Yesterday, I was visiting a big box retail store and stumbled upon a banner promoting an AI-powered washing machine. "Well, now I've seen it all . . . " I said out loud to my wife. On further reflection, I was able to come up with many ways that AI could enhance appliances . . . BUT . . . I thought to myself, it had better do a good job washing clothes.
ServiceNow already leverages artificial intelligence in powerful ways, as evidenced by ML-based Service Mapping and Application Fingerprinting, which are already integral components of the ServiceNow ITOM solution. But none of that would matter if we didn't help customers achieve the fundamental visibility necessary to map and secure their tech stacks, including certificates and firewall rules. The introduction of the full Discovery Admin Workspace in the Xanadu release further empowers our customers to take advantage of groundbreaking AI possibilities by making it easier than ever to capture and maintain the fundamental data-based foundations of their critical tech services.
This blog post delves into the transformative effects of AI on IT operations, exploring key features like the Discovery Admin Workspace, Certificate Management Support for ACME, and Service Graph Connectors for AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP), demonstrating how AI doesn't just support but actively drives visibility and management outcomes in complex IT environments.
1. Discovery Admin Workspace: A Unified Interface for Comprehensive Discovery Management
Managing IT discovery processes across a large enterprise can be challenging, especially when multiple tools and interfaces are involved. ServiceNow’s Discovery Admin Workspace offers a powerful solution by providing a single, unified interface for tracking and managing all discovery activities.
Key Benefits:
- Enhanced Visualizations: The Discovery Admin Workspace elevates discovery capabilities by leveraging advanced visualizations, including detailed application fingerprints and a 360-degree view of IT assets. This enables IT teams to gain deeper insights into their environments and make informed decisions faster.
- Streamlined Management: With guided setup and real-time insights, operations teams can efficiently manage discovery processes, track progress, note issues, and ensure the smooth population of their technology configuration data.
- Seamless Integration: The workspace integrates seamlessly into the Unified Map of the CMDB and Service Maps, providing a comprehensive view of discovery processes and their results. This ensures that teams have access to accurate, up-to-date data, which is essential for reducing response times, resolving incidents quickly, and maintaining business continuity.
Available as part of the ITOM Visibility package, the Discovery Admin Workspace is an essential tool for IT operations managers, network administrators, and IT asset managers looking to optimize their discovery processes.
For a detailed treatment of this feature, please visit Sree Subramaniam's excellent blog on the Top 10 Features of the Discovery Admin workspace.
Requirements:
- Discovery Admin Workspace application from the ServiceNow Store v1.3 or higher
- Washington DC Patch 5 or Xanadu release
2. Certificate Management Support for ACME: Simplifying and Securing Digital Certificates
Digital certificates are a cornerstone of secure communications, but managing them can be complex and prone to errors. ServiceNow’s Certificate Management support for ACME provides a streamlined, automated solution that simplifies certificate management while ensuring security and compliance.
Key Benefits:
- Centralized Management: This feature allows organizations to discover and manage all their certificates, including those from ACME providers, within a single framework. This centralized approach reduces the complexity of certificate management and minimizes the risk of errors.
- Automated Processes: By automating DNS challenges, certificate renewals, and revocations, ServiceNow ensures that certificates remain valid and secure with minimal manual intervention. Custom webhooks and low-code scripts further enhance the automation capabilities, making it easy to configure and manage certificates.
- Enhanced Security: By integrating ACME support into ServiceNow’s existing workflow, organizations can maintain secure communications, avoid service outages, and ensure compliance with industry standards.
Included in the ITOM Visibility Professional package, this feature is ideal for IT operations managers, security administrators, and network administrators who need a reliable, efficient way to manage digital certificates.
Requirements:
- Certificate Inventory and Management Application on the ServiceNow Store v 3.4
- Washington DC Patch 5 or Xanadu
3. Service Graph Connectors for AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform: Accelerating Cloud Integration**
As organizations continue to embrace cloud services, the ability to integrate cloud provider data into the ServiceNow CMDB is critical for maintaining visibility and managing IT assets effectively. ServiceNow’s Service Graph Connectors for AWS, Azure, and GCP provide a plug-and-play solution that simplifies this integration process.
Key Benefits:
- Rapid Integration: Service Graph Connectors allow organizations to quickly and seamlessly integrate data from major cloud providers into the CMDB, ensuring high data quality and consistency. This unified view of IT assets and their relationships enhances the overall visibility of the IT environment.
- Support for Key Outcomes: These connectors support a wide range of platform outcomes, including visibility, software asset management, health log analytics (HLA), and service operations. This comprehensive support enables organizations to manage their IT operations more effectively and efficiently.
- Continuous Updates: ServiceNow ensures that these connectors remain up-to-date with iterative updates provided with each store release. This means that as cloud offerings evolve, the connectors will continue to support new features and capabilities, ensuring long-term compatibility and functionality.
Available with any level of ITOM Visibility or AIOps, Service Graph Connectors are a must-have for IT operations managers, cloud administrators, and IT asset managers looking to optimize their cloud integration processes.
Requirements:
- From the ServiceNow Store:
- Service Graph Connectors work on most of the recent versions of ServiceNow including Vancouver, Washington DC, and Xanadu
- Service Graph Connectors require ITOM Visibility or higher
**For some Cloud use cases, customers should also consider agentless ITOM Discovery or Agent Client Collectors, or Cloud Native Operations for Discovery. Talk to your ServiceNow rep about the option that is most appropriate for you.
4. ML Based Service Mapping from any CMDB source
For more than a year, ServiceNow has set the standard for AI in Discovery by using some amazing technology and mathematical theory to create Service Maps from IP-based network traffic, automatically. It's a bit like giving a handful of friends a GPS to track movements in New York City and being able to infer a detailed map of the entire city from their limited movements in a few hours or days. In my view, this is every bit as incredible an advancement as what we have released in the generative AI space, and it doesn't require any additional licensing for most ITOM customers.
The only limitation has been that not all sources of discovery brought in usable IP traffic. Our engineers have addressed that limitation and we can now announce Service Mapping from any CMDB source, including Service Graph Connectors, Agent Client Collectors, or agentless discovery. This includes architectures that do not use a MID server.
Why are ServiceMaps so important? Our next-generation AI is service-aware, meaning that it produces tailored output based on your technology's unique configuration and how you are using it to accomplish your business objectives. Getting to this level of maturity used to require dozens of hours per service to assemble necessary inputs and guide marginally automated processes through each layer of the technology stack, step by step. ML-based Service Mapping fingerprints applications and automates that collection, even taking advantage of crowd-sourced network patterns. This allows you to map dozens of critical applications in weeks not months. Really, as you have sufficient network traffic. And that enables our AI to do far more than offer generic smarts cobbled together from vase data sets. It allows every kind of ServiceNow process to offer intelligent suggestions based on your business and the unique way you are structured to do business.
Requirement:s
- the Service Mapping Plus Application from the ServiceNow Store
- Washington Patch 5 or Xanadu
ServiceNow’s ITOM Visibility does not wash clothes. It does provide a robust set of tools designed to help organizations gain full visibility into their IT environments, streamline key processes, and integrate critical data. Whether you’re managing discovery processes, automating certificate management, or integrating cloud provider data, these features offer the capabilities you need to succeed in today’s dynamic IT landscape. In Xanadu, you will find features to do the fundamentals and that push value that value all the way into your AI-powered next steps!
