ServiceNow Licensing Policy now requires owning licensing for products activated in non-production?

[tstocking]

We have been a ServiceNow customer for over half a decade however we are now being told by our sales rep that any plugin that requires licensing has to be purchased before it can be activated in a non-production instance:

• A customer is not allowed to develop in their non-production environment, to: try, test, develop for later production, etc. 
• If a customer wants to try out products that they do not own that can be done in an eval / Personal Developer Instance (PDI).
• PDI’s are time limited to allow the customer to “kick the tires” prior to purchasing (Guidance and participation by ServiceNow and/or partner experts are encouraged).

Is anyone else being told this now? Seems to be a big change from how they used to operate.

[laszloballa]

Well, as always with ServiceNow, it is hard to compare different contracts/agreements of different customers (sadly), however... strictly personal opinion and nothing official: this sounds like a huge pile of BS to me, and I would actually challenge/escalate this. I don't see how it would be of any interest to ServiceNow if what you described were true.

[Mark Roethof]

Haven't heard of such. It's also pretty common to activate plugins on non production to be able to test, verify, etc..

Kind regards,
Mark 

[iwai]

It seems there's some confusion between plugins, applications, and products. Remember, products and applications often need licenses, even in non-production environments. Be sure to distinguish these terms when reading official documentation to avoid mistakes.
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