ServiceNow turns to platform and application development

Orchestrating all the components and services of IS is not enough for a startup that has grown into a fast company. It develops its SaaS solution into a platform with application dimensions, market and development environment.

This week is Knowledge15, which is the annual event of the publisher ServiceNow in Las Vegas. The event had 9,000 participants (6,000 in 2014, please refer to our article), indicating the company’s growing interest in service management solutions, and more generally in infrastructure management under the SaaS model. This is the United States The characteristics of the company.

For companies that want to know the actual situation on all levels of their information system (equipment, application, security, cost control, users, etc.) in real time, the service catalog has become its main goal. . Has the Itier method finally gained the approval of the nobility?

Get inspiration from Salesforce.com

If you believe in Frank Slootman, the CEO of ServiceNow, you might be able to adopt a new, IT-centric approach: “Through Salesforce.com, we can see how the way in which the relationship between the company and the public (B2C) customers can be stimulated to manage the business-to-business (B2B) relationship. IT departments should use it to manage the relationship with the company’s business departments. This Is our way to support the solution”.

So far, ITSM (IT Service Management) should support the business instead of running applications. According to ServiceNow, today’s boundaries are moving. “The ITSM platform responsible for orchestration understands all internal working principles and allows the definition of workflows to automate increasingly complex tasks, verification and the ability to track the development of requests or tasks:” Purchase equipment, request creation of accounts in business applications, etc. All of this eliminates many paper forms, continuous emails and other follow-up calls, because all information is centralized and anyone can access it at any time. Therefore, this reduces the time it takes from weeks to days or even Hours. And increased productivity!”, Emphasize the leader.

CMBD service orientation

Traditionally, ITOM (IT operations management) and service management (or ITSM for IT production process management) have been treated independently for a long time. “We use a common language to fuse the two disciplines together” to ensure Frank Slotman. “Therefore, ServiceWatch automatically performs the mapping between ITSM and business services, and enriches CMBD [base de données recensant les configurations] All components and application services involved in this business service. Through this mapping, detailed end-to-end supervision can be performed by combining ITOM and ITSM. “

ServiceWatch was designed by Neebula, an Israeli startup company (acquired by ServiceNow for USD 100 million in July 2014). The service automates the discovery, mapping, and monitoring of computerized enterprise services. Integration with the ServiceNow platform was completed in November last year.

Service-oriented CMDB makes it possible to define function mapping through services, thereby combining possible events and restricting them to the components actually involved in the process. As shown in the example opposite, only the components (hardware or software) involved in the payroll process are listed. Finally, the root cause of the incident was detected more quickly and therefore corrected, assuring the publisher.

New Appstore

However, the main development of ServiceNow is to transform the publisher’s SaaS into a service platform, which becomes the basis of various applications. Workflow, forms, validation… ServiceNow now has a real development interface for everyone to create applications. Several possibilities: end users can combine widgets and intuitively create workflows, while developers can access script-like code and directly view the results of their modifications. The problem is to supplement applications (based on transactions and databases) rather than competing with software packages.“By providing services to developers who use script-type languages, our target audience is 50 million individuals, while no-code developers (office users, editor’s note) exceed 500 million”, We specify at the publisher.

Aware of the need for skills and the developer community, ServiceNow even provides free examples for any interested developer. Of course, if the instance is idle for too long, it will be deleted. If a developer wants to deploy his service in a company, he obviously needs to subscribe to the publisher’s offer.

In order to accelerate the growth of these applications, the publisher also launched the ServiceNow Store, which is a new market for paid or free applications. ServiceNow can certify applications and platform integration (performance, security, and compatibility). The market is reserved for partners, each market is free to set the price of its application, and customers pay in U.S. dollars. ServiceNow charges 25% commission.

One-click from Express to full version

Finally, the publisher has great ambitions for its ServiceNow Express solution launched at the end of 2014. This is a simplified version of the SaaS product, and its concise interface and service have been reduced to the level strictly required by SME/SMI. 100 to 1000 users. ” Our goal?Quickly convince and equip one million companies », CEO Frank Slootman said confidently. The icing on the cake: This example is just a simplified view of its predecessor, which is based on the same platform. Therefore, customers can upgrade to the full version with just one click!

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