Is ServiceNow Going Down Market on Small Business MSPs?

by Joe Panettieri • Jul 28, 2022

At first glance, ServiceNow continues to gain traction as an IT service management (ITSM) and ticketing platform for large MSPs. You wonder: Will ServiceNow move down from the enterprise to engage with MSPs that support small business customers?

Take it easy, people. Look closely, and there are some nuances and key financial metrics to keep in mind. Chief among them:

• Fully 1,463 customers now spend more than $1 million annually with ServiceNow.
• Additionally, more than 100 customers now spend more than $10 million annually with ServiceNow, which grew more than 50% year-over-year, the company said in its earnings call on July 27, 2022.
• In the same earnings call, ServiceNow mentioned the “enterprise” market about a dozen times, and never mentioned SMB or small business customers.

Translation: When you look at the financial math and listen to the executive talk, ServiceNow is a lot of business — and seems priced for enterprise customers.

Enterprise Service Providers and ServiceNow: Big Crowd

However, I was amazed to see hundreds — maybe thousands — of service provider partners at the ServiceNow Knowledge 2019 conference (pre-pandemic).

Most of my talks at that conference were business in nature. But there are also plenty of midmarket MSPs on hand. An example includes Fully Managed, which is now owned by Tellus. We also heard about Thrive’s development in its ServiceNow training. And we’re hearing about mid-market MSPs partnering with corporate IT departments to offer managed ServiceNow capabilities.

Amidst all those trends, we don’t hear much about ServiceNow in the SMB sector — perhaps due to pricing, complex deployments and other nuances.