ITOM Visibility

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 12, 2026
  • 4 minutes to read
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    Summary of ITOM Visibility

    ServiceNow® ITOM Visibility in the Australia release provides comprehensive visibility into your IT infrastructure through integrated applications including Discovery, Service Mapping, Firewall Audits and Reporting, Certificate Inventory and Management, AI Agent Topology Mapping, and more. These capabilities deliver a unified and connected view of your entire IT network and the services it supports, enabling effective management and operational insight across your environment.

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    Key Features

    • Discovery: Automatically identifies IT infrastructure components such as servers, software, network devices, cloud resources, and TLS certificates using a reliable, replicable method called horizontal discovery.
    • Service Mapping: Maps dependencies and relationships between devices and applications (top-down mapping), creating dynamic application service maps that visualize infrastructure connections and highlight problematic components.
    • Data Integration: Feeds accurate and complete configuration management database (CMDB) data to various ServiceNow AI Platform applications like ITOM AIOps, ITOM Optimization, Software Asset Management, Customer Service Management, IT Service Management, Strategic Portfolio Management, and Security Operations.
    • ITOM AIOps: Uses machine learning to analyze infrastructure alerts and events, providing consolidated dashboards and proactive anomaly detection to prevent service outages.
    • ITOM Optimization: Facilitates provisioning and cost visibility for private and public cloud infrastructure, including cloud cost analysis via Cloud Insights.
    • CMDB Integration: Maintains an accurate and comprehensive CMDB that supports multiple IT and business functions, enabling better decision-making and operational efficiency.

    How It Works

    Discovery utilizes probes to collect data from devices and sensors to process that data, updating the CMDB accurately. Discovery patterns help identify device attributes and, in conjunction with Service Mapping, their connections. Service Mapping creates detailed application service maps using these patterns, as well as tags and traffic data, to reflect real-time infrastructure status and dependencies.

    Licensing and Setup

    ITOM Visibility requires activation of the Discovery and Service Mapping plugins, which are subscription-based. Licensing details depend on your organization's agreement with ServiceNow. To maximize ITOM Visibility functionality, install the latest applications from the ServiceNow Store and configure user access credentials for your network devices and applications.

    Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    • Gain a comprehensive and continuously updated view of your IT infrastructure and service dependencies.
    • Leverage accurate CMDB data to improve IT operations, reduce service outages, and optimize costs.
    • Enable advanced AI-driven insights with ITOM AIOps for proactive service health monitoring.
    • Integrate ITOM Visibility data across ServiceNow’s broader platform to enhance IT service management, security operations, software asset management, and customer service.

    The ServiceNow® ITOM Visibility product consists of ServiceNow® Discovery, Firewall Audits and Reporting, Certificate Inventory and Management, Service Mapping, AI Agent Topology Mapping, ITOM Content Service, Tag Governance, Cloud Discovery Workspace, and Cloud License Estimator applications. Discovery and Service Mapping give you a unified, connected view of your entire IT network and the services that it supports. The and applications provide data to ITOM Visibility.

    Who uses ITOM Visibility

    ITOM Visibility enables the IT departments of enterprises and cloud companies providing platform as a service to discover their IT resources.

    ServiceNow® Configuration Management Database (CMDB) is not just an operational tool, it is a strategic necessity in today’s IT landscape. Maintaining an accurate and complete CMDB provides the foundation for maintaining critical services and drives multiple outcomes important to IT departments.

    ITOM Visibility discovers many things which are stored in the CMDB.

