Stepping inside the partner ecosystem at the ServiceNow NowForum

[adrianbridgwate]

ServiceNow is a company that prides itself on collaboration and communication. No surprise then that the firm spends a good proportion of its NowForum event series working with its partners to ensure platform-wide interconnectivity and service-centric efficiency.

NowForum London 2016 was staged this past October in the Docklands' expansive ExCeL centre. Among the 40+ key partners making a personal appearance at the show itself were Sumerian, TeamUltra and Unisys… but what did they have to say?

Sumerian Sync Services sweetness

As a UK-headquartered, predictive-capacity analytics provider Sumerian used NowForum as a platform to announce new ServiceNow certification for its Sumerian Sync Services application.

ServiceNow only offers official certification status after products have completed a rigorous set of defined tests focused on integration interoperability, security and performance. This certification ensures that best practices are used in the design and implementation of the Sumerian Sync Services application with ServiceNow.

This new integration enriches Sumerian CPaaS (Capacity Planning as a Service) capacity insight with Business Service information from ServiceNow by syncing with ServiceNow's configuration management database (CMDB). The CMDB provides a single system of record for IT, providing service managers with an accurate view of the assets in their IT environment and current configuration data.

Automatic complexity control with CPaaS

Sumerian CPaaS can identify future risks to service (such as a disk volume that will fill up in two weeks' time if no action is taken) and automatically raise an incident ticket so that the appropriate action is taken. This enables users to model and assess the impact of service growth on underlying service infrastructure, automatically raising a change request.

"In an age of increasingly complex IT infrastructures, having access to the latest automated capacity management technologies like Sumerian CPaaS is crucial. It arms enterprises with powerful predictive analytics and 'what if' scenario modelling, delivering fresh intelligence into IT service capacity, risk and cost," said David Stevens, CEO, Sumerian.

TeamUltra adds SIAM

TeamUltra staff members were in fine voice for this year's NowForum London and no wonder; the firm has just announced news of its Service Integration and Management (SIAM) application reaching ServiceNow-certified status for the ServiceNow Geneva and Helsinki releases.

The TeamUltra software has also been added to ServiceNow's enterprise applications marketplace. It is designed to enable organizations to connect multiple suppliers or customers and achieve greater synergy, economies of scale, lower costs and improved service.

"Organizations are continually searching for new ways of connecting customers and suppliers and this interoperability is critical to operational effectiveness," commented Mike Beale, Managing Director of TeamUltra.

Full house on accreditations

"Publishing TeamConnect to the ServiceNow Store is an important milestone for TeamUltra. Not only do we broaden our reach to a sizeable global audience, but we demonstrate our commitment to ServiceNow with accreditations across the full partner ecosystem — sales, services, technology and authorized training," added Beale.

TeamConnect provides the integration layer of a SIAM or multi-supplier model. It can be used by organizations to integrate with suppliers and suppliers to integrate with their customers — or both at the same time.

The software itself comes configured for the exchange of 'incident tickets' with other systems and can easily be configured to exchange data from any table within ServiceNow, whether out-of-box or custom tables.

Unisys bridges cyber gap

Multinational tech company Unisys also attended ServiceNow NowForum London 2016 to explain how its latest combination of software and services addresses the gap between service management and cyber resilience.

The firm's new security services help clients prevent and resolve security incidents through improved integration of security and IT operations. Specifically, the new solutions include offerings for the ServiceNow Enterprise Cloud platform.

The software enables clients to evaluate their existing security investments, processes and vulnerabilities to create a consolidated, closely-managed system that provides continual insight into any organization's security posture and the status of core IT assets and information necessary for digital business.

Governance and automation

"Today's digital businesses rely on strong governance and automation to quickly identify and resolve issues that can affect delivery of business and IT services and security of data for workers and customers," said Ed Liebig, Global Vice President, Security Service Delivery, Unisys.

"These new solutions enable clients to properly assess their current security environments, align security and IT operations for a holistic view of the health of business-critical enterprise resources, and leverage the ServiceNow platform as the security command center for digital business."

Comprising both security consulting and ongoing security managed services, the new solutions build on Unisys' broad security expertise. Those for the ServiceNow platform build on key capabilities of the platform's ServiceNow Security Operations (SecOps) module, as well as on governance, risk, compliance and security change management capabilities.

The full list of sponsors and partners that attended NowForum London is available here and the event's Diamond Sponsor was Accenture.