ServiceNow's new CEO thinks IT can spare us from corporate re-orgs

ServiceNow's new CEO John Donahoe has introduced himself to the company's community at its Knowledge17 conference in Orlando, Florida. Along the way he introduced some new machine learning-fueled automation tech and offered his opinion that IT departments can put a stop to future corporate re-organization efforts. Donahoe came …

[Anonymous Coward]

Still in the dark.

"cloud giant" is the only explanation of what is ServiceNow.

I have a colleague who keeps asking me about it but I cant find any decent explanation of who they are or what they do....and more importantly who's using it.

More corporate yawn.

[Mark 110]

Re: Still in the dark.

Its not a 'Cloud Giant'. 'SaaS giant specialising in workflow automation tools' is a simplistic explanation. Originally they developed ServiceNow as a bells and whistles (ITIL framework compliant) competitor with IT Support / Service Desk ticketing tools such as BMC Remedy, Assyst, etc. Its now pretty much best in class - but other tools are actively and often successfully catching up. I'm currently working with a similar toolset developed by House on the Hill which in terms of cost and complexity is an ideal compromise for SMEs. It will do pretty much what ServiceNow does but without the power tools a FTSE100 might want to manage a very large IT estate.

The ServiceNow workflow functionality transfers pretty well to other business processes/workflows such as HR so they are developing the functionality to easily manage those workflows to try and expand sales. I've only ever seen it used for IT Service Management though.

[D.A.]

Allow me to explain...

Allow me to point out that ServiceNow is a massive steaming turd.

We are forced to use it in work and are gradually losing the will to live trying to extract the simplest of data from it for metrics purposes...

[Andy Mac]

Re: Allow me to explain...

A few steaming turds (of various sizes) have been in contact with me to express their outrage at you linking them with ServiceNow.

Libel action may ensue.

[Mark 110]

Re: Allow me to explain...

I've used it twice in the past:

- Very large utility company - very large IT estate - significant investment into getting S_Now set up right. Was pretty easy to get what I needed out of the tool and from a project point of view lots of help around to get the config changes done that were feeding out of my project.

- Another FTSE100 - S_Now set up and config had been left to offshore outsourcer. Little investment in setting it up. Was much harder to get what I needed or to get what I needed done.

Its a very complex tool and easy to get set up wrong and costly to maintain.

[Anonymous Coward]

Service Now is a glorified web based forms/RAD tool.

You get a bog standard workflow system and if you pay for premium version you get to tweak it with a load of customisations. It's nice enough but I can't say I particularly love it. It's another one of those things where management buy into the bullshit, the IT teams get dumped with it and told to make it work, then Service Now knowing you have to get your project off the ground ASAP will happily sell you a nice chunk of billable consultancy time to tweak it however you need it tweaked in order to get it in on time.

[Michael Sanders]

Oh it's a turd allright

We implemented it here. It's been a nightmare. It replaced our inventory system and help desk ticket system. I didn't think we could find a worse inventory system. But now it's fair to say we don't have an inventory because of it. And if it didn't have a search or a way of saving a favorite in the system...There would be no way to use it. It's just an i-frame on the left with all the commands and features listed in tree form. And you have to know what it means. It's Regedit basically. And this is after spending an embarrassing amount of money. Run screaming from any ServiceNow representative.

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed; a turd.

It's slow, over-complex, has a sloppy and horrible UI (e.g. If a ticket number has a trailing space - the search fails), the workflow tools are a mess. I can never find anything in it I want, and I'm not alone. Everyone at our organisation who uses it hates it.

If anyone who works at Service Now is reading this, then thanks for adding hours and hours of pointless and soul destroying bureaucracy to my working week, I hope you truly get when you give; and if John Donahoe has accidentally stumbled onto this site, then here's a personal message for him: stop talking sh@t and fix your f@@king product.