CA Service Management

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.)

We manage calls and emails for over 15000+ employees, and I think this application is a terrific tool for managing huge loads of requests, incidents, etc. It is user-friendly and great for training purposes to explain any company's process. It is also a great tool for managers and supervisors to pull reports from.

Scenario 1:
We got a task for Automation of Business Automation Document (BRD) which has many complex scenarios and approvals, we have achieved this with the help of CA. Also IT Downtime Notification automation is also achieved with the help of process automation and ca service desk manager.

Scenario 2:
Integration with the third party tools required lot of customization as there is no available connector for that.

Basic support tracking is the only time I would recommend CA Service Desk. Anything that relies on work-flow management would be better suited with another third party product.

Other products I have experience with approach customizations with the end user in mind. They try to make it easy to follow and user friendly. They attempt to keep it versatile and open without compromising their product where the user may actually cause damage. Service Desk does have a fairly robust tool (Web Screen Painter) for customizations but it is difficult for a beginner or average user to use. It displays the source code of the forms allowing it to be manipulated. They also allow references to their existing tables for customizations within the schema which can easily cause confusion as to the original function of said table. Once customizations are applied, they are difficult to remove as there is not a 'clean' way to remove them. It usually involves editing some obscure file manually which leaves room for human error. Service Desk is probably best used out of box but that might not be best suited for organizations that do not prefer the Service Desk approach.

CA Service Desk Manager is ideal out of the box and can be used for ITSM (IT Service Management). A lot of customizations can weaken the product and it's upgradability. The LDAP functionality is great for importing new users automatically, however if your Active Directory environment is a mess then the LDAP functionality will be compromised. Everything the solution boasts depends on your environment and process. This product is designed to fit into a company where ITIL processes are followed.

CA Service Desk Manager is a very good fit for workflow management for support staff. It has length wise coverage of ITSM, however it could use better depth or deeper integration techniques into the processes for, e.g., better and broader Event/Incident Management and linkages to knowledge management and other pieces.

This is well suited for companies who need to formalize communication between IT/application specialists and less technical employees.

This application is great for environments that need ITSM to be far-reaching, especially for larger environments.