Service Bridge Licenses

[d_worthington]

I have a large customer with several standalone instances. Generally, each one is configured to handle all of the needs its department requires. The customer wants to break apart and aggregate this functionality into various groups of consumers and providers of the various services, making for more cost-efficient operations going forward, utilizing Service Bridge functionality. I need to be able to explain to my customer the impact this will have on their license counts and costs.  They have been told various and conflicting (and mostly inaccurate, I believe) things about this impact - from a doubling of the number of licenses needed to a general uplift of license types.  While I understand that license costs are negotiable and require quotation, information about license types and numbers shouldn't be so obscure and difficult to ferret out.  Can anybody help me come to this understanding and knowledge? 

So for a simplistic example.  Say we now have two 100-licnse ITSM support groups, and we want to consolidate that into one, 200 license support group (ignoring possible future economies of scale). They've been told they would need 400 licenses, or alternatively, they would have to "transform" licensees to other licenses - a "general uplift."  But what's the real story? OK - a bad, simplistic example, but it's what they're being told.

[Mark Manders]

There is only one answer to this: talk to your ServiceNow sales rep. Any other answer is just a guess. 

And since we are talking about ServiceNow, your 'information about license types and number shouldn't be so obscure and difficult to ferret out' is unfortunately not true. It is obscure and nobody can figure this out for you, but your sales rep. And they are probably looking at their targets which makes an up-sale better for them, but maybe other solutions work better (license wise). 

You could also pitch to move everything to one instance, getting rid of the cost of multiple instances and have everyone work in one.

[SrdanMatijevic]

Yes, you need to talk to your sales rep. AFAIK, the Service Bridge is part of the Telecommunications Service Management or Technology Provider Service Management products only i.e. it is not offered as a separate add-on. It only needs to be licensed for the Provider instance, there are no license implications for the Consumer instance(s).

[d_worthington]

Thank you for the response. I don't think that is completely the answer.  Service Bridge is required on both sides - provider and consumer. It utilizes the Integration Hub. Entitlements do vary, but seem to be based on various apps and modules installed, including SPM and possibly ITAM and/or DevOps - not strictly telecom, although that may be its origin and most common use case.

[d_worthington]

Unfortunately, it's 45 separate instances, 30 or 35 different sales reps with 30 or 35 different answers - on one wants to talk about the overarching situation, no one wants one of "their" instances shut down or consolidated....

Right now, cost is not the issue. Just understanding the functionality of the licensing required to start stratifying and integrating the various little microcosms of functionality into the beginnings of an enterprise approach. Service Bridge seems like an obvious solution - but nobody can or will tell me the impact this direction will or may have.

Another example - say there are 15 separate HR groups, each with their own little HR fiefdom. Let's say we want to consolidate that to three or four groups - one for employee requests, one for benefits, one for GRC. Service Bridge could do this, but nobody can tell me what licenses would be required. I get the "enough to do the work" aspect, but that's just the fine tuning. Does the consumer require licenses, or only the providers?  What licenses? Who needs to be a catalog or a storefront user to initiate an employee request, or receive an answer or result?