Earlier this year ServiceNow announced our cloud management solution supporting Microsoft Azure. And since this resonated well with our customers, we continue to collaborate with Microsoft to strengthen cooperation between our platforms.
Next week at the Microsoft Ignite conference we are demonstrating our latest improvements to the ServiceNow integrations with Microsoft Azure. We invite you to stop by the booth #252 to get a first hand look at how ServiceNow helps you to…
Developers, admins and business users want their own access to quickly deploy Azure environments. Typically, these users go off and create their own Azure accounts and operate in the shadows outside of corporate IT. Although this may give the user what they want, operating shadow IT opens the business to unmitigated risks, possible data loss and potential audit failures. Nothing that any of us want!
ServiceNow gives IT the solution to encourage innovation and enable users to get what they need quickly and efficiently.
At Ignite, we will be demonstrating how a user can shop for an Azure setup from the ServiceNow service catalog and initiate the process. The user can order anything from a simple virtual machine to a more complex multi-tier environment — anything you can provision in Azure can be configured as an option in the catalog. The integration between ServiceNow and Azure streamlines the process and automates the deployment.
Govern the cloud
Now that the inmates can run the asylum through self service, how does this help IT? Glad you asked! Providing self-service capabilities does not mean you have to give up control or make a bunch of rules on paper you hope the users will follow. Since you control the catalog of offerings, you get to set the rules to ensure compliance to corporate policies including security, architecture, and privacy requirements.
With ServiceNow you can determine the level of approvals needed for each of the different offers in your catalog. Net-net, the end-user gets what they want when they want it and IT gets to ensure good governance is in place.
At the Ignite booth, we will be demonstrating how IT can leverage ServiceNow to implement a formal cloud governance strategy without creating roadblocks for the users. You will see how the ServiceNow platform seamlessly integrates cloud management of Azure with workflow capabilities and automation. We will also show how a self-service request can automatically generate a service map of all the infrastructure provisioned for a request. This service map further enhances the ability of IT to manage the cloud environment.
Understand the spend, optimize the resources
When shadow IT rules the day, gaining corporate level visibility into the costs and utilization of the cloud is pretty much impossible. The cloud costs turn up on expense reports or get paid out against departmental budgets. By not controlling costs and understanding utilization, access to the cloud can be further hindered. But with visibility into the costs, the organization can improve planning for cloud expenses and optimize utilization to drive value for the business.
ServiceNow brings together the billing information from across multiple clouds and creates a unified view. IT teams get the information they need to address budget management, forecasting and optimization of the use of these resources.
Our demonstration at Ignite will show you how we ingest billing from Azure and turn it into actionable insight for the IT team. You'll see how costs break down across the different types of resources being used and get the details on utilization. From the financial dashboards IT has the opportunity to identify, optimize and understand cloud expenditures.
We will also be hosting a session entitled "Extend IT best practices to Microsoft Azure" Tuesday, September 27th 2:10 — 2:30PM in Theater 5.
If you are not going to Ignite or are unable to break away to visit our booth, contact your ServiceNow account rep or call 858-720-0477 to schedule a discussion with our experts. We will be happy to discuss how we can help you govern the cloud while provide self-service and getting insight into cost and utilization of your Azure resources.
