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CA Service Management, with CA Service Desk Manager vs. Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    CA Service Management

    Score6.8 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

    Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)

    Score4.3 out of 10
    N/ACherwell Software was a full suite of service management tools competing with BMC Remedy, ServiceNow, and IBM SmartCloud. It was acquired by Ivanti, and has reached EOL.N/A
    Pricing
    CA Service ManagementCherwell Service Management (discontinued)
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    CA Service ManagementCherwell Service Management (discontinued)
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    CA Service ManagementCherwell Service Management (discontinued)
    Considered Both Products
    Broadcom
    No answer on this topic
    Discontinued Products
    Chose Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)
    Both Remedy & CA were far more complex to implement, enhance and support. The architecture and framework each solution was developed on didn't lend itself to be no-code or low-code like Cherwell, and therefore the ability to expand and utilize either tool on an enterprise-level …
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    94%
    Would buy again
    29 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    27 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    31 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    19 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    88%
    Implementation went as expected
    22 Answers
    Features
    CA Service ManagementCherwell Service Management (discontinued)
    Incident and problem management
    Comparison of Incident and problem management features of CA Service Management, with CA Service Desk Manager and Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)
    Feature
    CA Service Management, with CA Service Desk Manager
    8.6
    6 Ratings
    6% above category average
    Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)
    10.0
    53 Ratings
    21% above category average
    Organize and prioritize service tickets9.76 Ratings10.052 Ratings
    Expert directory8.75 Ratings10.041 Ratings
    Service restoration8.46 Ratings10.035 Ratings
    Self-service tools8.66 Ratings10.051 Ratings
    Subscription-based notifications7.96 Ratings10.038 Ratings
    ITSM collaboration and documentation9.76 Ratings10.048 Ratings
    ITSM reports and dashboards7.55 Ratings10.051 Ratings
    ITSM asset management
    Comparison of ITSM asset management features of CA Service Management, with CA Service Desk Manager and Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)
    Feature
    CA Service Management, with CA Service Desk Manager
    9.2
    6 Ratings
    11% above category average
    Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)
    10.0
    44 Ratings
    20% above category average
    Configuration mangement9.76 Ratings10.042 Ratings
    Asset management dashboard10.03 Ratings10.041 Ratings
    Policy and contract enforcement8.03 Ratings10.031 Ratings
    Change management
    Comparison of Change management features of CA Service Management, with CA Service Desk Manager and Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)
    Feature
    CA Service Management, with CA Service Desk Manager
    9.1
    6 Ratings
    8% above category average
    Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)
    10.0
    50 Ratings
    18% above category average
    Change requests repository9.06 Ratings10.048 Ratings
    Change calendar8.64 Ratings10.044 Ratings
    Service-level management9.55 Ratings10.045 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    CA Service ManagementCherwell Service Management (discontinued)
    Small Businesses
    Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
    Score9 out of 10
    Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
    Score9 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
    Score9.2 out of 10
    ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Ivanti Neurons for ITSM
    Score4.5 out of 10
    Ivanti Neurons for ITSM
    Score4.5 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    CA Service ManagementCherwell Service Management (discontinued)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (12 ratings)
    10.0
    (57 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    4.1
    (6 ratings)
    10.0
    (13 ratings)
    Usability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.9
    (5 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.2
    (3 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    6.4
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.7
    (16 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.9
    (2 ratings)
    Online Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (3 ratings)
    Configurability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    Professional Services
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.3
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    6.4
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    CA Service ManagementCherwell Service Management (discontinued)
    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
    Discontinued Products
    Well suited in an IT environment where you have limited staff. It can be managed by one administrator. Reliability of the SaaS environment has been excellent. Flexibility in developing automated workflows to open, manage, and close Incidents. Change Management due to ability to modify OOB to meet the needs of our staff. Contract Management allowing us to be notified when a contract or license is up for renewal and setting reminders. Integrations are not easy to create and manage.
    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
    Discontinued Products
    • Cherwell's email handling automation works flawlessly. The only time that I have ever needed to reset the automation service that drives it is when my own server that houses the small connecting agent has some kind of problem and disconnects us from our hosted Cherwell instance. It just works. Emails to a certain address always result in a new ticket or update to an existing ticket.
    • Cherwell is literally 100% customization in so many ways that it would be pointless to try to enumerate them. There is a very sizable list of already-created customizations (called "mApps") that you can download and apply to your instance. If you don't like them you can roll them back in seconds. But you can add and configure entire modules using one of these pre-defined, completely free, add-on packages. It's so easy to add features this way that I check the list of available mApps every month or so just to see what functionality I can add.
