearCase has when it comes to handling complex branching scenarios and identifying where certain versions of particular files are within a particular configuration.
• Rational ClearCase handles parallel development of many dependent applications really well.
• The use of ClearCase Views to switch between projects and configurations is extremely convenient as opposed to the local workstation model of the competitors.

Incentivized

• The interface is quite hard work, not very visually friendly
• It all just feels a bit old fashioned and needs a reboot
• This may be an internal process, but not everyone has access, so quite frequently I have to pick requests up and then take them out of the Supportworks system.

Incentivized

• Extremely buggy.
• Sometimes the repository gets locked for no reason.
• Slow.

Incentivized

If development is centrallized to one location and your company releases hundreds of customized versions of your software per year, then ClearCase is the best tool for managing the complexity of multiple versions of customized software. If your company has globally distributed development, then I'd recommend Team Foundation Server over ClearCase. If your organization uses Agile Methodologies, then I'd recommend TFS with GIT.

Incentivized

• The system 'does what it says on the tin' - it captures and helps manage incoming inquiries - so the positive impact is there.
• However, this is not done in the most intuitive or user-friendly manner. This causes frustration at times.
• Overall, a single centralized system for managing customer inquiries and requests is paramount for any mid-size business, particularly if this business is service-based

Incentivized

• Managed code versioning for many years.
• Only one person can edit code at a time - slows processing down.
• IBM is an expensive product to support.

Incentivized