ServiceNow’s beginnings may be cloud-based helpdesk, but the company has firmly planted its feet in the ITOM (IT operations management) space. In 2014, ServiceNow acquired Neebula and its acclaimed ServiceWatch offering, which discovers, maps and monitors the dependencies between business services and the IT services that support them.
The acquisition was a significant move for ServiceNow and the company is highly motivated to expand ServiceWatch into its broad customer base – one-third of which will be renewing their existing ServiceNow subscriptions in the next 12 months.
In short, if you’re a ServiceNow customer, you can expect to be courted for the ServiceWatch offering during your next renewal event. Here are key considerations as you proactively consider this expansion:
- ITOM takes work on the customer side, especially in the area of service mapping. Have you already made progress in this area? Is it on your radar? Do you have available resources internally to do the work?
- ServiceWatch was rewritten to work with ServiceNow's Geneva release. However, many customers are still on the Eureka platform. To get ServiceWatch to work most effectively, you may need an upgrade that will require planning, testing and training.
- Organizational ITOM maturity is important. Some ServiceNow customers are feeling buyer’s remorse for subscribing to ITOM services, like Event Management and Discovery services, that they’re largely not using. In these cases, companies have to decide whether to renew these subscriptions in the hopes of getting more value out of the next term - a decision which will be made all the more difficult by ServiceNow’s motivations to grow revenues in this particular service area.
- ServiceNow has several flavors of bundles that attempt to align customers with its recommended adoption order. Phase 1 includes Discovery and Service Mapping. Phase 2 expands to Event Management, and Phase 3 adds Orchestration and Cloud Management. Customers should know their roadmap prior to renewing or expanding within the ITOM service line. You'd be surprised how many clients renew based on perception vs. reality.
- Lastly, consider engaging with one of NPI’s ServiceNow ITOM sourcing specialists to help you make a more informed decision. This outside expertise can go a long way in helping you evaluate solution readiness and optimize the outcome of your renewal event.
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