Why is the age of Service Now?

[josiahsullivan]

Frank Slootman is right; the Age of Service is Now. But what defines that age?

History informs our present and future. In a social context, or with hindsight, major inflection points can be quite clear. Consider CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta's position reversal on marijuana, based on its effectiveness treating pediatric seizures and misclassification of risk. We have extraordinary transparency into the belief structures of others and how those beliefs affect their decision-making and positions.

In technology we don't always have such clarity. As engineers and builders of the Internet age, we define our day-to-day world in terms of products, features, quality, and business.

But there are occasional exceptions.

Larry Page publicly expresses disappointment and frustration at NSA spying. Aaron Levie's twitter feed is a more frequent, albeit lighter, take on a wider set of issues.

But one of the most interesting glimpses into the psyche of large technology comes memos written by Bill Gates and Ray Ozzie. And the one thing that stands out is the focus on broad swaths of time, measured in half-decades and in multiple decades. These memos encourage us to think about where we sit in the broader timeline, and what it means for technology.

The '80s were the decade of the PC.

The '90s were the decade of software.

The '00s were the decade of the Internet

Now this is the decade of Service.

Now, the hallmarks of the Internet and Internet-based services are a focus on core competencies and frictionless access to consumer-centric services.

Core Competencies

We dance on the shoulders of giants. With each new product and release we build on physical and digital infrastructure that has been evolving for decades. ServiceNow doesn't need to reinvent the wheel by building our own servers or hard drives. GoDaddy's 2014 Super Bowl Bodybuilder commercial implicitly reiterates the message that you can rely on technical service providers so that you can focus on what you do best. In their case, spray tans. Even the largest organizations on the planet don't want or need to write their own service management platform, and they trust ServiceNow instead.

Frictionless Access

Now that we can focus on our core competencies, we can make them great! And today, great is often defined as smooth, simple access to our needs and desires.

The best user interfaces get out of the way and let customers access what they want, when they want it. Amazon Prime fans consider 1-Click ordering and 2-day shipping inalienable rights.

The best solutions eliminate entire layers of inefficiency. Kyle Drake invented Coinpunk, a personal Bitcoin wallet because he, like most consumers, wants to eliminate the middleman costs of banks and payment processing. Crowdsourcing platforms like TopCoder enable individuals to identify each other across divergent backgrounds and share knowledge over great distances to focus on common causes like antibody DNA sequencing.

ServiceNow customers use Workflow and Orchestration to eliminate the most painful and inefficient processes because delivering frictionless service provides the most value to their users.

Consumer-Centric

Stephen Mann does an excellent job delving into the Consumerization of Service, far beyond simply bringing a tablet to the office. The essence of it is giving staff what they want, not what someone else thinks they need. The Service Catalog empowers employees to determine that quickly and effectively.

ServiceNow empowers our customers to change the world for the better because it fires on all of these cylinders. It smoothly turns employees into consumers of IT services and lets business focus on doing business instead of managing business. #KNOW14 is inspirational and valuable because customers connect with other customers to learn how to make this decade great for each other.

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