Configure a business application for internal use and as an external offering

[MarkPenn]

We have an application that we developed internally that provides a business capability, and we also provide/sell that same application to external customers. I'm not able to disclose a lot of details, but think of Google employees using gmail to satisfy the business capability of communicating electronically with others, but it is also offered and sold to millions of people. Other examples would be how Adobe's graphics design team uses Creative Cloud (Photoshop) to produce marketing materials, and Adobe sells that same product. 

I've considered defining a single business app, which also creates a product model. Use the product model as the "sellable" item and the BA as the internal app that provides the capability. That seems promising, but would that sellable item also be an operational CI such that the gmail product is installed on the gmail prod app service which is related to the gmail business application. How would one relate all of that on the development side? Would there be gmail applications and SDLC components too?

I'm trying to figure out a way to model this without creating multiple different entities in different tables just to represent a single thing we develop, use, support, and sell. One final note is that I am not interested at this time in the actual order to cash value stream. 

[SteveMac1]

Why do you need to represent this as a single entity? They are separate things - just because they have the same name does not make them the same entity. 

Even if you are using the same instance of the app, they are still separate entities. You are using it as a 'customer' of "My Company's App", but the company is selling it to others as well. 

Don't over complicate things. 

Steve

[Johannes]

If it is the same instance of the app, following the same lifecycle, having the same risks, owned by the same stakeholders etc., is it then not enough to separate these as two (or more) different Service Offerings connected to the same Application Services (which are related to the same Business Application)?

[Jonathan Schnei]

In CSDM 5, it looks like ServiceNow is more formally adding the Sold Product to the framework - at least adding it to the visual. The record type already exists and may help you manage what you sell to the external customer. If the customer wishes to purchase the product, Order Management can be used; and an existing customer can use CSM for customer service on the product. The sold product relates back through the service layer and eventually to the Business Application. This helps you understand Operationally (App Service) what the issues are and understand how frequent/serious/etc they are both internally and externally; and strategically (business app), roadmap/architecture decisions based on the same KPI's.

I believe it would be correct to have a single Business Application that represents this record. The capabilities it provides are the ones it does for your organization. If you are doing any development, the SDLC component layer can be used to represent those unique development efforts. And the Application Service layer, you would have any deployments/instances/stacks that you are directly managing (ie - Microsoft does not creating an app service for every company they sell O365 to).

In addition to the SN Docs, this link is to an interesting/related sold products conversation on community. https://www.servicenow.com/community/csm-articles/aligning-sold-products-and-install-base-items-with...