Recently I attended Cloud Field Day in the Bay area an one of the product presentations was delivered by ServiceNow. I have used ServiceNow, and I instantly think helpdesk solution. As the team unveiled their current initiatives it became clear that they are doing quite a bit more for the business side as well, and of course this is all done in the cloud (we were at Cloud Field Day).
The Strategic Approach
At the event, we heard from Dominic Phillips – VP of Finance and Corporate Strategy, Jonathan Sparks – Sr. Director of Product Development, and Josh Nerius – Solution Architect and Developer Evangelist. The team covered many different aspects of their strategy, but the goal as I understood will allow for a toolset that is favorable to both the business and IT. Also, important to them is that organizations a choose a solution that eliminates data silos by connecting the enterprise, reducing risk through automation, and ensuring the work being completed meets the needs of compliance.
The Technical Approach
The intention of this platform is to simplify and automate business processes in a way that empowers the business user. Their development product is very simple and graphical without any code for the user. Now that doesn’t mean that a person wouldn’t or shouldn’t need training – that would depend on the person. But you do not need to be a developer. The end result are “applications” that can be used to automate business related workflows that integrate with user information across the entire platform.
We did also get a nice demo of the product if you are interested I did provide a link right at the beginning of the post where you can take a closer look. To me at first glance while it was very more its own interface there was some resemblance in terms of functionality to SharePoint, and a similarity to Lotus Note applications. Again, different product entirely, but if you have are familiar with these other tools then I feel you would settle into using this product quite nicely.
Parting Thoughts
I like that ServiceNow is thinking business centric and not just limiting themselves to a helpdesk focused platform. Their toolset has the opportunity to extend great value to any organization that would see value from business automation of many of its tasks.