Enterprise Features

Service Now – IT Service Management Software

by admin

Service-now.com was founded in 2004 with the goal of refocusing the IT service management (ITSM) software industry on the customer and the real problems people in IT departments need to solve every day. Many IT departments are still using software from incumbent vendors who developed their technologies in the early 1980s and 1990s. With heavy on-premise software, client-server architectures and perpetual licensing model…it is dated technology.

Service-now.com founder and industry veteran Fred Luddy sensed that IT departments were ready for a very different model. Fred took lessons learned as CTO of Peregrine Systems and Remedy Corporation, and combined these with new concepts driving popular cloud and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications from Google, Amazon.com, Facebook and Twitter. Then, he listened to what customers needed. He worked shoulder-to-shoulder with IT teams to hone the functionality and usability of Service-now.com to create an IT service management application that could be quickly implemented via SaaS, automatically maintained and upgraded by the vendor, and easily purchased through a simple monthly subscription.

Today, I’ll be interviewing Rhett Glauser from Service Now in order to learn more about this innovative suite.

Can you please explain in layman’s terms what ITSM is, and what problem it solves for business?

IT service management is simply what IT organizations do on a day-to-day basis to deliver quality technology-based services to end users. Let’s assume an IT organization is a business itself, with its customers comprising the employee end users. ITSM is processes the IT organization uses to deliver products and services, set prices and expectations, ensure customer satisfaction, track inventory, manage workers, etc.

What should companies look for when buying an ITSM solution?

Companies should look for clear upgrade paths, the ability to create and preserve software customizations, and simple and fair licensing.

Many companies are trapped with decades-old ITSM software because large vendors do not provide a sustainable upgrade path. Changes that customers make are not supported in future versions, which usually require full reimplementations with costly professional services and maintenance contracts tied into them. Customers are left with a very difficult decision, do a fresh install of the new version wiping out any existing customizations, or stick with the old version and forgo any new functionality.

Companies need to make accurate budget forecasts for the costs associated with ITSM tools. Business processes are unique and evolve over time, which means an one-size-fits-all ITSM solution won’t be relevant as a company scales and grows. Costs will increase over time because professional services will be needed to keep it working and vendors will raise prices for maintaining legacy software. But newer options are emerging as enterprises adopt SaaS with monthly or yearly subscription models.

How is Service-now.com different from other IT Service Management solutions?

Organic product design and a commitment to customer service set Service-now.com apart from legacy vendors.

Service-now.com was designed as a SaaS application from the very beginning, which lets it do things that legacy applications can’t. Its design makes it easy to run in any Web browser even on new platforms like the iPhone, Google Android and the iPad — and include multi-touch support for these devices too. Since it’s delivered over the Internet as a service, Service-now.com shoulders the burden of application care and feeding, allowing customers to focus on delivering good service to the business. Customers receive access to software updates automatically with the ability to preserve customizations they have made along the way.

The company relies on feedback from its customer base to grow. Service-now.com product updates are issued three times a year and often feature new capabilities and applications were created with the customer at our side. An in-depth community site and product wiki keep customers engaged with us and their peers. Since Service-now.com is a service provider that happens to provide an IT management application, customer satisfaction is crucial.

What are some of the biggest mistakes that companies make when managing their IT environments?

The IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a set of IT processes and terminology created to help organizations improve the quality of their customer services. ITIL has done a lot of good for IT management over the years but it was never meant to be a prescriptive, one-size-fits-all framework. Enterprise IT organizations that try to adopt ITIL as gospel without any consideration for the critically unique processes that their businesses require are making a mistake and missing opportunity.

Unfortunately, IT organizations are being forced into a vanilla process scenario by their tool vendors. The majority of enterprise tool vendors are now using ITIL as a crutch for shortcomings in their technology. These vendors preach instant ITIL out of the box which is disingenuous and dangerous. Disingenuous because it is not possible, dangerous because it leads IT organizations down a path that is most likely not in the best interest of the business and people they support. There are other flavors than vanilla for a reason…but some people really like vanilla.

But why do these vendors push prescriptive ITIL so hard? First, their tools are not flexible enough to support deviation from a finite process flow. Second, if the IT organization is able to customize the tool to meet their process requirements, they have essentially forfeited the ability to upgrade the tool without a very costly reimplementation of the new version plus all of the customizations again. It is in the best interest of these vendors to get all of their customers to walk in lock step. Fortunately, there are alternatives like Service-now.com that allow customers to use either use a tool that was built using ITIL as a guide, while at the same time allowing extensive, future-proof customizations to meet unique process requirements.

The other mistake IT organizations make is being afraid of the unknown. One of my favorite recent quotes comes from a twitter user which stated, “If the change outside your organization is greater than the change within, the end is near.”

Significant opportunities exist for businesses to leverage cloud-based technologies and social media not just in marketing or sales, but especially in IT. While many IT organization may feel new technologies and trends subvert their control, they have not taken the time to figure out how they might benefit from a SaaS application…SaaS is not just for sales automation anymore. Likewise, they probably haven’t figured out how they can reduce support costs or simply improve customer service by tapping into the world of social networking via social media.

Tell me about your plans to become “ERP for IT”. What does this mean?

“ERP for IT” essentially means running IT like a business. It is probably cliché but this new economy demands a transformation in which the IT organization knows how much its services cost or can accurately visualize project status and plan resources accordingly.

Getting more granular, ERP for IT means creating and publishing a comprehensive portfolio and actionable catalog of of services provided by IT. This portfolio approach considers labor costs, materials, and real-estate values, while also evaluating long-term costs for network bandwidth, maintenance & licensing, help desk calls, trouble tickets, etc.

It is within this context that Service-now.com sees its software as becoming “ERP for IT.” We believe that an IT department — regardless of size or complexity — requires a “single system of record” for all processes being used to provision, upgrade, repair, support, and manage the business services and the underlying infrastructure upon which an organization depends.

This single system of record is our vision for providing clear visibility into what is being done in IT, for which parts of the business, with what priority, as well as the risks associated with that work. It will be sufficiently comprehensive for the most technical manager to understand the impact of pending changes being made in seemingly unrelated areas, yet simple enough to use that a non-IT employee finds value in it for reporting issues, ordering new services, getting news, and knowledge about the business.

For more information on Service Now, you can visit their web site at http://service-now.com

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