ServiceNow acquires next-gen observability leader Lightstep

I’m excited to announce that ServiceNow has signed an agreement to acquire next-generation observability leader Lightstep.

Combining Lightstep’s innovative observability capabilities with ServiceNow’s unmatched Now Platform will help customers better manage software complexity, reliability, and performance while enabling the enterprise workflows that deliver great experiences. ServiceNow’s acquisition of Lightstep connects insight with action across the people, processes, and technologies involved in delivering great experiences and driving digital transformation.

All companies are increasingly becoming software companies. The ability to reinvent and create new business models through digital products and services is key to long-term survival. Major shifts in technology and the way work gets done, such as the move to the cloud and DevOps, are rapidly increasing the complexity of the software that powers today’s enterprises.

Yet, in this complex environment, companies are still expected to increase innovation and velocity without sacrificing reliability and performance. The combination of ServiceNow and Lightstep addresses this tension by delivering deep operational insights that enable organizations to more effectively use modern technologies and team-based development practices.

A unified approach to observability

Lightstep provides a unified approach to observability with system-wide visibility and insights across metrics, distributed traces, and logs to help organizations speed software development velocity without compromising quality. This gives businesses the confidence and clarity to drive faster innovation and better outcomes across the entire digital customer experience.

Companies are betting on going digital in order to thrive in the 21st century, but the transition is often challenging to navigate. With Lightstep, ServiceNow will transform how software solutions are delivered to customers. This will ultimately make it easier for customers to innovate quickly. Now they'll be able to build and operate their software faster than ever before and take the new era of work head-on with confidence.

Lightstep is the trusted observability solution for both born-in-the-cloud companies like GitHub, Spotify, and Twilio and fast-growing enterprises whose businesses are increasingly reliant on software applications. Combined with ServiceNow’s IT workflow solutions’ ability to weave disparate elements into a seamless digital fabric, customers will be able to more easily monitor and respond to critical signals and indicators of software health.

World-class team

I’m thrilled that Lightstep’s world-class engineering team, led by CEO and co-founder Ben Sigelman, is joining ServiceNow. "Today, observability primarily benefits the DevOps teams that build and operate mission-critical apps," Sigelman says.

"We've always believed that the value of observability should extend across the entire enterprise, providing greater clarity and confidence to every team involved in these modern, digital businesses. By joining ServiceNow, together we will realize that vision for our customers and help transform the world of work in the process—and we couldn't be more excited about it."

San Francisco-based Lightstep was co-founded in 2015 by Sigelman, COO Ben Cronin, and Chief Architect Daniel Spoonhower. Key Lightstep team members helped define modern observability with their prior work on tracing and metrics monitoring at Google. Lightstep team members also co-created the OpenTracing and OpenTelemetry open-source projects, leading the industry’s overall migration away from proprietary agents toward the portable, always-on, and open standards-based acquisition of traces, metrics, and logs.

We're thrilled to welcome the Lightstep team to ServiceNow. I can't wait to start working together to help customers accelerate their software innovation with confidence.

Find out more about the acquisition in a fireside chat at Knowledge 2021. Not registered yet? It's free and easy.

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