CA Service Management


CA Service Management











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CA
Service Management

by Faulkner Staff

Copyright 2022, Faulkner Information Services. All Rights Reserved.

Docid: 00011275

Publication Date: 2207

Report Type: PRODUCT

Preview

CA’s Service Management suite is a collection of products for helping
manage business processes while improving their quality of service. This report takes a look at CA’s Service
Management product line, its key features, and the support offerings that the
vendor provides for customers along with the enhancements that have been made to
the latest version, 17.3. 

Report Contents:

Description

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Related Faulkner Reports
CA Company Profile

CA’s Service Management product
line is designed to improve service quality by helping to meet the demands of businesses.
It consists of a collaborative platform and delivers self-service functionality
for both business users and administrators. CA’s Service Management promotes a
collaborative user experience to access knowledge while collaborating, resolving
issues, requesting services, and managing IT assets. Broadcom purchased CA in a
deal valued at $18.9 billion in 2018. CA is now a fully owned subsidiary of
Broadcom. 


Vendor
Name: CA Inc
Headquarters
520 Madison Ave, 22nd Floor
New York, NY 10022 US
Toll-Free: (800) 225-5224
Fax: (212) 310-6222
Web: http://www.ca.com/
Type of Vendor: Software and Professional Services
Founded: 1976
Service Areas: Global
Stock Symbol: CA (NYSE)

Service Management’s important functions are based
on reducing complexity and costs and improving performance and operations. It ensures service quality and resource utilization across physical, virtual,
and could environments, enabling organizations to manage services, support,
assets, contracts, and software licenses. 

The main capabilities for Service Management are: 

  • Hardware and software asset management
  • Software asset management
  • Incident management
  • Problem management
  • Knowledge management
  • Change management
  • Services asset and configuration management
  • Request fulfillment
  • Support automation

The products that make up the CA Service Management suite are: Business
Service Insight, IT Asset Manager, Service Catalog, Service Desk Manager, and Xtraction for CA Service Management.

Table 1 depicts CA’s Service Management offerings along
with their key features. 

Table 1. CA Service Management Products 
Product Features
CA Business Service Insight  CA BSI determines what business services are in use to
reduce business and security risks while improving performance
operations. Its main functions are:

  • Data integration
  • Data correlation
  • Service library
  • Define and manage vendor and customer
    contracts
  • Mapping of internal and external business
    services
  • SLA dashboard
  • Breach alerts
CA IT Asset Manager CA’s IT Asset Manager is an asset lifecycle management
offering that helps control IT spending, ensure regulatory and policy
compliance, and boost service delivery. It offers out-of-the-box content
with a configured user interface for intuitive navigation and reporting
capabilities. Its key capabilities are:

  • Unified self-service
  • Financial management
  • Contract management
  • Vendor management
  • Simulation of the impacts caused by changes
  • Software asset management
CA Service Catalog The CA Service Catalog is used to define,
publish, and measure business and IT service offerings. Organizations
can define their offerings using business terms with graphical and text
descriptions while associating them with elements to include delivery
and management of services. CA Service Catalog provides insight into
service costs and performance. Main features for the CA Service Catalog
include:

  • Unified collaborative self-service
  • Services can be published across multiple portals 
  • Services are deliverable from any location or device
  • Automation of all tasks
  • Insight into service costs and performance
  • Calculation of service consumption
CA Service Desk Manager The CA Service Desk Manager streamlines all
stages and elements of service desk operations into a single platform,
including service requests, incident, change, knowledge, and
configuration management. It contains the following components:

  • Unified Self-Service (USS) – This community-based tool enables the
    communication with other people within the organization. USS is the
    unified interface for Unified Self-Service, CA Service Desk Manager,
    and CA Service Catalog.
  • Search Server – This is a platform for distributed search and data
    analysis in real-time. 
  • Collaboration Server – A chat tool used for instant messaging
    communications. 
  • xFlow Analyst Interface – The xFlow Analyst Interface provides
    insight into workloads and tasks. 
  • Insights – The Insights application offers advanced reporting
    features. 
  • Webscreen Painter for CA Service Manager – Installs the Web Screen
    Painter to customize the CA Service Desk Manager schema and Web
    interface. 
Xtraction for CA Service Management Xtraction for CA Service Management is an ad hoc dashboard
and reporting offering consisting of self-service capabilities for
analysis of an organization’s service management environment. Its major
features include:

  • Self-service — Users can create and modify dashboards and reports
    using drag-and-drop, lists, and point-and-click.
  • Pre-built layouts — Charts, graphs, calendars, grids, and pivot
    tables. 
  • Analysis – Drill-down, date ranges, filters, multiple data
    series. 
  • Browser-based.
  • Data aggregation.
  • Real-time data.
  • Exports to PDF, HTML, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint formats.

Updates to CA Service Management

With the introduction of CA Service Management 17.3, the system now supports Docker container based deployment
in Kubernetes. This method of deployment simplifies the install, upgrade, and patching experience for IT administrators,
reducing the time and resources spent in deploying the solution and helps reduce the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). It
also provides the ability to configure Rasa Server in Kubernetes and leverage the Virtual Analyst Service Bot capability
in CA Service Desk Manager (SDM) Containers.

Service management also provides “ARIA” (Automated Response with Intelligent Automation), a next-gen Service Desk Bot
to address end-users’ routine IT queries and provide ticketing solutions. It provides the ability to understand natural language
using machine learning techniques; provides assistance with routine IT tasks such as creating new tickets, performing ticket updates,
ticket closures, and reset password; recommends contextual knowledge solutions to end-users; allows optimal transfers to a human
analyst, when intervention is required; and collects feedback from end-users.

CA Service Management is currently in version 17.3.0.15 as of June 2022.

Applications

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CA’s Service Management is designed to improve service quality and resource
utilization across physical, virtual, and cloud environments. CA’s
products and services within this suite can be used to streamline the
workload of an IT department’s staff while cutting costs and boosting the
quality of services offered. This portfolio from CA is acceptable for
various organizations across a range of industries and sectors. 

Environment

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CA Service Management
supports the following operating systems: 

  • Microsoft Windows Server 2019 (64-bit only)
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2016 (64-bit only)
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2016 R2 (64-bit only)
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 (64-bit only)
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2012 (64-bit only)
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.1 (x86; 64-bit only)
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2 (x86; 64-bit only)
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP2 (64-bit only)
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP1 (64-bit only)
  • Oracle Solaris 11 (SPARC; 64-bit only)
  • Oracle Solaris 10 (SPARC 64-bit only).

Support 

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The company has several methods
of support and service to
customers. First, there are self-service options available through the CA Web site. These
include a knowledge base and product documentation that customers can access to help answer
questions. Users can also partake in an interactive forum with others to find
answers to issues and share information. 

In addition, CA offers business-critical options for customers looking
to purchase support. These include support availability managers, targeted
support, and extended support. Support options are available for purchase
depending on how much expertise a customer requires. 

Pricing

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The cost for
CA Service Management varies depending on the components chosen by a customer.
Specific quotes are available from the vendor.

Competitors

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CA Service Management’s top competitors include: SysAid from SysAid
Technologies, ServiceDesk Plus from ManageEngine, Microsoft System Center
Service Manager, Ivanti Service Manager, and Atlassian’s Jira Service Management (formerly Jira Service Desk), which includes
features from the former Mindville Insight that was acquired by Atlassian in June 2020.

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