Broadcom Clarity is a capable enterprise portfolio platform, and for an organization running investment-level financials across thousands of projects it is frequently still the right tool. The PMOs that start shopping are usually leaving for one of four reasons that have nothing to do with the feature list: a renewal quote that has outgrown the portfolio, a configuration that only one administrator understands, an on-premise instance nobody wants to keep upgrading, or a portfolio that shrank while the contract did not. This comparison is written for that buyer, by a site that sells none of the eight platforms below.
Key takeaways
- Clarity is Broadcom's, acquired with CA Technologies in 2018, and it is still the product formerly sold as CA PPM and CA Clarity PPM. Vendor comparisons and review directories index it under all three names, so shortlists double-count it.
- Broadcom does not publish list pricing for Clarity. Every figure you find online is a reviewer's recollection of a negotiated quote, which is why a like-for-like cost comparison is impossible until you have quotes in hand.
- We found no first-party Broadcom announcement of an end of life or a forced migration for Clarity. If a vendor tells you Clarity is being discontinued, ask them for the Broadcom source.
- The eight genuine alternatives split into enterprise strategic portfolio management (Planview Portfolios, ServiceNow SPM, Planisware), mid-market PPM (Triskell, Celoxis, Meisterplan, OpenText PPM) and work management with a portfolio layer (Smartsheet).
- The migration cost is concentrated in custom objects, portlets and financial history, not in the project records. Scope that before you compare license prices, because it usually dwarfs them.
Clarity PPM alternatives compared
Eight platforms that genuinely replace Clarity for some buyer, with the owner of each as of this writing. Ownership matters more than most shortlists allow: a platform answerable to public shareholders, one held by private equity, and one absorbed into a strategic parent behave differently on renewal pricing and roadmap continuity, which is the exact thing that pushed you out of Clarity.
| Alternative | Owner today | Best fit | Where it beats Clarity | Where Clarity still wins |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Planview Portfolios | TPG and TA Associates, private equity, since December 2020 | Large enterprise SPM, 500 plus projects | Strategy-to-delivery tracing and a deeper agile portfolio story | Investment-level financial management depth |
| ServiceNow SPM | ServiceNow, public | IT PMOs already running ServiceNow | The integration project you do not have to run, because demand, CMDB and the service desk are already there | Non-IT portfolios, where the ServiceNow platform is overhead you pay for twice |
| Planisware | Public shareholders, Euronext Paris since April 2024 | R and D, pharma, engineering, new product development | Stage gate and pipeline modeling built for product portfolios; published financials | IT and shared-services portfolios |
| Triskell | Independent, founded 2011 in Madrid | Mid-market PMOs wanting configurability without an admin team | Configuration by business users rather than by scripting | Scale, and the partner network behind a global rollout |
| Celoxis | Independent, founded 2001 | Mid-market PPM with real scheduling and billing needs | Price transparency and a short implementation | Enterprise financial planning and multi-entity structures |
| Meisterplan | itdesign, Germany, privately held | PMOs whose actual problem is capacity, not governance | Lean portfolio and capacity scenario planning, fast to stand up | Detailed project execution, time capture and cost accounting |
| OpenText PPM | OpenText, since 2023 | Large IT PMOs already inside the OpenText stack | Demand management lineage and IT financial reporting | Modernity of the interface; check which version is actively invested in, since this codebase has had three owners after HP and Micro Focus |
| Smartsheet | Blackstone and Vista Equity Partners, since January 2025 | Portfolios where adoption has failed and simplicity is the requirement | People actually use it, which is not a small point after a Clarity rollout | Portfolio financials, resource modeling and governance depth |
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One caution when you read other lists: Planview owns Sciforma (sold as ProjectAdvantage), Clarizen, Changepoint, Daptiv and Innotas. If your shortlist names three of those as separate alternatives, it is comparing one owner to itself. The Planview alternatives comparison covers that product family in full, and Clarity appears on it as an alternative in the other direction.
