Service Now is a digital work style platform-large-scale AI development-ZDNet Japan

ServiceNow’s annual conference “Knowledge 19” opened on May 7 in Las Vegas, Nevada. President and CEO John Donahoe said in the keynote speech of the day: “The “artificial intelligence (AI) and mobile technology and other technologies will bring the work style to the future company” with the theme of “work flow digitalization”. .

This time, until the 9th, more than 600 group discussions were held during the conference, and more than 20,000 people from about 80 countries visited the conference. About 200 people from Japan, including customers and partners, attended the meeting. Mr. Masashi Murase, president of the Japanese company, said: “Japan’s participation accounts for about 1% of the total, and it is still in the future.” However, compared with the previous more than 100 people, Japan’s participation has greatly increased.

Donahoe said at the beginning of the meeting: “Technology is changing the company.” Since taking office in April 2017, he has been advocating the role of the company, bringing the major changes brought about by the Internet and mobile into people’s lifestyles and society, and Bring it to the job site.

The iPhone came out in 2007. This was a turning point. With the popularity of smartphones, people’s behavior changed from newspapers to news applications, from stores to EC sites, from movie theaters to video distribution services. Donahoe said: “This is a change that has taken place in just 12 years.” On the other hand, for example, if the current company requires employees to forget the password, does it require the IT department to reset the password, or if the office equipment is damaged, the management department is required repair. He pointed out that even though daily life scenes have been digitized, they are still left to the company’s internal human resources.

“Search for products on Amazon, then buy them, and they will be delivered within a few days. Behind this simple user digital experience is the huge and complex systems and processes that Amazon needs to deliver products. It can be said that it is built on digital Above the work process. However, in the field of work, they are sought after by people. This is the biggest challenge facing the company.” (Donahoe)

He emphasized that the “Now platform” as the core of ServiceNow makes the workflow in the digital age of enterprises simple.

PaaS and solutions for workflow

ServiceNow is mainly developed on SaaS for IT Service Management (ITSM) and IT Operation Management (ITOM). In recent years, its scope has been extended to personnel, network security and risk management. The foundation of these SaaS is “Now Platform”, which can be said to be PaaS.

The company was originally developed by founder Fred Luddy and was triggered by the launch of ITSM SaaS based on the Now Platform. The Now platform aggregates configuration information and other information from different IT operation management tools used in various systems, and performs centralized operation management here to reduce the burden on IT personnel who are forced to perform personal tasks. If there is room for the workload, the person in charge can focus resources on tasks that can improve productivity and results, such as considering new system strategies. This became the concept of Now Platform.

“Now, for us, our partners and our users, Now Platform will become a PaaS with a workflow and user experience,” said Josh Kahn, vice president and general manager of Now Platform in charge of platform business. The company has integrated technologies such as mobile application infrastructure, artificial intelligence/machine learning and virtual assistants into the Now Platform, and only uses APIs and other public clouds (such as SaaS and IaaS) to integrate data with more than 90 types of systems The management tools are linked together.

In addition to Now Platform, there are other leading services and frameworks, such as Cloud Foundry and PaaS. According to Kahn, Now Platform and other PaaS are not competitors, they are essentially different.

“Now the platform is used for simple non-code application development. Once the user has set the workflow and goals, you can prepare, build and deploy the database. In other PaaS, developers will use code. You can develop complex and complex Applications, these applications may be similar to Salesforce.com, but their focus is CRM (customer relationship management), and Now Platform’s focus is workflow.”

As mentioned above, the Now platform is not only introduced in ServiceNow’s SaaS platform, but also in the partner service platform. The most recent example is the “Global Management One ITSM Platform” launched by NTT Communications on May 7. NTT Com will introduce Now Platform in domestic data centers to launch this new service.