ServiceNow's App Creator: The Dawn of "BYOD 2.0"

[MichaelDortch]

In the old days, like last year, "BYOD" meant "bring your own device," a trend of letting users connect to corporate networks with their own devices. This trend creates a sometimes daunting management challenge for many IT people.

In contrast, the 2.0 version of "BYOD" means "be your own developer," a trend of empowering business users of IT to build and deploy custom applications quickly and easily. And instead of creating problems for IT, BYOD 2.0 creates new opportunities for IT and the business colleagues they serve. And the combination of the newly announced ServiceNow App Creator and the ServiceNow Service Automation Platform represent a strong beginning of the age of "BYOD 2.0."

How? By enabling "mere mortals," otherwise known as businesspeople who are not professional coders, to build and deploy useful applications, with IT's full support, but with no direct IT participation required. Which is a boon for both IT and those very businesspeople.

The App Creator/ServiceNow Service Automation Platform combination delivers new levels of empowerment and self-service to businesspeople. It enables them to build modern, agile applications as they need them. With no difficult coding, challenging "integrated development environments," or increasingly scarce and expensive "code geeks" required. And those businesspeople can build and deploy the apps they want and need in minutes, hours, or days, not weeks or months.

The same combination of ServiceNow solutions also offers significant benefits to IT as well. It can enable creation of more and better business applications, without tying up scarce and valuable IT people and resources or increasing user support burdens. And perhaps most important, it can accelerate the transformation of user perceptions of IT from "the department of no" to "the department of now." Now, where have I heard that before?
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Want to see some up-to-the-minute examples of what's possible with App Creator and the ServiceNow Service Automation Platform? Check out the great work performed at Knowledge13 by "The Leftovers" and the four CreateNow Hackathon finalists. Then, head on over to https://demochannel.service-now.com, watch the App Creator video, and kick some tires and light some fires of your own. After all, there's no time like the present to begin the age of "BYOD 2.0" at your organization!