What is Broadcom Clarity used for?
Clarity is an enterprise portfolio management platform used to hold the investment view of a project portfolio: demand intake, project and program records, resource capacity, and the financial plan against actuals. Its distinguishing strength is financial management. Large IT organizations use it to run cost plans, benefit plans, chargebacks and capitalization at portfolio level, which most mid-market tools do not attempt. Broadcom sells it inside its ValueOps line alongside value stream management.
Is Clarity PPM being discontinued?
No first-party Broadcom announcement of an end of life, end of support or forced migration for Clarity could be found. Clarity is actively sold and was named a Leader in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Strategic Portfolio Management. What is genuinely happening is a commercial shift from perpetual on-premise licenses toward the SaaS edition, and competitor marketing aimed squarely at Clarity customers. Those are different things, and vendors selling to you will blur them.
Broadcom publishes release and support lifecycle dates for Clarity behind its support portal, which is where your own version's supported-until date lives. Check that yourself rather than accepting a competitor's characterization of it. If someone tells you Clarity is sunsetting, ask which Broadcom document says so.
How much does Broadcom Clarity cost?
Broadcom does not publish list pricing for Clarity. It is quoted per customer after contact with sales, with both perpetual on-premise plus annual maintenance and subscription SaaS models in use. That means published comparisons of Clarity's price against anything else are built on individual reviewers' recollections of their own negotiated contracts, which vary by an order of magnitude with volume, term and module mix.
The practical consequence for your business case: you cannot cost this decision from research. You need a renewal quote from Broadcom and at least two competing quotes scoped to the same user counts and modules. Reviewers on the major review sites consistently report that renewal and maintenance costs have risen without matching functionality gains, which is the complaint that starts most of these searches, but that is reported experience rather than published policy. Build your business case on quotes you hold, not on numbers from a comparison page, including this one.
What migrates cleanly out of Clarity, and what does not
This is the section every vendor listicle leaves out, and it is where the money is. Mature Clarity instances are heavily customized, and the customization is the migration. A ten year old instance typically carries dozens of custom objects and attributes, a portlet library built for specific executives, GEL scripts and processes automating approvals, and years of timesheet and financial history that finance will want to keep.
| What you hold in Clarity | How it moves | What it actually costs you |
|---|---|---|
| Project and program records, dates, status | Exports and imports cleanly | Low. This is the part every vendor demonstrates |
| Resource records and role definitions | Exports cleanly; role taxonomies rarely map one to one | Low, plus a mapping decision per role |
| Custom objects and custom attributes | Data exports; the object model does not | High. Each one is a design decision to remake or drop, and most instances have far more than anyone remembers |
| Portlets and dashboards | Does not move at all | High. Rebuild from scratch in the new tool, and use it as the chance to delete the ones nobody opens |
| Processes, GEL scripts, approval automation | Does not move | High, and often the reason a migration slips a quarter |
| Timesheet history | Exports as data, not as a working system of record | Medium. Usually archived rather than migrated, which needs a finance sign off |
| Financial plans, actuals, cost plan structures | Exports as data; the cost plan model is tool specific | High if you capitalize or charge back, low if you do not |
| Integrations to ERP, HR and the service desk | Rebuilt against the new platform's API | Medium to high, and it is the line most often missing from the plan |
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Two practical rules come out of that table. First, scope the customization inventory before you compare license prices, because on a ten year old instance the rebuild usually costs more than the first year of any of these platforms. Second, treat the migration as a chance to delete: most instances carry custom fields that were mandatory for a governance process that ended years ago, and carrying them forward buys you the same problem in a new tool. Before you switch the old instance off, establish which downstream reports and warehouses actually read from it, because a Clarity extract usually feeds more than the PMO. A data lineage tool that traces which systems consume a source answers that faster than asking around, and the reports nobody admits to owning are exactly the ones that break loudest in week one.
What is the best alternative to Clarity PPM?
