Application Service without operating environment

[Cat3218]

Hello Community,

I have a question regarding the Application Service class. In most data model examples I've come across, Application Services are typically tied to specific environments—for instance, SN Incident PROD or SN Incident UAT.

Recently, there's been a discussion within my organization about defining Application Services without referencing the operating environment. My position is that such a construct aligns more closely with a Business Application rather than an Application Service. However, from an architectural perspective, there's a preference to govern ServiceNow as a single Business Application, rather than separate busienss application such as SN Platform, SN Incident, SN Change etc.

I'm curious to hear your thoughts or experiences on this approach. Has anyone implemented a similar model?

If you are keeping Application Service without operating environment, how does your incident/change management process work?

[kaushal_snow · Accepted solution]

Hi @Cat3218 ,

I agree that from an enterprise architecture standpoint, treating ServiceNow as a single Business Application makes sense. However, according to CSDM best practices, a Business Application typically breaks down into one or more Application Services, each representing a distinct deployment environment (PROD, UAT, Dev).

This alignment allows for environment specific tracking in monitoring, incidents, and operations.....

In short, while centralizing under a single Business Application is efficient from a governance perspective, I’d recommend modeling environment specific Application Services to maintain clarity in operational and incident processes....

Check these articles:

https://www.servicenow.com/community/common-service-data-model-forum/should-all-business-application...

https://www.servicenow.com/community/cmdb-articles/types-of-services-csdm/ta-p/3225320

If you found my response helpful, please mark it as ‘Accept as Solution’ and ‘Helpful’. This helps other community members find the right answer more easily and supports the community.

[kaushal_snow · Accepted solution]

Hi @Cat3218 ,

I agree that from an enterprise architecture standpoint, treating ServiceNow as a single Business Application makes sense. However, according to CSDM best practices, a Business Application typically breaks down into one or more Application Services, each representing a distinct deployment environment (PROD, UAT, Dev).

This alignment allows for environment specific tracking in monitoring, incidents, and operations.....

In short, while centralizing under a single Business Application is efficient from a governance perspective, I’d recommend modeling environment specific Application Services to maintain clarity in operational and incident processes....

Check these articles:

https://www.servicenow.com/community/common-service-data-model-forum/should-all-business-application...

https://www.servicenow.com/community/cmdb-articles/types-of-services-csdm/ta-p/3225320

If you found my response helpful, please mark it as ‘Accept as Solution’ and ‘Helpful’. This helps other community members find the right answer more easily and supports the community.

[Pratiksha]

Check this out

 

Hope it helps. 

[Cat3218]

I also see this in the data model example, that's why I'm wondering if other companies are using it without the environment, or they just don't put environment in the name. 

[Mathew Hillyard]

Hi @Cat3218 

That image is quite busy, so it's likely they omitted the environment for clarity. There is also an assumption with some of the diagrams in the CSDM examples deck that they are referencing the production instance only.

When it comes to defining the granularity of Business Applications, think about their function: can the individual components run one or more Business Processes or provide Business Capabilities? Can the component receive its own upgrades? Does each component have a different Owner? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then a single Business App probably won't suffice. For platforms (like ServiceNow, SAP, Salesforce etc) I would advise you to think of a platform host and one or more platform applications - as @Mattias S_rlin mentions, you can always expand later, but if you're attempting to implement CSDM it's worth putting the work in upfront to define platforms appropriately, and it's often beneficial to define them first when establishing a Business Application inventory.

I hope this helps!
Mat