Service Mapping and Discovery

[SatishChitti]

Hi Everyone,

Can anyone tell me the clear difference between Horizontal discovery and Top-Down Discovery and also what is the meaning of "Services"?
Thanks

Satish

[rohansargar · Accepted solution]

Hello @SatishChitti,

Horizontal Discovery : 

It starts from the infrastructure layer, such as IP addresses or network devices.
Its goal is to discover physical and virtual components like servers, routers, switches, databases, and applications.
It performs discovery in layers – for example:
→ IP → Host (server) → Running Services → Applications.
It's commonly used for building the technical view of the CMDB.
It does not focus on service relationships or dependencies between applications.

Top-Down Discovery (Service-Centric)
It starts from the entry point of a business application or service, such as a URL or load balancer.
Its purpose is to discover the full dependency chain of a business service – from the application layer down to the infrastructure.
It maps how business applications depend on servers, databases, and other resources.
It helps build a service-aware CMDB, which is useful for impact analysis, SLAs, and AIOps.
Typically initiated by defining a Business Service and its entry points in ServiceNow.
It provides a topological view of all components that support a service.

Services : 

A Service represents a business or technical functionality delivered to users.
In ServiceNow, services are stored in the CMDB and are classified into:
Business Services (e.g., Email, Payroll Portal)
Technical Services (e.g., DNS, Database Hosting)
Services help in tracking SLAs, incidents, availability, and impact analysis.
Service Mapping helps understand how services are constructed and what they depend on.

If my response helped please mark it as correct,

BR,

Rohan