There is no single best alternative, because the reason you are leaving decides the answer. For enterprise portfolios that still need investment-level financials, Planview Portfolios is the closest like-for-like. For IT PMOs already on ServiceNow, ServiceNow SPM wins on integration alone. For mid-market PMOs leaving on cost, Celoxis, Triskell and Meisterplan are the realistic tier. Match the platform to the reason, not to the longest feature list.
| Why you are leaving Clarity | Look at first | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|
| The renewal quote outgrew the portfolio | Celoxis, Triskell, Meisterplan | Mid-market platforms priced for the portfolio you actually have, not the one you had at signing |
| Nobody outside the PMO will use it | Smartsheet | Adoption is the requirement. Accept the governance depth you lose and be explicit about it |
| IT already runs on ServiceNow | ServiceNow SPM | The integration you avoid is worth more than any feature difference on a comparison sheet |
| You need enterprise financials and strategy tracing | Planview Portfolios | The only tier that competes with Clarity on its strongest ground |
| The portfolio is product and R and D, not IT | Planisware | Stage gate and pipeline modeling built for product development rather than retrofitted |
| The real problem is capacity, not governance | Meisterplan | Scenario-based capacity planning, live in weeks rather than quarters |
| You are already inside the OpenText stack | OpenText PPM | Stack alignment and IT financial reporting, with the version question checked first |
| Clarity was always more platform than you needed | None of the above | See the section below. Replacing an oversized platform with a smaller one still buys you a platform |
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When the answer is not another PPM platform
A meaningful share of Clarity exits are not a tool problem. Clarity gets bought for a portfolio of many hundreds of projects with capitalized costs and timesheets, and organizations change: a division is divested, IT consolidates, the portfolio settles at forty initiatives. What is left is a platform sized for an organization that no longer exists, carrying an administrator, an upgrade cycle and a renewal.
If your portfolio is roughly 10 to 200 initiatives, you do not capture timesheets, and the decisions you actually have to make are which initiatives to fund and whether you have the people to staff them, none of the eight platforms above is the right size. What you need is a scoring model, a capacity plan and a gate pack. Our own project prioritization tool and the resource capacity planning tool in the same workspace do exactly that, at role level rather than by named person, with no implementation project. That is a smaller claim than the platforms above make, and it is deliberate: if you need cost capitalization or chargeback, buy a platform.
What to do before the renewal date
Whatever you choose, the sequence matters more than the choice, because leverage and access both expire on the renewal date.
- Take a full data export while you still have a live contract. Projects, resources, custom attribute values, financial plans and timesheet history. Once the contract lapses, the access negotiation starts from zero.
- Inventory the customizations. Count the custom objects, the portlets in active use, and the automated processes. Mark each one keep, rebuild or drop, and get the drops agreed by the people who asked for them.
- Get three quotes scoped identically. Same user counts, same modules, same term, including the Broadcom renewal. Nothing else makes the numbers comparable.
- Price the rebuild, not just the license. Integration work, report rebuilds and the parallel-run period belong in the business case. A worked business case that omits them will be wrong by a wide margin.
- Decide what happens to history. Finance usually needs several years of actuals retrievable. Archived in a warehouse is a legitimate answer, but it has to be an answer somebody signed.
- Run both systems for one reporting cycle. Cut over between reporting periods, never inside one, and keep the old instance readable until the first close in the new tool has been signed off.
The decision underneath the shortlist
Clarity's reputation for being expensive and hard to change is mostly earned, and it is also mostly a consequence of how much it was asked to do. The instances that are painful to leave are the ones that absorbed a decade of requests: every custom field, every portlet, every approval process was somebody's reasonable ask at the time. Any platform you replace it with will do the same thing if you let it, which is the argument for deciding what the portfolio system is genuinely for before you sign anything. If you are building that shortlist properly, the wider PPM software comparison covers the full landscape and the disqualifying criteria, and the enterprise PPM software guide has the requirements and RFP scoring model to run it with.