Quick Introduction to ServiceNow

ServiceNow is a cloud-based company which provides software as a service (SaaS) for technical management support. It supports IT Operations of large corporations, thereby improving their operational efficiency and automating their routine work tasks.

Simply put, ServiceNow is a platform in the cloud that has a framework and tools which allows one to build in applications. It has a pre-built standard set of application to support any process, say IT, HR, customer service, legal, finance, etc. For those who are still stuck with manual processing and find it highly challenging to manage all their service requests, ServiceNow is a perfect solution as it provides with a single system of record on the cloud to solve all your internal challenges.

What is Service Mapping?

ServiceNow Service Mapping has an innovative, “top-down” approach to discovering and mapping the relationships between IT components that comprise specific business services, even in dynamic, virtualized environments.

In short, Service Mapping application discovers all application services in your organization and builds a comprehensive map of all devices, applications, and configuration profiles used in these business services. Service Mapping maps dependencies, based on a connection between devices and applications. This method is referred to as top-down mapping. The top-down mapping helps you immediately see the impact of a problematic object on the rest of the application service operation.

Key Features of ServiceNow Service Mapping

Service mapping makes the IT service process more reliable and it has following features:

• Visibility: Service Mapping lets users easily evaluate the underlying impact of infrastructure services.
• Efficiency: Automation of mapping services reduces the time users are handling errors.
• Accuracy: Whenever a change occurs, the Service Map is updated in real time.

Who uses Service Mapping?

Service Mapping enables IT departments of companies, organizations, and cloud companies providing platform as a service to create a service-aware view of infrastructure.

How can you start a service map?

Service Mapping setup

• You get started with Service Mapping by configuring roles, credentials, and MID Server connections.
• Setting up Service Mapping is the first stage in the Service Mapping workflow.
• Service Mapping is part of the Now Platform and deploys some of its platform-wide mechanisms and features.

How does Service Mapping help you?

Typically Business Service to CI (configuration items) relationships are maintained manually as they are not discovered. The issue with these manual relationships is that as you soon as you are finished creating them, they quickly become out-of-date.

ServiceNow Service Mapping uses a top down approach to discovery. By using this approach, you can specify a Business Service entry point and find all the CI and relationships underneath.

Key Benefits of Service Mapping

1.Faster time to restore service: With Service Mapping, it is faster to restore service by correlating a hardware or software failure to the service(s) it supports and engaging support teams more quickly.

2.Protecting the environment from security vulnerabilities: Service Mapping provides your team the ability to identify crucial and high-risk services/conditions that require immediate remediation

3.Accurate & Up to date: ServiceWatch maps, tracks and consolidates business service topography in real time. If it detects a change, it updates it in a dynamic manner.

4.Improved Service quality: An accurate, updated service map helps you understand how business services are delivered in a highly dynamic, volatile and complex environment.

5.Service Map with cognitive & technology intelligence: ServiceWatch has built-in cognitive technological intelligence when it maps. These component-specific patterns provide a deep understanding of a wide range of applications and infrastructure components.

In Conclusion

Each of these areas points to ways in which business service mapping makes your critical business services more reliable, secure and available. This protects your organization from financial loss, loss of customers and other business threats caused by unstable systems and services.

It is important to note that no two organizations are the same and that many of the concepts discussed above may be seen as either too advanced or even not necessary. A process should be developed that matches your organizational needs while also making sure that the data is kept up to date with a proper paper trail of any and all changes created along the life cycle.

Agilis World Inc. specializes in Service Mapping and Configuration Management Database (CMDB). Please contact us with any questions you may have and we will help you discover, map, and manage what matters most to your organization with efficiency and maximum business value.