ServiceNow - the strategic platform to automate cross-enterprise work

Vincent Guiheneuc - 4th June 2019

ServiceNow’s user event of the year, Knowledge 19, was held in Las Vegas earlier this month. Engage ESM were gold sponsors for the event; having involvement in panel and thought leadership slots throughout the conference. However, it was easy to be overwhelmed by the high volume of information made available to all 20,000 attendees. Therefore, I thought it would be useful to summarize Top 5 takeaways from the event. ServiceNow continues to improve the platform with more integrations, mobility and better AI.

Figure 1 – 'Only' 10,000 seats

Firstly, it is important to remember what the Madrid update currently offers. It was all about the platform across the enterprise at Knowledge 19, but its integration is key for it to be successful. The IntegrationHub is the not-so-secret secret service that enables ServiceNow integration with any other third-party tool. It will continue to improve month after month, they are made available on the ServiceNow store as soon as they are ready, and ServiceNow aims to have 200 standard spokes by the end of 2020. In the New York release, Domain Separation will be supported with IntegrationHub and new ServiceNow licenses will benefit from 1 million free transactions. With the new Flow-Designer in Madrid, Flow-Designer and IntegrationHub should be used as the preferred solution over the Workflow Editor for any third-party integration.

 

Figure 2 – IntegrationHub, a true iPaaS killer

In addition, new DevOps in Madrid is available with limited access. The idea is that ServiceNow should be the backbone of DevOps whilst integrating with Jira, Jenkins, etc. In a nutshell, it is all about change automation for dev with easy toolchain integration for DevOps. AI continues to be improved, especially with Alert Intelligence prioritizing alerts and providing more comprehensive insight and automatic remediation within the ITOM suite. Also, Database Encryption is available with the added advantage of having no impact on the user. It is an alternative to other security functions such as Edge Encryption.

 

Figure 3 – Alert Intelligence part of Event Management

Coming in New York

Following on from this, there was discussion around what to expect from New York in Q3 this year, especially around how it will bring value in user experience (UX). The Virtual Agent chatbot will support Natural Language Understanding (NLU) to identify the intent of the conversation with a no code model. It will also potentially be plugged into other external systems such as IBM Watson. As well as this, Dynamic Translation will also be a new feature, meaning real-time text translation powered by Microsoft or IBM translation. Indeed, as the strategic partnership announced between ServiceNow and Google, we can also anticipate that Google Translate could be available very soon. Interestingly, voice with Siri Shortcuts will be supported to open an incident.

Figure 4 – Dynamic Translation in New York


Regarding the upcoming New York release, there are two particular main features of the platform that should be focused upon. Firstly, in addition to the existing back end mobile app with offline mode, an employee mobile app will be released with the intention of the end users being able to use ServiceNow from anywhere. For example, it would mean a new HR employee would be able to use the app before joining an organization. The database will be 7 times faster compared to London, which should allow near real-time reporting even on larger tables. The second important feature is Instance Data Replication which will synchronize ServiceNow Production instances, it will not replace cloning but support partial data replication with no code. Data transformation will also be supported. To start with it will only support instances on the same client domain, Orlando will allow data replication between instances in the same datacenter.

Figure 5 – HR new employee app to upload data before day 1

Looking forward even further, ServiceNow started to share some content which may be released in the Orlando release (Q1 2020). They demonstrated one feature, Natural Language Query (NLQ) where a question in plain language, potentially even by voice with help of Siri, can return data in the form of values, lists or charts. In terms of User Interface (UI), ServiceNow is working on a new Guided App Creator Studio to make creation of apps even simpler. We should start to see some way of creating our own Workspace with a UI Builder.

For further information or to speak with an expert today, get in touch with the team here.


About Engage ESM

Engage ESM is an Atos company and Gold Sales and Services partner for ServiceNow globally; providing design, implementation, and support services to clients worldwide. Engage ESM is a leader in the enterprise-service management (ESM) sector, which includes IT, Customer Service, Security, and HR. Engage ESM helps organisations of all sizes to improve their operational performance and extend the value of existing investments in ServiceNow.

Atos is a leader in digital services with annual revenue of over €12 billion and 100,000 employees in 72 countries. Serving a global client base, Atos provides Consulting & Systems Integration services, Application Transformation Services, Managed Services, Cloud operations, Big Data & Cyber-security solutions, and transactional services through Worldline. Atos is also the Worldwide Information Technology Partner for the Olympic & Paralympic Games.