    Data collected by ITOM Visibility provides a foundation for operation of the following business units and products of ServiceNow AI Platform:
    ITOM AIOps
    Use ITOM AIOps to track and maintain the health of services in your organization. ITOM AIOps gathers alerts from infrastructure events captured by third-party monitoring tools. It then uses IT-related information gathered by Discovery to map alerts to configuration items. Based on the collected information, ITOM AIOps provides dashboards showing a consolidated view of all service-impact events. You can also use ITOM AIOps to proactively analyze your IT infrastructure to spot issues and prevent service outages. Using advanced machine learning to analyze information about your IT infrastructure, the application automatically determines dynamic thresholds and identifies anomalies that may indicate potential service outages.
    ITOM Optimization
    ITOM Optimization gives you tools to provision private and public cloud infrastructure and services and to achieve consistent management and cost visibility. The Cloud Insights application, available in the ServiceNow Store, helps you to analyze the full range of costs associated with cloud assets so you can identify and take action on opportunities to save money and optimize operations.
    Software Asset Management
    Understand the software running in your IT environment. Software Asset Management works together with the CMDB powered up by ITOM Visibility. Use Software Asset Management to track configurations that impact software license consumption across your IT environments and datacenter.
    Customer Service Management
    Efficiently diagnose and resolve issues related to the IT infrastructure by using near real-time data supplied by ITOM Visibility.
    IT Service Management
    Rely on the IT infrastructure discovered by ITOM Visibility to manage and deliver services to your users. See changes and incidents created and managed by IT Service Management applications in ITOM Visibility service maps.
    Strategic Portfolio Management
    Use data collected by ITOM Visibility to gain a comprehensive understanding of the applications used in your organization.
    Security Operations
    View security incidents in the context of ITOM Visibility to find out which application services are at risk. Use this information to prioritize and resolve threats based on the impact they pose to your organization.

    How you use ITOM Visibility

    The Discovery feature offers a replicable and reliable method of identifying the enterprise IT infrastructure. Discovery can find computers, servers, software, printers, routers, and switches. It can also find IP-enabled devices and applications that run on them, resources from various cloud providers, and TLS certificates. This method is referred to as horizontal discovery. Connections between the devices and applications are not included in horizontal discovery.

    The Service Mapping feature maps dependencies, based on a connection between devices and applications. This method is referred to as top-down mapping. The top-down mapping helps you immediately see the impact of a problematic object on the rest of the application service operation. Application service maps show infrastructure objects and connections between them. Service Mapping regenerates application service maps regularly, to keep them updated and relevant. Any faulty objects are shown along with the devices and applications they affect, providing a visual clue of the state of the application service.

    Figure 1. Comparison of horizontal discovery and top-down mapping results
    Diagram showing results of horizontal discovery and top-down mapping results

    How ITOM Visibility works

    Discovery can use scripts to collect and process data on a host and then update the CMDB. Scripts that explore or investigate CIs on your network are called probes. Sensors are the scripts that parse the data returned from the probes. In addition, Discovery uses discovery patterns. A pattern is a sequence of operations whose purpose is to detect attributes of devices and applications and, when used by Service Mapping, their outbound connections.

    Service Mapping can deploy different methods for creating application services. Discovery patterns are the main method used by Service Mapping. However, you can also map application services using tags, and traffic connections between devices and applications. For more information, see Choose the right method for mapping application services.

    ITOM Visibility licensing

    The ServiceNow AI Platform® uses a licensing method where your organization is billed for using ITOM Visibility applications. Licensing options can vary based on your organization’s agreement. The ServiceNow Product Documentation doesn't provide information on prices, packaging, or other details determined by your organization customer contract. For general information about licensing and subscriptions, see ITOM/OT SU Licensing and subscriptions.

    What to know before you begin

    ITOM Visibility is available with activation of the Discovery (com.snc.discovery) plugin and the Service Mapping (com.snc.service-mapping) plugin, which require an ITOM Visibility subscription. For details, see Request Discovery and Request Service Mapping. For full ITOM Visibility functionality, install the latest ITOM Visibility applications from the ServiceNow Store.

    Define users and configure credentials to enable ITOM Visibility access to applications and devices inside your organization network. For details, see Prerequisites for performing top-down discovery using Service Mapping.