    Incentivized
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    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
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    Discontinued Products
    • Cherwell lacks modern UI capabilities such as responsive forms and CSS styling for web portals.
    • Built-in reporting engine is hard to use and resource intensive to run.
    • No patching model for small platform fixes, must upgrade to receive platform code changes.
    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
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    Discontinued Products
    Cherwell is still the best tool for the job in the market. Even though Ivanti bought them and are trying to convince everyone to move over to Neurons for ITSM, they have stated Cherwell will remain supported indefinitely and have a roadmap for future Cherwell development. Unfortunately, ISM is not as flexible as Cherwell (and the UX is atrocious), hence why many people are sticking with Cherwell (and why many Cherwell customers never purchased ISM originally)
    Incentivized
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    Usability
    Broadcom
    No answers on this topic
    Discontinued Products
    I enjoy the layout and configuration of our Cherwell Service Management instance. It did take me a bit to get used to, as with any new ticketing system, but now that I understand the system more, I thoroughly enjoy it! There are just so many options and the UI is very intuitive.
    Incentivized
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    Reliability and Availability
    Broadcom
    No answers on this topic
    Discontinued Products
    Almost always available, with exception for a handful of outages due to infrastructure related issues
    Incentivized
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    Performance
    Broadcom
    No answers on this topic
    Discontinued Products
    The browser client is mostly acceptable in terms of performance, but still lacks parity with the rich client. The rich client is not very performant at all. It's built on old architecture and relies heavily on a fast internet connection, good caching and database indexing. There are several unwritten rules with form design (and form arrangement) which most users are not aware of, but can severely impact performance in the rich client. This is where the flexibility of Cherwell can come back to bite you if you step outside the boundaries of these unwritten rules
    Incentivized
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    Support Rating
    Broadcom
    No answers on this topic
    Discontinued Products
    We generally have a good time with Cherwell support, however, there are the few niche cases where I have to explain how Cherwell works to the customer support agent on the other end. A little more product education for tier 1 support could go a long way in helping expedite support requests from SaaS customers.
    Read full review
    In-Person Training
    Broadcom
    No answers on this topic
    Discontinued Products
    I didn't partake in the in-person training, but it was available. I preferred the online method instead, which was a great experience. It was nice to have someone available to bounce questions off of and demonstrate how certain functions worked.
    Incentivized
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    Online Training
    Broadcom
    No answers on this topic
    Discontinued Products
    The training was great! We got together to review the system, its UI, and how to perform basic functions. Then there was plenty of time to ask questions and test out the system while there was someone available to assist.
    Incentivized
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    Implementation Rating
    Broadcom
    No answers on this topic
    Discontinued Products
    Implementation is a breeze. Each time I've implemented it, we had an outsourced vendor overseeing it & assisting where needed. However, Cherwell OOTB is ready to go, and configuring it for LDAP/SAML, etc. for authentication and user-imports is really straight forward. The infrastructure needed for Cherwell is extremely simple too - and installing the server & database takes no more than 20 mins
    Incentivized
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    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
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    Discontinued Products
    Much more customizable than other products, especially when ran in a self-hosted environment. Cherwell [Service Management] allows for greater flexibility of custom development and integrations to allow for automating tasks that traditional ITSM apps are not well suited for. Cherwell [Service Management] gives you the freedom to develop your own objects with minimal licensing costs.
    Incentivized
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    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    Broadcom
    No answers on this topic
    Discontinued Products
    We have had great contracts with Cherwell and love the concurrent licensing model
    Incentivized
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    Scalability
    Broadcom
    No answers on this topic
    Discontinued Products
    We have never had any major show-stopper issues with Cherwell itself - more so with the infrastructure it sits on. Moving from in-house cloud (on Cherwell's side), to AWS then to Azure has caused multiple problems over the years (some still on-going), however the product has remained fairly stable
    Incentivized
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    Professional Services
    Broadcom
    No answers on this topic
    Discontinued Products
    As mentioned, they were always great to work with (minus the project management side). My only feedback would be to push back on requirements that don't make sense
    Incentivized
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    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
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    Discontinued Products
    • As with any standard ticketing system, it helped decrease the time before first contact with clients.
    • Our department was always concerned with keeping a low budget, and it was cheaper than most.
    • My supervisor could easily tell how many resources were being put into each employee, so we had more visibility of our team's capabilities at a given time if we needed to take on something complex.
    Incentivized
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