ServiceNow Discovery Integration with Flexera

[joel_edillon]

Has anyone successfully implemented integration of ServiceNow Discovery with Flexera? I am interested on:

1) What are things that need special consideration during design / planning?
2) What are potentially issues, and how to avoid them?
3) Is it possible for you to share the mapping / transformation details - so we can use them as baseline?

Appreciate any thoughts you will have on this topic.

Best regards.

[rgarland]

I am also interested in this as it is on our roadmap to get done. From what I understand Flexera is working on building this as an add-on to their product. No timeframe announced for when they will have that though.

[daveholmes]

Hey Joel

FlexNet integration has been available since mid to end 2014. FlexNet would do the software discovery and normalisation and can share the discovered software back to ServiceNow. There is also the ability to choose either FlexNet or SeviceNow as the trusted source for contracts, any changes to which are reflected automatically in either system.

Some info here Flexera Software and ServiceNow: Asset Management to License Optimization | Flexera Software

Thanks

Dave

[BalzHedinger]

We just established this Integration between Flexnet (that is how we call the product) and our Servicemow instance.

The Set Up we have is as follows:

In Servicenow we manage Hardware Assets so that Servicenow is the Master for HW Data.

In Flexnet we manage SW Assets so that Flexnet is the Master for Software Assets.

From a Process Perspective in Servicenow the asset and Configuration Managmeent process is supported and Flexnet supports the Software Asset Management Process Activities.

Because Flexnet delivers a Software Models Catalog that is maintained by Flexera (so all new SW Versions and the way how to count the Software and how the Licencies are defined and so on) we choosed to have a System doing this instead we have to do on our own manually. So in Flexnet the whole procedures like Counting, Reconciliation, Reporting and so on are executed.

Integrations

Flexnet must have an Integration to the Active Directory to recieve Users and must have an Integration with a Discovery Tool (can be their own or Third party like SCCM or others) that are able to deliver Software data and also as you know those tools always delivers some Hardware Data.

The Integration between Flexnet and Service-now Instance requires a MID Server on Servicenow side and something simmiliar on Flexnet side called beacon Server.

Once the servers are up and running and the communications are established between those servers some configurations must be done (took me 15 Minutes on Servicenow side) and thats it.

A mapping excercise is recommended and also carefull testing on both sides (this is actually what I am doing).

Real issues i did not find until now.

This Integration is a bi-direction Integration so service-now will deliver HW Assets to Flexnet and once the Data is processed in Flexnet the Flexnet will send back enriched HW data. Enriched means with Softwaredata related to the HW CI, SW Models and also HW data that also has been collected in our case with SCCM.

Like this servicenow instance resp. Users do benefit from the data processing in Flexnet. Like this HW Asset management ist still done where it should be done, and the same is true for Software Asset Management.

With this appoach ist is a real Win-Win Situation.

regards

Balz

[ArshiaK]

Thanks for your information, Do you know how can we update the "Most recent discovery" manually from client side?