What is the value of defining "platform host" Business Applications

[Tom Sienkiewicz]

Hello Everyone,

can anyone please help me see the value of defining the "platform host" type of Business Apps?

My understanding is that for EA/design, the "platform app" level is most critical since those are the ones used for TCO/Rationalization/Capability mapping?

It also does not seem necessary from operations perspective, since any platform-level task can be handled via App Service.

What value or usage do you see if you are currently using this setup?

Many thanks!

[Geri1]

I am looking into updating the business applications that are platforms to use Platform Host and Platform Application. Today, I am just tracking them as business applications. The change would provide greater visibility to the various apps that are running on the platform for tracking incidents, changes, and assets. It could also be useful for tracking different vendors that are providing apps on the platform. And we could potentially associate different controls with the different apps on the platform. 

So for example, we have the ServiceNow platform. That has a particular upgrade lifecycle of twice a year. We also have apps running on the platform, such as ITSM. That gets upgrades through the ServiceNow store, potentially monthly. From an asset point of view, these are separate products with separate licenses. We could decide in future to continue using ServiceNow for some capabilities, but not renew ITSM. We could track changes or incidents to the individual apps on the platform. A scoped app in ServiceNow, such as HR Pro, could have different controls because it contains restricted information that might not exist in other parts of the platform.

Using Platform Host and Platform Application architecture types on the Business Application, it gives more flexibility in various processes. If you do not need that flexibility, then you do not need to add the overhead of maintaining the platform separate from the applications running on the platform.

[Tom Sienkiewicz]

Hi Geri, thanks for your insight! 

Just to understand better, do you today track whole of ServiceNow as a single Business Application, or do you track modules within SN (ITSM etc.) as Business Apps, but currently not grouping them under Platform Host?

Cheers,

Tom

[Geri1]

Today we track ServiceNow and all the modules as a single business application, but that will not suit our needs going forward. 

My plan is to designate ServiceNow Business Application as a Platform Host, then create a business application for each module we have that are Platform Application architecture type with ServiceNow as the host. That will create an asset for the platform (ServiceNow Business Application) and a separate asset for each module. I don't want to go crazy with this - I'm thinking one Business Application for each SKU on the contract.

If we buy a third party app, it would be it's own Business Application related to the ServiceNow host. Then I can relate it to the vendor who supplies that app and in the asset table, relate it to the particular contract for that app.

[Tom Sienkiewicz]

Yeah that is a good approach I think. In our case I also need to account for different ownership which is pretty granular as well as TCO requirements. So might even go lower than SKU level in some cases.