New Blog: Intro

[Chuck Tomasi]

It's time for me to start a ServiceNow blog! Every week - heck, nearly every day - I learn something new about ServiceNow that I want to share. While I could have created a quick category on my own personal website, this community was the best choice for this material. Here's a little background about me...

I've been in IT since the early 80s. I've got a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science and have done a wide variety of IT jobs including software developer, networking, Unix administrator, backup architect, project manager, and training instructor, but my favorite always seems to be writing scripts/apps to solve people's problems. One long-lived project included an IT ticketing system that ran at my former employer for over 15 years (heck, it may still be working.)

I was introduced to ServiceNow in 2008 when I became the Global Service Desk Manager of my former employer. They were using multiple tools, from outsourced to home made, in various locations. The users were unhappy. Sound familiar? IT leadership decided it was time to bring the help desk back in house and I stepped up to lead the new arm of corporate IT. We looked at a half a dozen solutions and quickly chose ServiceNow. Oh, and along with tool selection I was responsible for reviewing processes, staffing (including writing job descriptions and salaries), and even office furniture. It was a great project. From the time I got home from SN admin training to go-live was 52 days (which includes Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years holidays.) In that time we implemented incident, service catalog, and knowledge.

Along with being the Service Desk manager, I was also one of the two people who maintained the system for the 175 IT staff and 7,500 users. I did that for a year and a half. That era was highlighted by winning ServiceNow's first Innovation of the Year Award at Knowledge '10. My entry was for a loaner reservation system capable of multiple classes of loaner items (phones, air cards, projectors, etc.) from multiple depots It's currently in beta with a couple clients now. I look forward to making that system available to you here in an update set soon.

A few short days after returning from Knowledge '10 I was terminated by my company after 22 years of service. I wasn't unemployed long; a month later I was working for ServiceNow on the Discovery team. I thought I knew ServiceNow software due to my experience with the core project... I sure learned a lot from Doug! Discovery is a well thought out platform and I still enjoy working with it today.

Today the majority of my work is a mixture of core and discovery deployments. I get the best of both worlds and look forward tying in to Run Book Automation some day too! From time to time I also conduct Admin training and even work with the marketing group. Over the past year I've met, and worked with, some terrific people. I feel truly blessed for this current situation.

As the ServiceNow platform continues to grow in features and functionality, I look forward to sharing some of that information here and encourage your feedback. While I'm no Mark Stanger, I hope you'll find what I have to share useful.

My goal is to contribute something to this blog each week. If you don't make a regular habit of visit this blog explicitly, consider using the RSS icon to add the feed to your favorite RSS reader (e.x. Outlook, Google Reader, etc.) so new content is delivered automatically.

Thank you!