Frank Slootman of ServiceNow: “Our platform goes far beyond ITSM”

Interviewed a manager of a company. The company’s solutions are developing rapidly in the IT infrastructure management market and intend to surpass: mid-market, application workflow, etc.

At the user conference, ServiceNow CEO Frank Slootman expressed the company’s rise to Silicon.fr, and the company hopes to maintain its entrepreneurial spirit.

Silicon.fr: Today, ServiceNow is becoming a major player in the market? At what price and what to give up?

Frank Slootman (Frank Slootman): Since I took office 4 years ago, ServiceNow has increased tenfold in terms of number of employees, turnover and number of customers. Likewise, the open and optimized architecture that now constitutes our platform allows us to position ourselves by opening up to applications, mobility and fully controlled maintenance. But all of this was impossible before. We have established ourselves as an important discipline for platform development and all innovations related to infrastructure.

An important step from a startup to a company. However, we managed to maintain creativity. However, this is exactly what some major publishers (such as HP, BMC, Symantec or CA Technologies) lack.

Since our platform must remain available 24/7 throughout the year, we have the responsibility to be strict with our customers. This is why the organization and this discipline are crucial.

What do you think about the legality of entering the app market?

Originally a SaaS publisher of IT Service Management (ITSM) solutions, we have developed into a platform product that can automate and orchestrate tasks and processes (workflows), far beyond ITSM. The boundaries between disciplines and organizations are becoming blurred. This allows us to extend the solution to applications.

ITSM is task and process oriented, while CRM (for example) is transaction and database oriented [records].
Therefore, our business will not guide us in the management of application transactions like a software package for managing human resources (HR). However, the human resource process also includes tasks to be automatically executed through verification. In this case, our platform is very useful for developing this type of application quickly and easily, for example, when it is integrated or not integrated with the software package, newcomers are welcome (onboarding).

ServiceNow will increasingly provide this type of applications (finance, risk, etc.). Since our store has just launched, our partners have already shown great interest because the store already has 80 apps. Our model will be to encourage partners to develop applications, not to get our revenue from the platform that runs them.

How to integrate ServiceNow into heterogeneous and more and more multi-cloud information systems?

We are definitely not a closed platform. By definition, the business process platform must be integrated with any other solution (with or without cloud). Moreover, this feature has become a standard in the market and is no longer an exception.
In the company’s internal infrastructure or data center, ServiceNow deploys a “proxy server” that is not only responsible for orchestration, but also for all these integration aspects.

In terms of workflow and automation, your competitors are more solutions like SharePoint. Who will you meet more on ITSM?

We are effectively replacing Microsoft SharePoint in more and more companies. But this also applies to IBM Lotus. In addition, when it comes to updating solutions in a company (such as HP, IBM or BMC), ServiceNow usually wins. Most of the software is based on more than 20 years of technology.

With ServiceNow Express, we can also address the mid-range market. In this market, we have encountered many publishers whose solutions often include the word “service desk.”
In general, there are still a lot of solutions that use Excel spreadsheets, PDF documents (usually signed and then rescanned…), e-mails, etc. This provides many opportunities for ServiceNow, which can easily ensure a fast ROI.

Please also read:

ITSM: ServiceNow shifts to platform and application development

Albéa puts its service desk under the smell of ServiceNow