Get Your History Lesson Here - ServiceNow is NOT an ITSM Company Selling ITBM

[rickyb]

ServiceNow is a platform-as-a-service, cloud-based application development and workflow engine that allows business users to create meaningful applications. A little glimpse at the history of ServiceNow will help you understand that.

When Fred Luddy was 16 years old in the early '70s, he had a part-time job as a purchasing guy at American Standard. The company bought a high-end computer, and when he walked into the data center where the Hewlett-Packard computer was he felt like he never wanted to leave. Fred describes it as a moth drawn to the flame. He immediately knew that he wanted to be part of this data processing community.

In 2003 Fred saw a phenomenal opportunity to build software that was totally different from what had been done before. It was different in the way it could be delivered and charged for. Fred started ServiceNow in October of 2003, and built the initial software himself.

Fred saw that Internet deployments were obviously a wonderful way to do business and a great enabler for a significantly larger group of people than client server software had been. When he started ServiceNow he had no idea what area he would attack but he knew he wanted to do something involving forms-based workflows.

While the first primary application to be built was IT Service Management, it was only the beginning.   This proved to be a valuable use of the development and workflow engine, and is only the first extension of an incredibly robust ecosystem of applications including IT Operations Management, Security Operations, and IT Business Management. In addition ServiceNow continues creating a service-model for areas outside of traditional IT including HR, Finance and other shared service organizations.   Many customers and partners are extending the platform application development capabilities to build mission-critical applications that deliver value daily.   ServiceNow's IT Business Management application suite is an extremely critical extension of the ServiceNow platform.   By building IT Business Management (which includes ideation, demand, portfolio, resource, project management, as well as application portfolio management and IT financial management) on the core platform, ServiceNow simultaneously provides high value by bringing powerful platform capabilities to what has previously been done in silos. By leveraging the single system of record, single system of engagement for strategic portfolio delivery ServiceNow creates a closed-loop ecosystem that directly associates strategy and value-based portfolio alignment (project portfolio, application portfolio, service portfolio) with actual execution and management — creating the ability to harvest value and better define future strategies.

You did one heck of a job Fred!

You can read the full story here: http://www.sramanamitra.com/2010/03/10/servicing-it-servicenow-ceo-fred-luddy-part-1/